What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
Review by Jordan S.
I loved this book.
I've been a fan of T. Kingfisher's work for a few years. 2019's The Twisted Ones is one of my favorite horror stories of all time. 2020's The Hollow Places was one of those "perfect book at the right time" books for me. I was just going through a divorce and The Hollow Places made me feel seen and made sense of some of the feelings I was struggling to voice. I will always be thankful to Kingfisher for writing that book. Both of those books were adaptations/homages/inspired by horror short stories from the past. The Twisted Ones was an homage to Machen's The White People and The Hollow Places was an homage/spiritual sequel to Blackwood's The Willows. What Moves the Dead is a similar homage to Poe's Fall of the House of Usher and just like its predecessors is a fantastic read that will be added to my list of favorite horror stories.
The general premise of What Moves the Dead is that Easton, the main character has been summoned by their friend Madeline Usher to the Usher ancestral home. When they arrive, Easton finds their friend and their friend's brother apparently deathly ill. However, other strange things are occurring as well. Both Ushers are behaving strangely, there are bizarre and exotic fungus everywhere and...well...there's some really weird hares. Over the course of the novella, these elements blend together to result in climax that is just as riveting as both of the aforementioned earlier books from Kingfisher and might even surpass them in terms of quality.
Beyond characterization (which continues to be one of the areas in which T. Kingfisher far surpasses most writers) the setting for this book was astounding and was incredibly vivid. As I read this book, I felt the decay that was described in the Usher home and I felt the eerieness and outlandishness of the strange happenings around that home. Also Kingfisher is one of the best at writing animals. Alongside the dog in The Twisted Ones and the stuffed otter in The Hollow Places, Easton's horse is now one of my favorite fictional animals. Also the hares were fascinating and are image that is going to rattle in my head for a long time to come.