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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 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.
Summary
I recently read the novella What Moves the Dead (Sworn Solider, #1) by US fantasy and horror author T. Kingfisher.
Review
What Moves the Dead is an intriguing atmospheric reimagining of Edgar Allan Poe’s story ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’ In Kingfisher’s reimagining, decay and rot spread throughout the house, the wilderness, waterways, into the animals and slowly revealed- the characters themselves. Gothic tropes layered with soldiers returning from war and the heavy toll ‘battle shock’ or PTSD consuming lives and minds makes for a great psychological horror.
The natural world is turned against humanity as gothic, psychological, body horror themes prevail throughout as a fungal horror provides an uneasy menace through the book. At only a novella length of approximately 178 pages, What Moves the Dead is carefully structured and no scene lingers overly long and both dread and doubt build throughout the novella. For some readers very familiar with Poe and with gothic horror, may find some of the plot foreseeable but others may enjoy the atmospheric homage of a gothic work.
In What Moves the Dead, the unnatural, is the natural world, where a fungal agency tuns both minds and bodies out of personal control. This makes a work that is equally climate horror and body horror. I also had the pleasure to review What Feasts At Night (Sworn Soldier, #2).
Conclusion
What Moves the Dead is a powerful, atmospheric gothic horror novella. Kingfisher reimagines a classic tale and alters it through the lens of climate or ecological horror which is perfect for readers who enjoy grounding the supernatural in the scientific. A haunting, unsettling, gothic and body horror with strong unsettling atmospheric tones.
** This is my personal opinion and does not reflect any judging decisions **
Leanbh Pearson 