Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. I finished the first book in this series, “What Moves the Dead” and immediately went to request an ARC for the sequel. There’s something about Kingfisher’s writing that is so charming while being simultaneously bone chillingly terrifying. I was completely engrossed.

What Moves the Dead was a five star read for me. I absolutely loved it. I hated The Fall of the House of Usher, but the retelling really hit something in me. Mostly that it was horror, but it also hit on something for me that was scientifically possible, but not probable. The characters were amazing and I was intrigued by the world-building. I found the concept really interesting and it came together perfectly for me. I can’t quite say the same of What Feasts at Night.

What Feasts at Night is a horror story that leans more into the supernatural than the scientific, which is generally more appealing to me. I enjoy stories with spirits, ghosts, and preternatural creatures. The move from the scientific to the supernatural threw me off a little at first, but I didn’t really bother me. What made me enjoy the sequel less, falls more in line with the way the story unfolded.

For me, the way that What Moves the Dead unfolded was masterful. The pacing and the reveals were just perfect. However, the beginning of What Feasts at Night was a little slow to get off the ground and in a slender novella, that’s not necessarily a good thing. I think T. Kingfisher is normally very good at pacing a novella, this was not her finest pacing. Most of the reveals happen in the latter half of the book and everything truly exciting happens in the last 85%. I don’t think the suspense had enough time to build as the reveals were placed too close together.

Does this mean that I didn’t enjoy it? No, I still enjoyed it. I love the characters in this book. Alex is fantastic and I love kan. I also enjoy Hob, as much as I can enjoy a horse. I live and breathe the romance between Angus and Ms. Potter though. I adore them together so much. I also loved our new side characters. Also, the general commentary on Finns and salmiakki was spot on. I still love Kingfisher’s humor and the way that she writes is descriptive and, at times, horrifying and beautiful. I still enjoyed this, but I just enjoyed What Moves the Dead more.

Overall, I still think fans will be generally satisfied, but I think most are just excited that this could become a series. I would read the snot out of the adventures of Alex Easton gallivanting all over Europe and having a series of unfortunate events and experiences. I could understand if Kingfisher wasn’t as keen to continue though. I think that series can become a bit of a cage for some writers. A certain group of readers may even enjoy this more than the original. Those that wanted a more supernatural than a scientific explanation. I am just excited for anything that I can get from Kingfisher in the future.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with an eARC of this novella, however, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

How nice to be back in an adventure with Alex Easton. I want more adventures, more tales, more, more, more. This was gruesome and humorous and a little sad. I didn't laugh as much as I did with What Moves the Dead but still a creative and mesmerizing story. Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC.

I loved this! I think as far as sequels go, this was just perfect. Alex heads into kan homeland, Galacia, accompanied by Angus and kan horse, Hob (btw, the horse is fine). Staying in kan hunting lodge, Alex discovers that the caretaker has passed away and in such a way that has started rumors of a Moroi. Readying the house for Miss Potter (one of my all-time favorite experts in mushrooms), Alex hires a local duo to help out around the place.

Of course, the Moroi that even Alex knows ka should have initially believed in at this point turns out to be a bit more real than just a rumor. This Moroi and what it does really remind me of sleep paralysis which is something I struggled with for a little over a year, and trust me, it's a terrifying experience.

I really liked this. I think one of my favorite aspects of this book was learning so much more about Alex and particularly T. Kingfisher's created country, Galacia. It's horrifying but also cozy and funny. I just hope I get to see more about Alex. I am in such awe of this author and their creativity and humor. The balance between feeling scared and cozy vibes is just brilliant.

Out February 13, 2024!

Thank you, Netgalley and Publisher, for this Arc!

I really liked What Moves the Dead, but I had a few issues with it, mainly the pacing. I think What Feasts at Night fixes that and I'm still really loving the characters. I love Easton and the non-binary representation.

The horror aspect was super well done, just as in What Moves the Dead, although I do feel like Easton was centered a little more than in the previous book.

Overall, I'm really looking forward to any books in this same series and and books by T. Kingfisher in general.

This is the sequel to the gothic horror novella What Moves the Dead, one of my favourite reads of 2022.

What Feasts at Night takes Easton and Angus home to a village in Gallacia. The caretaker of Easton’s family cabin is dead, and the villagers claim there is a breath-stealing monster haunting the cabin.

The novella is spooky and funny. It also delves into Easton’s background as a soldier and looks at attitudes around PTSD in the late 1800s.

I love the way Kingfisher mixes horror and drama with her particular sense of humour. This is a quick, fun read with unexpected depth.

Thank you to Tor Nightfire and Netgalley for my review copy of this book.

Not as many fun moments as the first (which you do really need to read first to get the most out of this one!), but gloriously moody and an incredibly fast read. I downed it in one sitting. (On the plus side, it won't leave you twitchy about something as common as mushrooms...)

