What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
Book Reviews

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

Publish date: July 12, 2022
Genre:
 Gothic Horror, Fantasy, Mystery
Series: Sworn Soldier (book 1)
Trigger warnings: Body horror, Death and decay, Mental illness / madness, Animal death and unsettling animal behavior, Descriptions of war trauma / past violence

Short description (created with AI)
When retired soldier Alex Easton receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is gravely ill, they rush to the remote, decaying family estate in the countryside. But something is very wrong at the House of Usher. The air is thick with rot. The lake glows with an unnatural sheen. And the animals—if they can still be called that—are acting strange.

As Madeline wastes away and her brother Roderick grows increasingly unstable, Easton begins to uncover the grotesque secrets festering in the walls, in the earth, and perhaps in the very bodies of the Ushers themselves.

Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, this chilling novella reimagines the gothic classic with eerie mushrooms, creeping dread, and a generous dose of body horror. What Moves the Dead is a dark, twisted tale of decay, obsession, and the terrifying things that thrive in damp, forgotten places.

This book is disgusting. And I mean that in the most unhinged, body-fluid-drenched, maggot-crawling, creepy-mushroom-on-that-moist-part way possible. It’s gothic horror that grabs you by the throat and shoves your face into the dirt. Lol sorry, Madeline. I haven’t read The Fall of the House of Usher yet, but now I’m curious.

When I say this novella is disgusting, I mean it with love. Yes, you read that right. I’m just a weird girl. I like horror, and I loved  T. Kingfisher takes the bones of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher and reanimates them — quite literally — with something wet, dark, and horrifyingly alive.

"The human mind is remarkably good at pretending things are normal. Until it isn’t."
T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead

The story follows retired soldier Alex Easton, who travels to the crumbling Usher estate to visit an old friend, Madeline, who’s reportedly gravely ill. But what awaits them is more than just sickness. The house is dying, yes, but so is the land around it — and perhaps something beneath it is thriving. The air is thick with rot. The animals are acting wrong. And Madeline… well. She’s not quite herself.

Without spoiling anything: imagine mushrooms, but the bad kind. Not the cute 🍄 cottagecore ones — the kind that glow faintly in the dark, colonize your body, and burrow into the parts of you that used to be human. Add some body horror, a bit of gallows humor, and a LOT of atmospheric dread, and you’re halfway there

Kingfisher writes with the perfect mix of elegance and irreverence. One moment, you’re knee-deep in poetic gothic imagery; the next, you’re side-eyeing a line that makes you laugh out loud and dry-heave at the same time. (It’s a talent. Truly.)

And then there’s the hares. The moment they show up, you know something is deeply, irreversibly wrong. Their strange movements and lifeless gazes are an early warning that this isn’t just a haunted house story — this is a body horror story, and it wants to get under your skin.

What struck me most, though, is how short this book is — under 200 pages — and yet it still manages to sink its teeth in fast and hard. There’s no bloat. Just rot. Delicious, horrifying rot. I haven’t read the original Poe story yet (I know, I know), but now I’m very curious to see how it compares. If anything, What Moves the Dead feels like a love letter to gothic fiction, written with a modern flair and an eye for the grotesque.

If you like mushrooms (but make it deadly), creepy animals doing very wrong things, crumbling estate soaked in dread, smart, funny writing with a side of rot, then I highly recommend you give this one a go. Read it before  bed for extra chill. Or while eating mushrooms.

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

View my vlog reading What Moves the Dead and more!

characters
atmosphere
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I am using the CAWPILE rating system, though please remember a reader’s taste may change from time to time, so I’m not sure if you can trust me here unless this was a recent read. Leaving my ratings anyways because this was totally how I felt the time I read this book. *winks*

Welcome to the unhinged fungal reading vlog you didn’t know you needed. (LOL) In this video, I dove blindly into What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher – a grotesque little gothic horror novella inspired by Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. I also read a couple more books I hope you’d love, too!

Here are other reads if you liked or interested with What Moves the Dead:

Click the book covers to go to Goodreads.

Sworn Soldier #2 What Feasts at Night T. KingfisherWhat Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher

Retired soldier Alex Easton returns in a horrifying new adventure.

After their terrifying ordeal at the Usher manor, Alex Easton feels as if they just survived another war. All they crave is rest, routine, and sunshine, but instead, as a favor to Angus and Miss Potter, they find themself heading to their family hunting lodge, deep in the cold, damp forests of their home country, Gallacia.

In theory, one can find relaxation in even the coldest and dampest of Gallacian autumns, but when Easton arrives, they find the caretaker dead, the lodge in disarray, and the grounds troubled by a strange, uncanny silence. The villagers whisper that a breath-stealing monster from folklore has taken up residence in Easton’s home. Easton knows better than to put too much stock in local superstitions, but they can tell that something is not quite right in their home. . . or in their dreams.

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What happens when a husband’s dying wish is for his wife to find a new love… before he’s even gone?

Harper is living a life she never expected. After a failed attempt at making it as an artist in New York while falling for and losing her first love, her dreams crumbled in the span of a week. A decade later, Harper is happily living a simpler life as an art teacher in Chattanooga with her beloved new husband, Ben.

When Ben is diagnosed with late-stage cancer, their whole world shifts. Despite the bad news, Ben comes up with one final wish for his wife: he wants Harper to find a new partner before he dies. When the New York Times sends a journalist to do a feature story about Ben’s life, Harper comes face to face with Liam Hale, the man she fell madly in love with all those years ago and never saw again.

Suddenly, Harper is faced with all of those old what-ifs: What if Harper had ended up with Liam instead of Ben? What if she’d pursued life as an artist instead of teaching? What if it had all turned out differently?

After making a wish, Harper wakes up to find herself in a parallel universe . . . where her what-ifs become a reality. Is the grass really greener, or is she standing right where she should be—no matter the cost?

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Authors Juniper Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena is a literary darling while June is a nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls?, June thinks. So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse, stealing Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.

So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

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