first of all: i may like mushrooms on my pizza, but fuck mushrooms.

the writing is phenomenal, with just the right amount of humor to make the horror that much worse. i loved the twists and turns the plot took -- my only real critique is that the book was maybe 50 pages too long, and i just really wanted alex to pick up on all the terribly obvious signs by the time i was 100 pages in. but the characters were stellar, the ending was perfect, and have i mentioned fuck mushrooms? because mushrooms are the worst.

also, whoever made that cover art is my new hero.

thanks to netgalley and tor nightforge for the arc!

Another unique horror release and clever retelling by Kingfisher! What Moves the Dead is a retelling of Poe’s classic The Fall of the House of Usher. I haven’t read the classic story, but did do some basic research on it/read a summary before I started this novella.

I’d recommend this to fans of Mexican Gothic (is fungal horror a new genre?), Haunting of Hill House, and Kingfisher’s other novel The Hollow Places. Also to fans of gothic tales and trippy “what did I just read” stories. Really atmospheric and weird.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
What moves the dead follows main character Easton. Easton arrives at a friends house and realizes that there’s something very wrong going on.
This book was creepy, but short. It was very reminiscent of Mexican Gothic, but shorter. I also guessed the weird thing that was going on right at the beginning of the book.
Overall, I still think this was a good and creepy read. It’s quick and atmospheric and gave me the creepy crawlies a little bit. There was a little bit of gore when the character cut open a hare, but nothing worse than that.

What Moves the Dead was a pretty faithful retelling of The Fall of the House of Usher, but with a few twists. I really enjoyed T. Kingfisher’s writing here and the overall story set up and introduction of Easton’s character. It was very easy to get swept up in the narrative and eerie vibes of House of Usher.

First mega positive point here, personally, was the question of gender and how Kingfisher explored it through one of the main characters. I really loved that addition and how it was presented and developed since it was one of the original points in the story. It was a pleasant surprise for me and I really liked what it added to the plot.

And speaking of plot! If you’re familiar with Poe’s short story, you pretty much know how this is all going to go and end. I will say that the major twist Kingfisher added here was also extremely predictable and straightforward. I knew what was going to happen as soon as that particular information was presented to me during the first few chapters–and Kingfisher discusses that in the Author’s Note as well.

The atmosphere here was still pretty creepy, even more so when I finally understood the extent of what was happening with Madeline. There were some gross and very unsettling imagery described during the final few chapters and I loved how that came about! Pretty happy I read this and I will definitely continue to read Kingfisher’s works.

This is a story about the scariest thing in the world: mushrooms.

This book was creepy, an odd and delightful. It had twists I didn't see coming, and it was beautifully written (like everything by Kingfisher). I was very late in the game when I realized the Poe connection, but if you're a Poe fan, I think you'll especially love this.

Thank you so much Netgalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge, Tor Nightfire

The Fall of the House of Usher has been my favorite "Poe" for as long as I can remember. I was lucky to have a Lit teacher who loves Poe (and still performs as him on occasion), but he stuck to the classics - The Raven, Annabel Lee, The Tell Tale Heart.... But something about "Usher" has always stuck with me.

T. Kingfisher has taken "Usher" and made it into a beautiful firework. Our narrator is now Alex Easton, a retired solider. They are traveling to the Usher home after receiving a letter from Madeline. What they find is terrible, horrible and unbelievable.

We also meet an American doctor and a British mycologist who band together with Alex to help solve the mystery of the House of Usher.

Kingfisher has made a gothic horror classic, with the added non-binary narrator--which comes into play later in the story. Fantastic retelling of a favorite.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Come the fall months, I'll have a hard time recommending anything else for people to read when they're looking for an extra shiver up their spine. This was an easy read, aided by the author's writing style, and made a nice addition to the short story on which it was based! For those who are squeamish, the graphics were not too over the topic, but still enough to cement it in the horror genre. It might even in the future be able to find a real home in classrooms that are dedicating some time to studying Poe's works. I'm very happy to have read this and think it merits a revisiting once October hits!

