Title: What Moves the Dead

Author: T. Kingfisher

Publisher: Tor Nightmare 2022

Genre: Horror

Pages: 176

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges:

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.

Super creepy short retelling of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” That has always been a favorite of mine and I randomly stumbled upon this retelling and read it in one sitting. It’s a gorgeous homage to the original story with expanded explanations for the illness that Madeline and Roderick suffer. We get some extra creepy scenes involving wild hares that certainly gave me pause. I enjoyed the update to the narrator character giving Easton a much more interesting and expansive backstory. Overall, a very enjoyable slim novella for a fall night’s reading.

Next up on the TBR pile: