What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
Published: 2022
Genre: Horror
Official Synopsis:
(from Amazon.com)
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.
Review:
In T. Kingfisher’s gothic horror novel, What Moves the Dead, Alex Easton is summoned to the House of Usher by their childhood friend, Madeline Usher. What Easton finds there is a landscape riddled with strange fungi, which appear to have the wildlife acting strangely. When Alex sees Madeline Usher, they quickly realize that Madeline’s strange affliction might be related to the fungi beyond the walls of the manor…
T. Kingfisher’s novel - a retelling of Poe’s "The Fall of the House of Usher" - is a great example of what a contemporary gothic horror story could be, with a quick paced, intriguing plot line. While it took me a few chapters to get into the story, I was motivated to continue reading by the secrets of the Usher house itself, as well as the mysterious illness that plagues Madeline Usher, all of which comes to head at the climax of the story. Clocking in at only 170+ pages, What Moves the Dead does not have a lot of real estate to work with, so the suspense and body horror that Kingfisher packs into this novel is worthy of any full-length read. Furthermore, Kingfisher is able to execute all of these elements of horror and suspense without any graphic content, making this a book that could be used in the classroom.
While my favorite Poe retelling remains Bradbury’s “Usher II,” What Moves the Dead is a chilling, compact read.
0 Comments.