54 pages • 1 hour read
Larissa LaiThe Tiger Flu
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 5, Chapter 43Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 43 Summary: “The Starfish Tree”
Chapter 43 is set in New Grist Village and is told from Kora’s perspective on Day 1 of the node “Insects Awaken.” It is 156 years later, in the year 2301.
Kora has been transmutated into a “starfish tree,” which is a tree that bears organs as fruit. The Kora Tree shades and tells stories and Grist history to a group of young Grist girls. The Kora Tree explains how she escaped from the New Origins Archive during the fall of Chang. Kora was uploaded to a batterkite using LïFT technology and became its consciousness. With Kiri and Bombyx’s help, they discovered that batterkite tentacles, if groomed carefully and left atop fertile soil, can grow roots. With this knowledge, they created the Kora Tree and an entire orchard of starfish trees.
The book concludes with Kiri, who is now an elder groomsman, contemplating returning to the New Origins Archive ruins to find the blue door of the Dark Baths so she can see Peristrophe and Glorybind again. Eng lurches along its orbit overhead.
Part 5, Chapter 43 Analysis
Part 5 marks the beginning of a new era in the Tiger Flu universe. The New Grist Village rebuilds in an altered capacity. Its new incarnation calls back to an earlier moment in the book, when Kiri wondered if the fate of humanity rested more with the manipulation of plants than with animals. The Kora Tree and the Starfish Orchard suggest that the Grist sisters will have a long life ahead of them and that the bloodline will continue for many generations to come.
With Chang destroyed by Isabelle’s nuclear missile in Part 4, Part 5 concludes with a kind of death for Eng too: We see Eng’s ever-deepening orbit, one that will take “a thousand years” to complete (330). With the fall of these two mainframe planets, both of which have been a constant presence throughout the book, it is implied that humanity at large must start a new chapter.
