What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, 1)
An Instant USA Today & Indie Bestseller
A Barnes & Noble Book of the Year Finalist
A Goodreads Best Horror Choice Award Nominee
A gripping and atmospheric reimagining of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” from Hugo, Locus, & Nebula award-winning author T. Kingfisher
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.
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Community Reviews
I think the author's style fleshed out this classic well-known story. It didn't repeat the original, it genuinely added to it. In addition, the characters were fantastic and compelling.
The creepy and raw elements were greatly executed, accompanied by a narrator that was charismatic but did not downplay the events happening.
If there's anything to criticize about this, is that the introduction went a bit longer than I expected, but definitely paid off in the end.
Every sense I had honed over years on the battlefield was screaming that something was not as it appeared. I could feel it. The dead don't walk.
When retired officer Alex Easton receives a letter from their friend Madeline Usher claiming that she's dying they don't hesitate and immediately head for the Usher estate in Ruravia. Upon arriving Alex notices that both Usher siblings are worse for wear, as is the house and its surroundings, and something odd is going on with the hares around the property. As the days pass and Madeline's condition worsens and becomes stranger, Alex must uncover the secret behind this disease unless they want to become the next victim of this illness.
A retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's well known "The Fall of the House of Usher" with a twist, I really enjoyed this. It expands on themes of the original one, and its longer, while not being a carbon copy. T. Kingfisher adds her on brand of horror to this tale and you can feel her style leaping out of the page. The standouts in this book were the characters, they are all fleshed out and meticulously constructed. I specially like Alex, their narration was funny but didn't downplay the horrors. The answer to the mystery was quite good too and creepy enough to compete with Edgar Allan Poe. I do wish that the pacing had been a bit tighter. For a novella it felt like the introduction dragged on and the action entered the frame quite late.
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