What Feasts At Night by T. Kingfisher: Book Review

What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If this was a fairy tale, it was the kind where everyone gets eaten as a cautionary tale about straying into the woods, not the sentimental kind that ends with a wedding and the words, “And if they have not since died, they are living there still.”

What Feasts At Night by T. Kingfisher is the second book in the Sworn Soldier series, in which Alex Easton returns to their hunting lodge to find the caretaker dead, learns about the local superstition regarding ghosts appearing in dreams, confronts their belief/ non-belief in the supernatural and chooses to do everything they can to protect their friends.

Kingfisher's terrific world-building continues in this second book, this time leaning more on the supernatural. The characters retain their deadpan humour however and their interactions are still fun to read!

The story is fast paced, showing how belief in the supernatural is viewed by different characters. The writing weaves superstition, dreams, hallucinations and internal battles brilliantly, emphasizing survival instinct and acceptance of the battle to win.

It can’t have worked, I thought. You can’t really kill someone in a dream. This isn’t just a dream, though. It’s the war.

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[One star for the premise and the whole book; Half a star for the characters; Half a star for the story; One star for the writing; 3/4 star for the world-building - 3 3/4 stars in total, rounded up to 4 stars.]

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What Moves The Dead by T. Kingfisher: Book Review

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I looked across the tarn to the house and sighed myself.
It was not a promising sight. It was an old gloomy manor house in the old gloomy style, a stone monstrosity that the richest man in Europe would be hard-pressed to keep up. One wing had collapsed into a pile of stone and jutting rafters. Madeline lived there with her twin brother, Roderick Usher, who was nothing like the richest man in Europe.

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher is a slightly creepy retelling of the Gothic Poe original The Fall of the House of Usher, in which we see the protagonist Alex Easton visit their friends Madeline and Roderick Usher, get introduced to mycology, identify the cause of some strange behaviour in the wildlife there and help the Ushers in dealing with it.

The retelling seems to be more or less faithful to the original story and characters, though we see Kingfisher's characterization skills in the sworn soldier Alex, their valet Angus, the very British mycologist Miss Potter and the American Doctor Denton. This retelling is supported by some terrific world-building - not at all supernatural, but still alien enough to be horrifying - in explaining the Fall, literally and figuratively.

The dead don’t walk. The dead don’t walk. If they did, then … then … I don’t know what. Something dreadful.

The tone of the writing is horror with a healthy (or unhealthy) amount of creepy. Kingfisher still manages to infuse the writing with her deadpan humor, which I enjoyed. The most deadpan character would be Alex's world-weary horse Hob, with the valet Angus being a close second, and Alex's relationship with both is a comfort.

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[Half a star for the premise and the whole book; 3/4 star for the characters; Half a star for the story arc; Half a star for the writing; 3/4 star for the world-building - 3 stars in total.]