This was great! I liked it quite a bit better than What Moves the Dead. I enjoyed that book too, but I had more fun reading this one. Maybe because I feel like I've heard enough mushroom based horror stories for a while when I read it, but I still like the folk horror/fairy tale approach to this one better. There's a lot of story in such an a short novella. Alex Easton's still a great character and I hope Kingfisher continues their adventures. Thanks for the ARC!

What Feasts at Night is a slow-burn atmospheric horror exploring survivor's guilt and class dynamics. A perfect read for a long winter night.

T. Kingfisher's What Feasts at Night is a solid follow-up to What Moves the Dead.

This time, Alex Easton finds themself back in their homeland, Gallacia - a laughably dreary place as Alex describes it - a few weeks removed from the Usher House horror. Alex's employed maintenance man working at their inherited lodge has not responded to any of their letters in quite some time, so Alex stops in to find out what happened to the fellow. From here, a mystery unfolds revolving around an Eastern European folkloric monster. Or maybe just pneumonia, for the skeptics among us. Silence and moths and iron blades abound.

I enjoyed Kingfisher's angle on grief, trauma, survivor's guilt, and PTSD, as well as the trademark humor throughout. The prickly and superstitious Widow made for an interesting adversary.

Loved this installment almost as much as the first. T. Kingfisher has such a way with words that just places you exactly in the midst of all the gore and creepiness and I love it. This book picks up exactly where the last ended and takes us on a new path with Alex as they return to their home. The entire story is creepy and atmospheric. The ending specifically had me in knots. Excellent!

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What Feasts at Night is the follow-up to What Moves the Dead, a favorite of mine from last year. This one follows Alex as they travel to their home country to meet Miss Potter so she can explore the fungi of the land. Upon arrival they find their grounds keeper has passed away in possibly suspect circumstances and soon things get… spooky.

I really enjoyed the exploration of Alex’s homeland and the exploration of PTSD and what it feels like to be thrown back into memories. This happens to Alex a lot here, and it’s talked about how hard it is to escape something like that. It was familiar and comforting to see it rendered so well and simply. Sadly the story and creepy factor didn’t quite hit for me. I think this could have been the format in which I read the novella as objectively it was creepy. However the hit of the creepy factor didn’t land due to issues in the format.

As a follow-up I don’t think it’s quite as strong as it could be, though I reserve my complete judgement on that till I can reread this in physical. Outside of that I enjoyed T. Kingfisher’s world and the care she takes with her characters and topics. I will still definitely be picking this up for my collection and rereading it in the future.

4 out of 5 dissolving horses

Listen, I’m a mega T. Kingfisher fan at this point and all of her recent novellas have worked splendidly for me. I love the Sworn Soldier books and could read about Easton’s adventures endlessly. (Seriously, please keep writing these!)

This installment feels different in tone, more melancholy and fitting with its setting at an old forest hunting lodge. I loved the theme and meditation on ‘soldier’s heart’ which fit well with the tone and blended well with spooky elements of the book. It was also nice as a lens through which to get to understand Easton better as our protagonist. I also loved finally getting to visit Gallacia in this book! What a fun little place our author has dreamed up.

Highly recommend if you liked any of her recent works. Thanks to Tor for the eARC.

What Feasts at Night is a followup to T. Kingfisher's retelling of the Fall of the House of Usher, What Moves the Dead. I enjoyed this sequel, it was a good continuation of the stories of the characters from the first. I really loved the new character of the widow, she was an excellent addition to the crew, providing some comic relief while never being the butt of the joke for her country and folk "remedies" for the haunting the group feels.

This book gave some great creepy moments as well as having some great characters who are well thought out and given good moments in the story. Well recommend the read if you enjoyed the first book.

I binged this in a single sitting before bed, and gosh what a story.

I love gothic spooky stories so much, and What Moves the Dead is one of my new all-time favorite reads. What Feasts the Night continues the story of Alex's life as they return home to an old hunting cabin along with Angus and Miss Potter to allow our favorite mycologist a chance to study fungus in a new environment.

This story in a lot of ways focuses more on Alex's time in the army as well as the PTSD and trauma they experienced on the battlefield, coupled with old country villages and their superstitions about the unknown. It's spooky, thoughtful, and just the right amount of found family trope to even it all out.

*3.5 rounded up to 4 for Goodreads scoring system*
Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for my arc in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

I recently read "What Moves the Dead" which is a retelling of Edgar Allen Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher" and it was so unsettling and gothic and lovely. I loved it so much so I was excited to get an arc of the sequel "What Feasts at Night" which isn't a retelling of anything but it draws its inspiration from Eastern European folklore. In this case, the moroi, which is typically from Romanian folklore and is a vampire or ghost. And this time, we follow Alex Easton to his hunting lodge in Gallacia with Angus and Miss Potter (who I adore!). When Alex and Angus arrive, the caretaker is missing with the lodge in a mess.

