“The dead don’t walk.” Alex Easton repeats this line as a mantra even as all evidence seems to point to the contrary in What Moves the Dead. This latest novel by horror and fantasy writer T. Kingfisher is a retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic story “The Fall of the House of Usher” and came out back in July. This is the first of Kingfisher’s works I have read, despite having had her books and short stories recommended to me for years. She finally lured me in with a Poe retelling, and I’ll definitely be checking out more from this author!
What Moves the Dead takes the premise of “The Fall of the House of Usher” and transports it to a fictional European country where something uncanny is afflicting the local wildlife along with the two Usher siblings. Alex Easton, the story’s protagonist, is a nonbinary soldier from a neighboring region who grew up beside Roderick and Madeline Usher and fought beside Roderick in the army. After receiving a letter from Madeline explaining that she is gravely ill, Easton immediately sets out to visit the Usher estate. But Madeline isn’t the only one whose health is in decline. Upon arriving at the estate, Easton is struck by Roderick’s strange appearance and behavior, as well, and also hears rumors of unhealthy wildlife in the area—especially the local hares, which the locals associate with witches and refuse to hunt. Easton begins to suspect that the mysterious illness afflicting Madeline and Roderick may be connected to whatever is wrong with the hares—and perhaps also to the ghoulish lake and the blood-red mushrooms that grow around it. With the help of an American doctor and a neighboring mycologist, Easton races to discover the source of the sickness before it can spread further.
The protagonist of Alex Easton brings new life to the vague and nameless narrator of Edgar Allan Poe’s story. Easton’s backstory is slowly revealed as the world of this alternate-Europe is fleshed out throughout the novel. Easton comes from a culture whose language has multiple sets of genderless pronouns—including those used for children and those used specifically for warriors. This linguistic phenomenon led to a loophole through which people assigned female at birth could enlist in the army and take on the genderless identity of a soldier. Easton is one of many soldiers who choose to maintain that nonbinary identity even after they leave military service, using the pronouns ka/kan. The book does a smooth and skillful job of introducing multiple sets of neo-pronouns in a way that feels natural in this fantasy world and approachable to the reader.
What Moves the Dead is also yet another entrant into what seems to be a burgeoning new subgenre of mushroom horror. The other big example that I have read and reviewed here is Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, but other members of this subgenre include Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon and the anthologies Fungi and Fruiting Bodies. What is it about mushrooms that make them such perfect agents of horror? In this case, at least, I think it’s a combination of their liminal qualities as something that seems to exist between/outside of the boundaries of plant and animal, as well as the ability of some species of fungus to form parasitic relationships with other living creatures. There’s also something innately terrifying about a vast living network in which individual fruiting bodies are only the visible avatars of the hidden mycelia that create a vast living organism largely outside of our perception.
If you, too, would like to find mushrooms more terrifying than they already are, you can find What Moves the Dead on shelves now at your favorite local retailer. Or you can buy a copy online and support The Gothic Library in the process using this Bookshop.org affiliate link. If you’ve already read the book, let me know what you think of it in the comments!