***eArc was given in exchange for an honest review by NetGalley & Tor Nightfire***

Who doesn't love a horror novella, especially one based off a famous story. Me, apparently. I don't think What Moves the Dead is terrible by any means, it's actually quite good and spooky and interesting. The writing is beautiful, the images provocative, the horror visceral. But I'm left wondering what exactly moved T. Kingfisher to adapt the Fall of the House of Usher in quite this way.

A book that I wish was a little longer. Perfect for what it was trying to do for a novella, but the world was vastly interesting and pray for more future books in this odd world. Kingfisher's prose is atmospheric and at times claustrophobic. It perfectly balances the Sci-Fi/Horror elements that I love in Kingfisher's writing.

Wow! What a fantastic read. This was my first T. Kingfisher book and I loved it. I can’t wait to read more from this author. This is a great novella for people who enjoy gothic literature. The vibes and the writing were top tier. I’ve never read the original Fall of the House of Usher story so I can’t compare them. This had so much that I wish for in a gothic manor horror tale. I only wish there had been some romance. Thank you netgalley and Tor Nightfire for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

If you enjoyed Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, you’ll definitely enjoy this novel! And the cover? Gorgeous! ANNNDDD the inside artwork. Literally flawless ! Definitely a new favorite 🫶🏼

Apparently this is a retelling of Edgar Allen Poe’s story of The Fall of The House Of Usher which I’m ashamed to admit that I either have yet to read or probably read it for school and completely forgot. So I know what I’m reading next!

“This place breeds nightmares.”

What Moves the Dead is definitely in my top 10 (or even 5) books of 2022. There’s still a few months left in the year, and some amazing looking books on my TBR, but as soon as I finished this book, I already wanted to reread it. As someone who doesn’t really reread books, that tells how much I enjoyed it.

“The dead carry lanterns down in the deep.”

The Fall of the House of Usher is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe released in 1840. More than 150 years later, T. Kingfisher weaves it into a modern day story, while still retaining a lot of the classic elements that I enjoyed in the Poe story. What Moves the Dead takes the original gothic story and makes it queer, with a touch of fungus. My favorite.

As mentioned in Kingfisher’s author’s note, this novel is reminiscent of Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Mexican Gothic is another one of my favorite novels, and while WMTD is similar, it definitely works on its own. File it under “a fungus comes in and makes everyone slightly crazy” and I will read it. And most likely love it.

I was lucky enough to receive an advanced review copy from Tor Nightfire, and my opinions are my own. Go buy this book if you haven’t already. I highly recommend.

CW for animal death, gore, suicide, war, and mental illness

ARC from Netgalley. VERY much enjoyed this, and for our extremely conservative library here, it is an ideal introduction to some of the themes involved. Awesome retelling.

While I didn't love this as much the other T. Kingfisher books I've read, it was still an enjoyable read. The writing made it feel like something that had been written long ago. It has been a while since I've read Edgar Allan Poe's House of Usher, but Kingfisher's writing in this novella could fit right alongside Poe's. I loved the quirky characters and though the pace was slow, the gothic atmosphere mostly made up for it. Kingfisher mentions Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic in the author's note and that feels like an apt comparison. If you enjoyed that book, I think you'd also enjoy this one.

I wanted to like this book but I didn't. This book reminded me of Mexican Gothic, which I just found ok. There was to much world building as well as to much fungus.

Enjoyment: 5
Total rating: 5


Inspired by Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," we follow retired soldier Alex Easton as they rush to the Usher's home after receiving notice that Madeline is dying.

What they find is much worse than anticipated: possessed wildlife, fungal overgrowth and a very frail, unrecognizable Madeline. Her brother, and their friend, is not well either. Now Alex is racing against time to unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.

Kingfisher is quickly becoming one of my fave authors. She has a talent for creating unique worlds, delivering humour consistent with the work's tone, building entire worlds seamlessly, and delivering delightful, well-rounded, engaging characters.

In What Moves the Dead, Kingfisher captures the essence of Poe's The House of Usher and gives it such a unique spin; the only similarities the reader encounters are the intense atmosphere, increasing tension and brilliant storytelling.

What Moves the Dead is set in an alternative world, containing its own pronoun rules, yet the narrative feels organic and easy to comprehend. The characters are delightfully early 1800-esque in nature, language and sense of humour.

It's worth checking the content warning before reading the novella, but I will say that Kingfisher handled it well and is written in a way that is pertinent to the plot.



Disclaimer: In exchange for an honest review, I am thankful to the publishers and NetGalley for providing a copy of What Moves the Dead

The cover is so creepy and pretty. This book is the perfect read for the fall/Halloween season. It's a creepy haunted house filled with mysteries and horror.

Mushrooms are having a moment in horror and I'm here for it.

This tiny book leaves behind a great sense of dread and mustiness in the best way. It's a House of Usher retelling and it's very creepy and gothic and I loved it

T. Kingfisher has chosen to put some interesting spin on a retelling of The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe. Now, I had no problem with her changes because, to tell the truth, I read the book so many years ago that I barely remember it. What I do remember is there was a really creepy house out in the middle of nowhere, a big lake-ish thing nearby, and a couple of people who were friends of the narrator who were sick, and at the end, the house falls apart or something.

