I literally just wrote a review for the book I finished a day before I finished this one where I could barely remember what had happened or how I felt about it, and then comes this book where I feel like I just read it yesterday and it’s vividly imprinted on my brain. And yet I gave them the same rating. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Maybe I’ll bump this one up to 4.5 stars. It really was very well done. Fantastically creepy. I was already scarred for life because of that episode of The X-Files and learning about the zombie ants. I’m not linking to that one because then I’d have to see pictures all over again. You want to see it, Google it yourself, though I do not recommend this. Then you will KNOW. Anyway, if you have fungus fear, don’t read this.
What Moves the Dead is a retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” but I’d actually probably call it more of an expansion. It takes what was in that story and just fleshes it out, adding a couple of elements that work perfectly, in my opinion. Our main character is Alex Easton, on his way to visit their old friends the Ushers after Madeleine Usher wrote to them saying she was ill and please come. When Alex gets there, weirdness abounds. Freaky weirdness. Madeleine is indeed very ill. But something else is of course going on.
An extra dimension the author adds to the story is that Alex comes from a culture where the language allows for a much more nuanced expression of gender. They have a gender that is entirely for soldiers, which is what Alex is. I used “they” and “them” above but the actual correct pronoun is “ka” and “kan,” but if you haven’t read the book yet I thought you might be like what the fuck, if I just threw them in there. One of the reasons I didn’t give this a full five stars is because I feel like I need to re-read it to fully make the connections between what was going on with Alex and what is going on in the house of Usher. I won’t mind at all, because this book was a trip, and I sort of zoomed through it. It would be nice to take my time with it on a second read.
[4.5 stars]
Chipping Away at Mt. TBR, July 2022—Book 31/31
CBR BINGO: Question
The question mark is missing in this title, but I really didn’t go deep on this one.
