What Moves the Dead

This is a novella based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. In the 1890s; Easton, a former soldier of the Gallacia, visits kan old friend Madeline Usher at her family’s ancestral seat on the news that she may be dying. The house is decaying and covered in fungus; only a few servants remain (Madeline’s maid jumped from the roof a few months prior) while her nervous wreck of a brother has only an American doctor to rely on who is baffled by Madeline’s ailment. As Easton attempts to help the family, ka uncovers a mystery around the glowing lake and unsettling wildlife that just won't die.

If you’re up for some gothic horror, mycelial zombie hares, a soldier whose gender/pronouns are simply “soldier”, and regular English jibes at Americans then this is worth picking up. I enjoyed the characters a lot, especially Easton and the English lady providing the mushroom nerdery, and I’m always here for fungal horror vibes. It gives it a blend of old and modern horror. 

I have never read The Fall of the House of Usher, so I cannot comment on references to the original.

I read Mexican Gothic last year and saw people comparing it with this one, so I was not surprised to see the similarities, or to see in the authors note that they were inspired by MG. I did however find this to be more enjoyable. It felt more streamlined and didn't drag on in any areas. I'm looking forward to reading the sequel to see where it goes.

So, it's not very scary or anything. It also has soldiers, which often makes me dislike stories. But ah. This one is exactly right for me. It has the right kind of mushrooms and queerness and feminism and I enjoyed so many little details in it.

Oh my gosh, I was really really enjoying this book up until maybe the last three chapters. Incredible how it pivoted so hard. I couldn't help but compare this to Mexican Gothic, a book I was a fan of. But this improved on that story in so many ways. The creepiness factor was really dialed up, and I found myself to be legitimately freaked out at times. I loved the body horror and almost alien, incomprehensible horror that they were trying to uncover. However all of that went downhill when Madeline, quite predictably, arose from the dead, being controlled by the fungus. That in and of itself wasn't an issue. I thought that was creepy. But having possessed a human, it gave voice to the fungus, which was apparently semi-conscious, had motivations, and was like a child wanting to learn more. There was a comically bad scene of Madeline moaning like a zombie, pleading with the main character to help the fungus learn and grow. It instantly dashed the scariest part of the book, which was that this was a horrific, inescapable thing that happens because fungus doesn't have motivations, and it is a horrific thought that something without motivation can do such terrible things to living beings for seemingly no other reason than to propagate. A hard truth in nature. But making the fungus sentient just ruined it for me, honestly. I want to give the book credit for how gripped it was the majority of the time, but boy was this a disappointing ending.

Merged review:

Oh my gosh, I was really really enjoying this book up until maybe the last three chapters. Incredible how it pivoted so hard. I couldn't help but compare this to Mexican Gothic, a book I was a fan of. But this improved on that story in so many ways. The creepiness factor was really dialed up, and I found myself to be legitimately freaked out at times. I loved the body horror and almost alien, incomprehensible horror that they were trying to uncover. However all of that went downhill when Madeline, quite predictably, arose from the dead, being controlled by the fungus. That in and of itself wasn't an issue. I thought that was creepy. But having possessed a human, it gave voice to the fungus, which was apparently semi-conscious, had motivations, and was like a child wanting to learn more. There was a comically bad scene of Madeline moaning like a zombie, pleading with the main character to help the fungus learn and grow. It instantly dashed the scariest part of the book, which was that this was a horrific, inescapable thing that happens because fungus doesn't have motivations, and it is a horrific thought that something without motivation can do such terrible things to living beings for seemingly no other reason than to propagate. A hard truth in nature. But making the fungus sentient just ruined it for me, honestly. I want to give the book credit for how gripped it was the majority of the time, but boy was this a disappointing ending.

I'm sure I read The Fall of the House of Usher at some point, but I didn't retain enough that I had any particular expectations for the direction of the plot, etc.

However, I did read Mexican Gothic relatively recently, so I spent a good deal of What Moves the Dead, once the overall shape of the story became apparent, nodding along and waiting for the characters to catch up - it gave me a chuckle to see the reference to Mexican Gothic in the author's note.

Great writing, an intriguing reimagination of the classic.

I found The Fall Of The House Of Usher intriguing but ultimately frustrating, and judging by the author's note at the end of this book, so did Ursula Vernon. Her reworking does a great job of keeping the atmosphere of the original while filling it out to be much more of a satisfying story, with clearer reasons behind what happens and much more compelling characters.

I love how the narrator has so much of their own story, and it's mostly made relevant to the core story of the book. And the mystery aspect is very well done, with that tantalising sense that we as readers are just slightly ahead of Easton & Denton in figuring out what's going on and what will have to happen. I also appreciated how Roderick gets to be more of an actor in this telling rather than a pure victim, and I'm intrigued by the ambiguity of whether Madeline also is one or whether we're purely hearing from the fungus towards the end of the book. It must be tempting when writing a story that fills in so many gaps from the original to fill in every gap, and I think stopping short of doing that was a very good move.

This novella retells Poe's "The Fall of the House Usher" as a sci-fi body horror while retaining the gothic flavor with some delightful humor in the mix. What made this truly outstanding was the the recasting of the narrator as non-binary in a way that the transcended simple inclusion and allowed the language to add more layers of meaning. This was a very rewarding read.