Emily Morrison

Synopsis

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 Ruravia.

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.

Review

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher is a reimagining of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, which is a supernatural horror short story that is basically a metaphor for incestuous traditions leading to the decline of a bloodline etc. Mike Flanagan’s Netflix series of the same name as the short story is a modern take that swaps incest with corruption and excessive wealth, and provides more fleshed out versions of the Usher family so that the audience can better see and understand why their downfall eventually occurs—in unforgettably gory and shocking ways—and builds on Poe’s message beautifully with modern context. Kingfisher’s novella sits somewhere in the middle of these.

Alex Easton is a retired soldier from a fictional country who receives word that their childhood friend, Madeline, is dying and immediately travels to the Usher’s ancestral home. Once there, however, Alex finds that there is something not quite right with the local rabbits and an English Mycologist, Miss Potter, is investigating the unusual fungi growing on the Usher’s land. The two discover there is a connection between both phenomena and suspect it may also be connected to Madeline’s illness.

Stripping What Moves the Dead to its bare plot points, most of them are the same as Poe’s original story, however as Kingfisher says in her author’s note, she ‘wanted explanations’ and so this novella was born. I personally don’t need everything explained or to be tied up neatly by the end of a story, I actually think that kind of mystery adds to the overall story a lot of the time, but I can agree with Kingfisher that I wanted more of Poe’s original short story, so was excited to read this take on it. What I found lacking in the novella, however, was the lack of message I’ve come to associate with The Fall of the House of Usher and its reimaginings. Kingfisher expands on the fungal aspect, which was fun and interesting, though not as unsettling or scary as I thought it would be, and the new characters like Miss Potter and Alex’s valet/groom, Angus. Meeting Maddy and seeing the changes in her as her illness took over was interesting as well, seeing as we aren’t shown much of her in Poe’s original.

The trans/non-binary representation with Alex is obviously new and is the norm for soldiers among the fictional Gallacian people and culture (not to be confused with Galicia north of Spain). The inclusion of a fictional nation provided a shallowly explored acceptance of Alex’s gender by the other characters, seeing as the story is set in 1890 when trans people didn’t commonly walk around for everyone to know. At first I hoped perhaps the metaphor for the fall of the Usher’s house would be related to sexuality or gender acceptance because of this, but Alex’s gender identity didn’t seem to have any impact outside of a brief conversation. This seemed like a missed opportunity. But at the same time gender identity is not a person’s only identity, and I’m glad Alex was a realistically well-rounded character.

By the end of the story, there was no larger message or metaphor that the fall of the Usher’s house could illustrate, and the result was a relatively flat ending. Funnily, I was left with several questions about Kingfisher’s attempt to answer her own questions because of this, like why here? Why now? Why them? At least with Poe’s short story, I knew it was because the usher family fell due to generations of being grubby inbreeders. The essence of the original was lost in this adaptation for me and felt more like an attempt to combine Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic with The Fall of the House of Usher than anything else. Perhaps it’s because I love so many other fungi-related and inspired horror stories that I didn’t find this one brought anything new or even really very scary to the genre. I found the rabbits creepy, and that’s about it. There’s a certain level of atmosphere that needs to be created for mushrooms to be scary, which isn’t quite there with this story. This feels more like if modern Disney tried to make a gothic horror (if that makes sense): a little soulless. All the elements are technically there, but I feel nothing.

The biggest pet-peeve I have with reading anything is being taken out of the story by something within the story itself, this can be editorial mistakes that were missed, incorrect information such as a vague but not fact-checked historical event included, etc., or the tone of narrator voice not suiting the time and setting of the world. Alex Easton narrates the story for us and often says things or phrases things in a very modern way. This would be less noticeable and more forgiving if the whole story was narrated that way, but it isn’t. Alex goes from speaking with 19th century formality to suddenly sounding like a modern teenager imitating how they think 19th century people sounded. This may not be an issue for most people, but it’s very jarring for me as someone who consumes a lot of period and historical film/television. I recently read the second book in this series, What Feasts at Night, where it was more frequent and noticeable than the first book. Outside of the Sworn Soldier Series I’ve only read The Hollow Places, which takes place in a modern setting, so this may just be the way Kingfisher writes as well. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I usually enjoy alternative writing styles and voices, but this one didn’t mesh well with me personally because I found myself constantly taken out of the world and I don’t want to be jarred out of a story I’m enjoying.

While I likely would have enjoyed this more if I hadn’t already developed a love for Poe’s original story and other reimaginings of it prior to reading it, I can’t help this and unfortunately my expectations weren’t met here. I didn’t love Kingfisher’s version, but I also didn’t hate it. I can see what elements she was inspired by and appreciate the fresh view she brings with it, but I didn’t feel the story was given the time and thought it deserved to go further, leaving it feeling flat and underdeveloped for me. But let me know if you took away anything I missed, I would enjoy a new perspective on it!

Rating – 3/5 stars

Author – T. Kingfisher
Published – 2022
Pages – 169
Publisher – Titan Books
ISBN – 9781803360072