My Review
"The dead don’t move…”
Finished reading What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher, and I…have thoughts. Unfortunately, none of them are particularly comforting.
Have you ever sat down and thought to yourself, “You know what? I need a reimagining of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, but with way more fungus?” If you answered yes, then this book is definitely for you.
What Moves the Dead takes the original Poe story and turns it into…something else. Sure, you’ve still got Roderick and Madeline rotting away in their decrepit family mansion, but you’ve also got…so much more.
Our narrator is Alex Easton, a non-binary soldier who is a friend of the family. Alex shows up to the Usher house at the request of Madeline, only to find out they weren’t expected. But Alex stays to try and solve the mystery of what’s going on with Madeline (and Roderick too). Add in an American doctor and a female mycologist, and you’ve set the stage for a very weird and unsettling new take on Poe’s short story.
I don’t want to say too much and spoil anything, but the story is a little slow to start (at least for me). However, once it gets to a certain point (a little bit before halfway, I’d say), it starts to pick up and get creepy. There are hares around the property, and they act…wrong. Not like normal hares. If you’ve seen the Masters of Horror episode Pelts (directed by Dario Argento and based on an F. Paul Wilson short story), then you might be reminded a little of the one scene with the raccoons. And if you’re like me (with a weird fear of animals acting unnaturally), you’ll immediately be spooked and slightly disturbed.
Then there’s the discovery of what’s really going on and how the weird mushrooms around the property play into things. And you might be thinking, “Jasmine, it’s basically cordyceps.” No. Wrong.


If you love:
☑️ Gothic horror + crumbling old mansions
☑️ Reimaginings of classic horror
☑️ Slow-burn dread that gets progressively weirder
☑️ Creepy animals behaving very, very wrong
☑️ Fungal horror + nature gone horribly awry
☑️ Body horror
☑️ Strange scientific mysteries
☑️ An overwhelming sense that something is deeply wrong...

...then What Moves the Dead might be worth a trip to the House of Usher. Just remember: the mushrooms are not your friends...