Now, What Moves The Dead by T. Kingfisher has all those same elements. The narrator now has a name, Alex Easton, a retired soldier who served with Roderick Usher in a war neither wants to talk about. Alex shows up unexpectedly after receiving a letter from Roderick's sister, Madeline, requesting Alex come as she's dying.

When Alex arrives, the entire area is depressing, the house is barely standing, in fact, parts have caved in, the tarn outside is weirdly off-putting, there are hardly any servants, the local wildlife gives those in the area the creeps, and neither Roderick nor Madeline look very healthy. The atmosphere is uber-Gothic (more literary than architectural meaning) the secondary or incidental characters are an interesting mix of individuals that help Alex to make some sense of what might be going on.

While not the horrific horror that will keep you up with the lights on, it will certainly make the hair on the back of your neck stand up and make you wonder about the reasonableness of putting mushrooms on your pizza. In other words, this story will probably stick to me because there's more logic, science, and real emotion which made me care about some of the characters.

This book was an interesting mix of comedy and horror. Seriously, the idea of fungi possessed hare just staring and the descriptions of how they moved truly frightened me, something a book has not done in a very long time.

I was a little apprehensive when starting What Moves the Dead as it was my first by Kingfisher and I typically don't have the best luck with Poe retellings or with gothic tales but I was pleasantly surprised with this one. This ended up being a solid four star read, I loved the subtle horror of the story and the gothic telling was superb. The gore was fantastic and the twist was done so well. I believe this story worked very well in novella form. I will keep this one as a recommendation to fellow horror readers.

Wonderful retelling with a fascinating innovation. It was well thought out and the flow of science behind the horror only enhanced it. One of my favorite retellings of all time - Poe would be proud.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange of an honest review. I really enjoyed this one. It had good creepy vibes, loved the way the story unfolded. I am obsessd with the mycologist character. Highly reccomended

Ahoy there mateys! Amazing and wonderful retelling of Poe's "the fall of the house of usher."  Creepy house, creepy hosts, and creepy hares.  I absolutely loved the narrator Easton who is a soldier with an unusual background.  This took a story that I really enjoyed as a child and twisted it in a way that made it even better.  I don't want to give too much away because the reader should watch the story unfold.  The novella contains Kingfisher's mix of humor and exquisite writing. The author's notes at the end were a delight in terms of explaining her writing process and her commentary on the original.  After reading this, I immediately went back to reread Poe's version.  The juxtaposition of the two was so delicious and enriched the horror of both.  It made me tingly with dread and I will reread this for sure.  Arrr!

"The dead don’t walk. Except, sometimes, when they do."
--------------------------------------
"It is a cliché to say that a building’s windows look like eyes because humans will find faces in anything and of course the windows would be the eyes. The house of Usher had dozens of eyes, so either it was a great many faces lined up together or it was the face of some creature belonging to a different order of life—a spider, perhaps, with rows of eyes along its head."

How many of you have not read Edgar Allan Poe’s story, The Fall of the House of Usher? Ok, now how many of you read it, but so long ago that you do not really remember what it was all about? All right, the link is right above, so, really, go check it out. Take your time. I get paid the same whether you take half an hour or a year, so no worries on my part. Pop back in when you’re done.

All right, I think it has been long enough. Those who have not done the reading can catch up later. As I am sure you get, What Moves the Dead is a pastiche, a reimagining of Poe’s tale. Often these are temporal updates, moving the events to a more contemporary setting. But this one is different. Kingfisher (really Ursula Vernon) keeps Usher in the late 19th century. She supplants Poe’s thick style with a more contemporary, less florid, more conversational presentation.

Poe’s unnamed narrator becomes Alex Easton, of which more in a bit. We first meet the lieutenant examining some disturbing flora.

"The mushroom’s gills were the deep-red color of severed muscle, the almost-violet shade that contrasts so dreadfully with the pale pink of viscera. I had seen it any number of times in dead deer and dying soldiers, but it startled me to see it here."

Ok, definitely not good. Continuing on, Alex is alarmed at the state of the Usher manse.

"It was a joyless scene, even with the end of the journey in sight. There were more of the pale sedges and a few dead trees, too gray and decayed for me to identify…Mosses coated the edges of the stones and more of the stinking redgills pushed up in obscene little lumps. The house squatted over it all like the largest mushroom of them all."

The invitation (plea) to visit in this version came not from Roderick Usher, but from his twin, Madeline. Neither sibling had had any children, so mark the end of their line, as many prior generations had failed to provide more than a single direct line of descendants. Both Madeline and Roderick look awful, cadaverous, with Maddy, diagnosed as cataleptic, quite wasted away and clearly nearing death. They are having a bad hair life.

There is another in attendance, Doctor James Denton, an American, whose primary narrative purpose seems to be to provide a conversational and analytical partner for Easton.

