“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! Continue reading Review of What Moves the Dead—More Mushroom Horror
Tag: The Fall of the House of Usher
Gothic Settings: Ancestral Homes
It’s time for another installment of Gothic Settings, a series of posts in which I explore recurring landscapes and structures that serve as the backdrop to innumerable Gothic stories. So far, we’ve explored such iconic settings as the classic castle and the romantic moors. This week’s setting is one of my very favorites: the ancestral home.
Gothic Tropes: Burning Houses
In Gothic literature, the setting of the story functions almost like a character itself. These castles, estates, and manor houses are given names, along with their own history, personality, and secrets. And as with living characters, sometimes the novel needs to end with their death. In one common trope, house fires are employed as a means of destroying the central setting at the end of the novel, often with symbolic significance. Continue reading Gothic Tropes: Burning Houses