“What Moves the Dead” by T. Kingfisher

As I said before, I bought this one on the recommendation of the lady who makes my coffee at Barnes and Noble. She has yet to steer me wrong.

This is a retelling of Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher” and I want to say right off that it is not necessary to have read Poe’s Usher to enjoy this tale. However, having read it does add a layer of familiarity to the new book that I enjoyed. It was like, “Oh yeah, I’ve been here before. I wonder if Roderick is still just as dreary?”

Poe wrote in a style where all you had to do was set a melancholy, morbid and, most of all MOLDY setting and you had yourself a story. Kingfisher took that and added some very clever twists with the WHY’s and the HOW’s of what happened to the Usher family.

One thing I want to mention: PRONOUNS.

Let me get to the point, Alex Easton, the main character, is a member of a group who uses their own set of personal pronouns. This often makes me an uncomfortable reader. I do my best, in real life, to respect people’s use of pronouns just as I respect their own name. But when it’s thrown at me in a book I want it to be natural, there needs to be a reason. And in a story set in the world of Poe’s Usher, there is no reason. Or is there?

There is. Kingfisher did a great job establishing Alex Easton, who ka was and why ka was addressed in such a fashion. I wasn’t comfortable with it at first, because I was afraid that it would take away from the story. What it did was help establish Alex as a unique character in the narrative.

What happened at Chez Usher? Unlike Poe Kingfisher gives us a reason for the Usher woes. A scary reason. One that fits with the original Poe version. In this version we get a new perspective which fills in the blanks.

I highly recommend “What Moves the Dead” by T. Kingfisher. I am looking forward to the next book in the Sworn Soldier series, “What Feasts at Night”.

Read everyday and read for fun!