A gothic novella about what happens when a retired soldier is summoned to visit their ill childhood friend and the absolutely bonkers explanation for what is truly going on. We've got fungus, a haunted lake, creepy rabbits, even Beatrix Potters aunt (!!)... This story was truly eerie and genuinely creeped me out multiple times. I can only imagine I'll enjoy it more after reading the Edgar Allen Poe story upon which it was based.

Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillan-Tor/Forge for the advanced reader copy.

I absolutely LOVED “What Moves the Dead”.

This terrifying reimagining of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” feels like a mix between John Langan’s THE FISHERMAN & John Carpenter’s THE THING. And it is truly scary!

An absolutely beautiful and horrific read filled to the brim with gorgeous prose. What Moves the Dead will easily find itself at the top of my favorite reads for 2022... and will be a book I revisit many times!

What Moves The Dead by T. Kingfisher releases July 12th. It's good a quick mishmash of eco-horror and Fall of the House of Usher.

I'm typically not impressed with retellings unless they are really unique. As soon as I read the last name "Usher" I audibly groaned. With that amazing cover art, though, I had to give it a chance and I'm glad I did. Although not scary, if you're interested in a quick read that's creepy and gothic this book's for you. Weird stories happen to be my thing and 'What Moves the Dead' has enough originality to make it solidly different from The Fall of the House of Usher by E.A. Poe. Reading T. Kingfisher's writing had me almost smelling the mustiness of that old damp house and feeling the characters shock. I liked it.

Kingfisher has an uncanny ability to make you shiver. I never know what their books will bring next, but it's always terror.

The writing style of this author helped me feel engaged enough to find a story about a mycologist and a soldier interesting. T. Kingfisher is brilliant and the execution is this retelling is superb. The comparison to Mexican Gothic can be made however that story felt more character driven while this one is about plot. I prefer this method of storytelling as it can be more fast paced.
The representation and use of the ka pronoun was a great addition to the narrative.
Overall, this was a quick read which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Thank you to Tor Nightfire and Netgalley for the Arc in exchange for an honest review.

What Moves the Dead is a sublimely creepy little book. It’s spilling with evil fungus, glowing lake sludge and hares. So many hares. With a crumbling estate occupied by sickly owners, and visiting soldiers who are way out of their depth when faced with the supernatural. I haven’t read the Poe short story it is based on to be able to compare them, but it has piqued my interest in checking it out and seeing how Kingfisher expanded upon the original material. This being the second book I’ve read of hers, I can confidently say she is a very skilled writer, with impressive atmosphere and characters. I’ll definitely be picking up more books by her.

I didn’t know I needed a retelling of The Fall of the House of Usher, but wow. I guess I did!
Kingfisher does everything right in this retelling. The dark thick tone of the book really calls to the original story, the house and setting becoming a menacing and mysterious villain long before the narrator sees his old friends and the physical tolls that they have been through.
There’s wonderful detail in this story. I love how the house, the fungus and the lake are described. I could easily see the poison running through the land and the disease eating at the house and its inhabitants. There’s a lot of depth in this retelling and I enjoyed this expanded story.
I was getting seriously annoyed with the main characters! Why can’t they leave? Don’t they realize something sinister is going on? I was invested in these characters and really wanted them to get out!
That said, the ending is perfect. I don’t want to give it away, but it ended just the way it should have. I think fans of the original will be very pleased with this retelling and new fans of Kingfisher will find a new favorite author.

What Moves the Dead was as creepy and weird as I expected it to be, and I loved every minute of it! I found T. Kingfisher’s twist on The Fall of the House of Usher to be delightfully macabre, and I can’t say I’ll ever look at fungi the same.

