Horror/Fantasy Novella Review: What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

What Moves the Dead by T Kingfisher

What Moves the Dead is a horror novella by author T Kingfisher (aka children's author Ursula Vernon).  The novella is an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Fall of the House of Usher", in which Kingfisher attempts to answer some questions she has always had about the short story and to fill in her own horror-filled answers. I've never read the short story and to be honest I'm not a huge horror fan, but generally Kingfisher's adaptations of old classic horror stories (see The Twisted Ones and The Hollow Places) have really worked for me, with strong characters, dialogue, and plotting, even if I don't thrive on jumps cares or existential horror the ways others do. So when this novella saw a sequel announced recently, I figured I'd given it a try.

And well, What Moves the Dead doesn't quite work for me in the same fashion as those novels. Don't get me wrong, the dialogue and internal narration of the protagonist, Alex Easton (a queer former soldier from a fictional country with some interesting difference in its gender roles), is very enjoyable and the story is told decently enough. But the story is obvious from its start about what will likely be responsible for the horror (hint: creepy fungi) and yet takes a while to get to that point, and if you - like me - don't necessarily find the horrifying result worth a read in and of itself, well, the novella won't do too much for you.

More specifics after the jump


Quick Plot Summary: Alex Easton, ex Gallacian Sworn Soldier, finds kanself* coming to the house of Usher, the ancestral estate of kan formerly close friend Roderick and Madeline Usher. Easton had received a note, informing ka that Madeline is sick and dying, and so arrived to see what ka could do to help if not to pay kan last respects. But what Easton finds in the house is not what ka could ever have expected, and the tragedy that results will require ka to think quickly, or fall alongside the house....

*For reasons explained in the story, Easton was a soldier and thus goes by Ka/Kan pronouns per Kan language, and I'll try that in this review as a result.

Thoughts: To be clear, like I said above the jump, What Moves the Dead has an excellent narrator and protagonist in Easton, a queer soldier (by our standards) from the fictional nation of Gallacia, who fought in wars that made ka extremely weary, suffer from tinitus, and otherwise be a bit unsure of what to do when ka comes to a house so far out of kan comfort zone. Easton's narration is extremely enjoyable, sometimes funny (especially with kan horse and with kan's servant), and carries the story extremely well, as ka deals with the Ushers, an American doctor, and a fungi-obsessed englishwoman. I would be interested in reading the sequel story to get more of Easton.

That said, the problem is there isn't much else here other than fungi-based horror, without serious themes of much other things involved (the author's note here notes Kingfisher read Mexican Gothic midway through writing this and was aghast at how much better it was. They're very different books, but she's not wrong about that one being far more interestgin in terms of having serious themes and hooks). You'll see the source of the horror coming very quickly since it's foreshadowed in the first chapter (hence me not caring about spoiling it) and unless how it's portrayed freaks you out in a good way, there's just not much else here. I've enjoyed Kingfisher's stories when I was curious how they would end and cared about the characters, and while I cared about Easton, I didn't much for everyone else here and wasn't really curious about how things would end, since well it's obvious what's happening from the start and it takes till the end of the book for Easton to figure that out to actually do something about it.

In short, if you liked the Poe story or are a big horror fan, this might be for you. If not, I'd pass on this one.