Have You Read This? What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

 

Horror fans are, of course, familiar with Edgar Allan Poe, whether it’s through his dark and dolorous monologues over birds perching on statues, or detailing the exploits of a razor-wielding orangutan. Poe has lived a brief but tumultuous life, but his fingerprints on the horror genre are everywhere. His influence is such that many modern authors are revisiting his classic tales, not necessarily to rewrite these stories but to tell different ones that happen to take place in the same universe. An example of this play-in-Poe’s-sandbox approach is What Moves the Dead, T. Kingfisher’s novella that revisits “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

Alex Easton, a retired soldier, has made their way to the infamous House of Usher because their friend Madeline Usher is dying. Not only is brother Roderick a nervous wreck, but there is a strange fungus growing on the grounds and the lake is glowing. With the help of a charming mycologist and a skeptical doctor, Alex will delve into the mystery of what grows beneath the House of Usher, hopefully before it devours them.

T. Kingfisher, author of The Twisted Ones, is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors for delivering folk horror but she also has a particular knack for including humor into her horror. Many have trouble maintaining that balance, the tone constantly oscillating between too funny and too terrifying while ultimately becoming confusing for readers. Kingfisher lets the humor shine through in the dialogue between Alex, a great example of LGBTQ+ representation, interacting with characters like the eccentric mycologist as well as the dialogue between Alex the mentee and Alex’s gruff mentor and friend. Those that have read Poe’s story can guess that the horror ratchets up near the end, and Kingfisher delivers with some body horror that might trigger a fear of mold. Narrator Avi Roque’s portrayal of Alex, through snappy banter and stomach-turning horror, and the relatively short run-time, makes this book a frightfully fun exploration of Poe’s universe.

Graphic Content: Dead Kingdom, Vol. 1 by Etienne Deprentigny

 

A little-known fact about me (at least, I’m still assuming it’s little known) is that I love to play Dungeons & Dragons. Particularly, I love exploring a dark dungeon, gathering up treasure and killing scores of enemies. Also, I love to read stories about said dungeons, treasure, and monsters, not necessarily in that order. As a lover of horror, I am particularly overjoyed when fantasy and horror overlap, where the swords sever lots of limbs and the sorcery is typically used to raise and/or control the dead. This is basically the setup of Etienne Derepentigny’s Dead Kingdom, Vol. 1, which takes the Walking Dead formula and sets it during medieval times.

The story is set in a land that has been torn apart by war. Kain is a peacekeeper and former soldier who has grown tired of battle, but he must once again take up his sword as the land faces a plague of the dead rising and attacking the living. As the bodies fall only to rise again, Kain must make his way across the land, reunite with his wife, and hopefully not die and become part of the undead army.

This world drawn by Derepentigny is not a shimmering fantasy world of shimmering castles and flying dragons that could easily end the zombie scourge with a few fiery blasts. Derepentigny’s world is dingy, full of drab stone walls and muddied, bloody soldiers. When the dead are dispatched, after figuring out that the head is indeed vulnerable, the kills with ax and arrow become a highlight of his book, especially for fans of the Walking Dead. Those fans will definitely see a Rick Grimes template in Kain. Derepentigny, who also writes the book, establishes Kain as a soldier reluctant to fight but is, despite his best efforts, quite good at it. Add in a quest for his wife and this story becomes ideal for fans of both Walking Dead and Dungeons and Dragons, those who wouldn’t mind roving the apocalyptic wastelands while wielding a sword. 

New Arrival: Eynhallow by Tim McGregor

 Frankenstein is Mary Shelley’s famous (or infamous) tale of a reanimated monster, which is ironic since this is a story that seems to be “reanimated” on the regular. From retellings to reimaginings, Frankenstein’s monster, made from mismatched body parts and our own anxieties about death, has been stomping through popular culture and will no doubt keep going until humans stop fearing death (which is unlikely to end soon). But these stories aren’t just reanimated dead narratives, however; there are many that revisit the story while offering a new perspective on the source material, such as Tim McGregor’s Eynhallow.

Eynhallow’s main character is not the scientist or his monster, but one Agnes Tulloch, a mother of four who feels increasingly isolated thanks in part to her emotionally abusive husband and because the rocky, secluded island of Eynhallow is not the island paradise her husband promised. Then a mysterious stranger moves to the island to work in secret. Agnes works for and soon befriends the man, not knowing that he is Victor Frankenstein, animator of dead things, or that his monster is looking for Victor to fulfill his promise of a bride.

Many adaptations, like Victor Lavalle’s Destroyer and Frankenstein in Baghdad use more modern settings, complete with modern problems, to inject a dose of relevance into the source material. McGregor goes a different route and expands on a part of Mary Shelley’s original work that had great potential for drama, a drama that pulls main character Agnes into its orbit. McGregor gives Agnes the role of narrator, letting readers learn all about her hardscrabble life and her dreams of escaping it, so when the horror finally comes crashing down on her, readers’ hearts will break for her. Definitely one of the finer reimaginings of the Frankenstein story, Eynhallow demonstrates McGregor’s knack for creating fleshed-out (living flesh, that is) characters.