What Moves the Dead is my second book by T. Kingfisher (Nettle and Bone is wonderful as well) and is perfect for my current horror phase. A retelling of Poe's Fall of the House of Usher, has a mysterious illness, mushrooms, possessed animals, A strange lake and an overwhelming uneasy feeling. This short, spooky story will appeal to Mexican Gothic fans and horror enthusiasts.

Have you ever read The Fall of the House of Usher and wished for a bit more? Well, What Moves the Dead gives that to you, along with some slight humour, a deeper mystery, and more overt horror.

I was so into this.

I hadn’t read Usher in at least a decade, so I gave it a re-read before this and it was like - oh yeah! The run-down mansion! The sickly siblings. The fungus! The weird poems. The corpse walking. Such fun!

This book has all of that, except the poems, and it beefs everything up. It’s set in this alternate 1800s where this country, Gallacia, exists and produces these warriors who, because they are fighters, are given their own pronoun as a sign of honour. It doesn’t matter if you’re a woman, a man, or non-binary; you use ka/kan as your pronouns if you're a warrior. This was so fun to me and both an interesting take on language as well as gender politics. Gallacia isn’t featured in the story a whole lot, but the bits of background we get gave the story an interesting dynamic.

I really liked the main character, Alex Easton, who was an old soldier but has a duty to kan friends ka can’t ignore. Easton makes logical choices - ka both takes up arms when ka needs to as well as gets freaked out and bolts at a few points. Ka acts like a normal person involved in odd circumstances. This is one of those few exceptions where I really liked the first-person point of view.

The other characters are fun too. Denton is compelling because he’s brash one minute and aloof the next, but also likeable. The siblings aren’t in it as much as you’d expect, but there are a few side characters that add some flair to the story too.

The mystery was fun because while I should have guessed what it was, I did not. I suppose Kingfisher just did a great job hiding what was going on with other things in the plot. Yet, the story is cohesive, interesting, and slow enough to build tension and mood but quick enough that you’re not bored. It reminded me a lot of Mexican Gothic, but I liked the ending to this a lot better.

It’s also quite funny! The humour is hard to describe. It’s not laugh-out-loud so much as amusing observations. These pop up just enough to even out the tension and give Easton a rather quirky personality. I loved the few references to Beatrix Potter as well.

The novel is also very clever. Small details mentioned in passing have relevance later - in this regard, Kingfisher really emulated Poe because every line seems to have a purpose.

That’s not to say this novel feels like an unnecessary copy of The Fall of the House of Usher. Where that story is all about mood, this has more horror elements and has its own story to tell. It’s a fun homage to one of horror’s more popular classic tales.

There’s a lot to love about his novel and if you like Edgar Allan Poe, gothic mystery, horror that won’t make you sh*t your pants but is still creepy, and rundown mansions covered in fungus, you’ll enjoy this!

5/5 stars.

Thank you to the publisher for the ARC, this is an honest opinion.

This was a great kind of creepy and unsettling. What Moves the Dead is a retelling of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe and in the afterword the author goes into their motivation for writing it. I thought it was a great premise for a retelling to add and flesh out some motivation and whys prior to the story. If you're on the hunt for a quick read that'll make the hairs on your arm stand up, you should pick this one up. Though it may cause you to take a second look the next time you see a hare.

In What Moves the Dead, T. Kingfisher delivers her own wonderfully spin on a retelling of Poe’s classic Fall of the House of Usher. She took the bones of Poe’s tale and built upon it, adding/altering characters (embracing diversity), and delivering a more definitive ending. Extremely atmospheric and at times downright creepy, I have no doubt Poe would approve. Thanks so much to Tor Nightfire for allowing me to read and review an eARC of What Moves the Dead.

Old school gothic horror. Very atmospheric and creepy.

Easton was my favorite character-stolid, but humorous. Having grown up together, Easton travels to visit her sick friend, Madeline, and Madeline's brother, Roderick. The house is in disrepair, there's a creepy lake and even creepier hares running around.

The tale slowly unfolds to it's horrifying end. Still icks me out and makes my skin crawl. A+++