I loved the first book so much. It was creepy, unsettling, and the detail was so lovely (aside from the extended discussion on Gallacian pronouns, which I understood why Kingfisher included it but it took a lot away from the tension and the narrative to have just a page and a half about linguistics and pronouns in a story that doesn't massively have anything to with it). This one was still enjoyable but after the events of the first book, it got to be exhausting to see Alex constantly deny what they were seeing and experiencing. There was also a lot less detail which is a good and bad thing; it's good because for the most part, the tension was consistent BUT it's bad because it lacked the same charm and creepiness that the first was filled with.

I also found the housekeeper to be exhausting. Her interactions with Alex led to a lot of linguistic discussions which is helpful but like with WMTD, it was just exhausting to read and took me out of the narrative. I honestly kept hoping for the housekeeper to get got by the moroi.

Overall, I did enjoy this one but it wasn't as charming and creepy as I expected it to be.

Read WHAT FEASTS AT NIGHT by T. Kingfisher if you love remote villages, disreputable cabins in the woods, mysterious illnesses, nightmares, fungi, strongly spiced sausage, trauma narratives, endless cups of tea, propriety, knives & very good horses.

While I still very much appreciate Alex Easton (whose gender truly is “soldier” and uses ka/kan pronouns) as main character and narrator, What Feasts at Night lacked much of the delightfully gothic charm of What Moves the Dead. There was much less description and much more “we’ve seen exactly what the problem is several times but I guess Easton is just going to be stubborn for some reason”, and the side characters didn’t have nearly so much presence as the Ushers did in the previous book.

Would I read another novella starring our favorite sworn soldier? Absolutely. Is this going on my favorites list for the year? Nah.

T. Kingfisher is taking the symbols of cottagecore one by one and making them horrifying...

Thanks so much to the publisher for inviting me to read an ARC of this title!

I liked this one even more than WHAT MOVES THE DEAD! I love Alex as a narrator and I am so excited that we got to spend time in Gallacia and learn about this interesting made-up country. For a set of novellas, the thought that's been put into the worldbuilding here is so interesting and, in my opinion, more well thought-out than a lot of behemoth novels that I've read. It feels like a real place with real traditions and people! In my review for #1, I remember noting how interesting I found the specific pronouns used for soldiers--in #2, we got another interesting set, for priests! I think it just shows how much the author has thought about the world and inclusion within fiction, even in a completely made up country and culture.

Also, I was delighted to see more of Miss Potter and Angus. Also Hob. What a fun horse.

My enjoyment of this may be biased, since I have been scared of its subject matter for probably my entire adult life. <spoiler>I am genuinely so scared of the concept of sleep paralysis. I will not sleep on my back because I read one (1) time that it's the more likely to occur in that sleep position! I am so scared of it!</spoiler> The folklore aspect of it was so fun and I loved the different characters' reactions to the lore and their levels of belief in it.

This is such a good series. I would happily read about Alex Easton for as long as T. Kingfisher will let me.

What Feasts at Night is the second book in the Sworn Soldier series. I really enjoyed being back with these great characters, especially our Sworn Soldier Alex! The atmosphere was spot on in this one! Great gothic and cold vibes! I think this one makes an excellent winter read ❄👻 I'm excited to see where these characters will end up in the next swon soldier book!

Thanks, netgalley for this arc!

What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher

Other Books I have Enjoyed: What Moves the Dead, The Twisted Ones, A House with Good Bones

Release Date: February 13th, 2024

BISAC Categories: Horror-General, Occult & Supernatural, Gothic, LBGTQ

Themes/Tropes/Triggers: (animal death) war, PTSD, soldiers, friendship, hunting cabin, moths, small-town secrets, superstitions, rumors, folklore, witchcraft/occult, nightmares, pronouns & gender fluidity

What You Need to Know: This is the second book in a series. The first book in the Sworn Soldier Series is called, What Moves the Dead. These books can be read as standalone. The characters think about and make reference to events from the previous book but they are explained and not necessary to know in order to make sense of the current plot.

My Reading Experience: Kingfisher is a real master of three important aspects of quality storytelling: Setting--I love the descriptions of landscapes, weather, dwellings, and all the flora/fauna.
Backstory: Character backstory is organically dispersed and always serves the forward motion of the book. It's never awkward or useless. Piggybacking off that is Character development with a complex dynamic between characters and interesting dialogue. I appreciate that all the characters have unique voices and personalities.

In book one, there was the mysterious threat of a strange fungus and possessed wildlife. Book two finds Alex and Angus traveling to Alex's family hunting lodge in his very small hometown of Gallacia. Once they settle in and hire some help, odd things begin to happen at night. I love the folklore and supernatural elements of this story. Kingfisher introduces some new characters and brings back some beloved ones too.

Final Rec: The perfect one-sitting read with more humor, wit, gothic vibes, small-town secrets and spooky visitors.

Comps: What Moves the Dead, The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw