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I finally read a T. Kingfisher book; I’ve only heard great things about the author, so I picked one and checked it out from my library. As it so happens, I chose What Moves the Dead, which is a retelling and fleshing out of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” When I was probably 13 or 14 I went through a Poe streak, where I read pretty much his whole set of works (well, at least the short stories). I’ve even been privileged to see his home in Baltimore, Maryland. Squeee. That’s the kind of thing I fangirl over.
That being said, I have not read Poe in (ahem) 40 years. Honestly, I can’t remember what most of the stories were about. But Kingfisher brings a solid, satisfying Poe energy to this imagining of Usher.
The story is told from the point of view of Alex Easton, a retired soldier, who visits the falling-down old estate of childhood friends Roderick and Madeline Usher. Easton is what’s called a “sworn soldier” in their country, which means they are female but referred to by a particular neutral pronoun in the country’s language that’s used for soldiers. (The language has a number of sets of pronouns for various ages and stations.) Thanks to that pronoun, the army had to accept females who wanted to join, in short.
Easton has seen plenty of the horrors of war in the past decade and a half. But now they’re seeing a whole other kind of horror in the dusty, moldy home of the Ushers. The twin siblings are both sick, but Madeline looks like she’s the walking dead. She also sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices to nothing in particular. Roderick had asked an American doctor, James Denton, to come to the estate to see if he could do anything for his sister. Easton and Denton try to figure out what has infected this house and this family before it takes over more than just one home.
Mushrooms/fungus figure prominently and ickily in What Moves the Dead. And Kingfisher involves a fictional older aunt of Beatrix Potter who draws and investigates fungus around the countryside. She joins Denton and Easton in putting together pieces of the puzzle that’s causing the sickness in the Usher household. That’s a fun touch, too.
Now I kind of want to go back and read “Usher” again, or maybe more of Poe that I can no longer remember. And I’ll definitely read more T. Kingfisher.
Rated: Moderate. Profanity includes around 10 instances of moderate profanity, about 30 uses of mild language, 40 instances of the name of Deity in vain, and 5 uses of British profanity. Sexual content is minimal. Violence includes allusions to battles as well as icky bodily things happening thanks to invasive creatures of the story.
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