What Moves the Dead

First edition, 160 pages

Published July 11, 2022 by Tor Nightfire.

ISBN:
978-1-250-83075-3
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5 stars (4 reviews)

From T. Kingfisher, the award-winning author of The Twisted Ones, comes What Moves the Dead, a gripping and atmospheric retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic "The Fall of the House of Usher."

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.

3 editions

Review of 'What Moves the Dead' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

This is a novella based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. In the 1890s; Easton, a former soldier of the Gallacia, visits kan old friend Madeline Usher at her family’s ancestral seat on the news that she may be dying. The house is decaying and covered in fungus; only a few servants remain (Madeline’s maid jumped from the roof a few months prior) while her nervous wreck of a brother has only an American doctor to rely on who is baffled by Madeline’s ailment. As Easton attempts to help the family, ka uncovers a mystery around the glowing lake and unsettling wildlife that just won't die.

If you’re up for some gothic horror, mycelial zombie hares, a soldier whose gender/pronouns are simply “soldier”, and regular English jibes at Americans then this is worth picking up. I enjoyed the characters a lot, especially Easton and the …

Atmospheric and Terrifying

5 stars

Without being too spoilery, I never, when I started reading this book, thought I would finish it feeling pity for a fungus, but here we are.

I love Poe, and Usher is one of my favorite stories of his, and this retelling is absolutely masterful. The descriptions of the grounds and house are atmospheric and almost dripping with dread, which fills every page from page one and grows slowly, but incessantly, until you reach the end.