Book Review - What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

Title: What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier # 1)
Author: T. Kingfisher
Genre: Horror/ Fantasy
Published: 2022
 
Description: 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 Ruravia.
 
What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growth 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 the Usher before it consumes them all.
 
Review: “What Moves the Dead” is an atmospheric and eerie retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic “The Fall of the House of Usher”, which excels in world-building but ultimately falls just short of true depth.
 
From the very first page, author T. Kingfisher establishes a gloomy atmosphere that immediately gets under the reader’s skin. The greatest strength of this novella lies in the protagonist, Alex Easton, whose down-to-earth perspective serves as a fascinating guide through all the misery. Easton also brings a healthy dose of dry humor, allowing Kingfisher to perfectly break the dark tension through sharp, cynical dialogue. The addition of a bizarre natural phenomena and terrifying fungi gives the familiar basic story a unique and modern body horror twist.
 
At barely 170 pages, the build-up towards the end feels rushed. As a result, the supporting characters unfortunately remain one-dimensional and are given little chance to truly come to life for the reader. The plot was interesting, yet I was not as invested as I hoped I would be.
 
It’s a delightfully creepy book, that I enjoyed for the most part. But the lack of depth in most characters, due to the shorter format, made that I didn’t fall in love with this book. I am still interested in other work from T. Kingfisher, because her writer is beautiful.
 
Rating: 3/ 5