What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

Synopsis:

When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania.

What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.

Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.

Edition:

E-ARC (Although I have since bought myself a gorgeous hardcover edition)

Disclaimer:

I received a copy of What Moves the Dead via Netgalley in exchange for review. This does not impact the contents of my review.

My Thoughts:

Tell me that you love Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. Of course you do. Everyone does – it’s a wonderful story. If you’re at all like me, right now you’re probably thinking to yourself, “That story is amazing, and certainly doesn’t need to be adapted by another author.” But you’re wrong. We’re wrong. What Moves the Dead is that rare adaptation that may even in some ways surpass its source material.

T. Kingfisher has an undeniable knack for adapting older works of horror fiction. If you’ve been around the site, you might remember my review of her Lovecraft adaptation The Hollow Places. I really enjoyed that one as well. In the case of The Hollow Places, I enjoyed the way she told the same general story, but did away with Lovecraft’s slightly eye-rolly penchant for $40 words. In the case of What Moves the Dead, I don’t think that was necessary because Poe was a much more accessible, less hoity and/or toity writer than Lovecraft ever was. However, this should not in any way serve to diminish what she has accomplished here. This story is even more impossible to put down than its source material.

“The dead don’t walk. Except, sometimes, when they do.”

I’m sure by now that many of you are aware of my love of fungal horror. And What Moves the Dead is extremely fungal horror (how does something become “extremely fungal?” I’m not sure – but this definitely is). It is overflowing with the fungi. And it’s beautiful.

I will not apologize for this gif.

Equally impressive as the sheer fungiosity of the story, is how Kingfisher has managed to improve upon the moodiness and the strangeness of Usher. Is it still ultra-gothic and turbo-bleak? Yes. But now all that gothy mood is in the service of fungus and some super creepy bunnies. And the Ushers, of course.

Alex is a truly enjoyable character, and I genuinely appreciated the seamless way Kingfisher was able to introduce Alex’s entire backstory and explanation for much of the language that surrounds the soldiers in this world. I was also quite fond of Miss Potter (ok, I loved her), and the good doctor (he was okay). I was less fond of both Roderick and Madeline, but not nearly so much so of Roderick, at least, as I was when reading The Fall of the House of Usher.

Rating:

If you like retellings/reimaginings of classic tales, I HIGHLY recommend this one. It has some truly inspired original elements, and it is just a hell of a lot of fun.

What Moves the Dead
By T. Kingfisher
Tor Nightfire
ISBN: 9781250830753
Published: July 12, 2022
Hardcover, Ebook, Audio
165 Pages
T. Kingfisher is the pen-name of Ursula Vernon
Author's Website