We track the demise of Madeline. Given her Poe-DNA, we know her chances for survival are not great. (But was she really dead in that one, or just entombed alive?) Add in a delight of an amateur mycologist, Eugenia, a fictional aunt of Beatrix Potter, who was quite an accomplished student and illustrator of things fungal. Potter is a pure delight upon the page, (maybe she used some spells?) possessed of a sharp mind and wit, and a bit of unkind regard for some. Other supporting cast include Easton’s batman (no, not that one) Angus, and his mount, Hob, who is given a lot more personality than horses are usually allowed.

So, plenty of dark and dreary, but the atmospherics are not all that is going on here. Kingfisher had read the book as a kid, but rereading it as an adult, found her curiosity piqued. She noted that Poe goes on a fair bit in his story about things fungal, so decided to dig into that as a possible reason for the sad state of the Usher land and clan. The result is a spore-burst of understanding,

"…so I was reading old pulp, basically going, is there anything here that grabs me that I can see a story in. And I happened on Usher and I was like, I haven't reread any Poe in a while. And I read Fall of the House of Usher and it's obsessed with rotting vegetation and fungus. And it's really short. And they don't explain hardly anything…I wanted to know what was wrong with Madeline Usher because you get buried alive, that is a problem. And so I started reading about catalepsy which is what it was diagnosed as at the time and also fungus, there was just so much about fungus and I'm like, okay, obviously these two must be linked somehow." - from the LitHub piece

There is a particularly creepy element, in the hares around the tarn that sit and stare at people through blank eyes. They do not behave like normal bunnies at all in other unsettling ways I will not spoil here.

It is definitely worth your time to re-read Poe’s original. There are so many wonderful elements. One is a song that Roderick composes, which encapsulates the dark sense of the tale. There are some bits that were changed or omitted from the original. Poe’s Roderick was heavy into painting, an element that Kingfisher opted to omit. And he was particularly taken with Henry Fuseli, whose dark painting, The Nightmare, certainly fits well with the tale. His guitar work in the original was replaced with piano playing.

Kingfisher adds into the story a bit of gender irregularity. What to do if a non-binary person with mammaries wants to become a soldier? Well, these days, can do, but in the late 19th century, not so much. She learned of a practice in the Caucusus, borne of a shortfall of human cannon fodder. A woman could join the military by declaring herself a man, and voila, presto chango, she is legally a dude. Kingfisher took a tangent off that, giving Easton a home in a made-up European nation.

"Gallacia’s language is . . . idiosyncratic. Most languages you encounter in Europe have words like he and she and his and hers. Ours has those, too, although we use ta and tha and tan and than. But we also have va and var, ka and kan, and a few others specifically for rocks and God… And then there’s ka and kan. I mentioned that we were a fierce warrior people, right? Even though we were bad at it? But we were proud of our warriors. Someone had to be, I guess, and this recognition extends to the linguistic fact that when you’re a warrior, you get to use ka and kan instead of ta and tan. You show up to basic training and they hand you a sword and a new set of pronouns. (It’s extremely rude to address a soldier as ta. It won’t get you labeled as a pervert, but it might get you punched in the mouth.)"

This did not seem particularly necessary to the story, but it is certainly an interesting element.

So, while you know the outcome in the original, (because you went back and read the story, right?) there is a question of causation. Why is the land so dreary? Why are the Ushers so ill? Why was the family tree more like a telephone pole? Kingfisher provides a delightful answer.

So, What Moves the Dead, in novella length, (about 45K words) provides an intriguing mystery, renders a suitably grim setting, offers up some fun characters, with an interesting take on gender identification possibilities, delivers some serious, scary moments, and pays homage to a classic horror tale, while (didn’t I mention this above?) making us laugh out loud. I had in my notes FIVE LOLs. Add in a bunch of snickers and a passel of smiles. Not something one might expect in a horror tale. Bottom line is that T. Kingfisher has written a scary/funny/smart re-examination (exhumation?) of a fabulous tale. What Moves the Dead moves me to report that this book is perfect for the Halloween season, and a great read anytime if you are looking for a bit of a short, but not short-story short, creepy scare.

"DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher." - from The Fall of the House of Usher

Review posted – September 9, 2022

Publication date – July 12, 2022
I received an eARE of What Moves the Dead from Tor Nightfire in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. Wait, why are you staring at me like that? Stop it! Really, Stop it!

For the full review, with images and links, please take a look at https://cootsreviews.com/2022/09/09/what-moves-the-dead-by-t-kingfisher/

A reimagining of Fall of the House of usher .Alex Easton a retired soldier is summoned to his childhood friends home .What awaits him is debilitated mansion and his friend Madeline very sick . Sleepwalking ,fungus play a part in this truly creepy gothic novel

Holy shiitake mushrooms...this novel TRULY spooked me, quite the feat for a lover and avid consumer of the horror/thriller genre! The blend of biological, cosmic, supernatural, and atmospheric horror is masterfully visceral, the tension, suspense, and descriptive imagery gave me full-body shivers multiple times throughout. I am not ashamed to admit that I hid under my blankets a few times as I devoured the book in one night, who knew hares could be so terrifying?! This is the first T. Kingfisher work I've read but will certainly not be the last.