Week 40 Review: What Moves the Dead

From Goodreads:

An instant USA Today & Indie bestseller

From T. Kingfisher, the award-winning author of The Twisted Ones, comes What Moves the Dead, a gripping and atmospheric retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic "The Fall of the House of Usher."

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.

My Review:
This was a fantastic read! I haven't read the original, but this retelling was so dark and thrilling-and in the authors note, it mentions that the original is so short and doesn't have a lot of details, well, I'd easily prefer to have read this book!

I didn't know going in that Ruritania isn't a real country, it's mainly used as a placeholder for a country somewhere in Central Europe-and Alex brought Gallacia with ka in T. Kingfisher's mind. So they were free to have their own cultures-like soldiers have their own pronouns, so those who were born to she/her (but who might not want to have those pronouns) could become soldiers, like Alex. So I loved those details!

This book was so creepy! Alex was not one prone to scares, ka was in the army, but this was on a whole nother level! The sleepwalking, the fine hairs, the hares, and this mansion that is decaying around them. Absolutely fantastic atmosphere! 

That ending, with the dead actually moving, and finding out what was going on, that was creepy and horrifying. The idea that it was spreading, learning how to talk to humanity, yeah, I can easily understand why they reacted like they did! 

This was fantastic, and I see why T. Kingfisher has made a name for herself, and I'll have to check out her other books! 

Author: T. Kingfisher 
Read: October 7th, 2022
Source: Ebook.bike
Reason Why: Sounded really good, and it's a 2022 Retelling Reading Challenge Book and a SAC 2022 Book! 
Publisher: Tor Nightfire
Published: July 12th 2022

5/5 Hearts

5/5 Books

5/5 Stars