Has the BookTube hype fooled me? What Moves the Dead by T Kingfisher 

I haven't read this one yet, but THE TWISTED ONES and THE HOLLOW PLACES are both absolute grade-A bangers. Kingfisher is a force to be reckoned with. (And THE HALCYON FAIRY BOOK, SUMMER IN ORCUS, and DIGGER - the latter her comic published as Ursula Vernon - are also top notch. She's really one of the best authors working in specfic right now.)

I have recently managed to "convert" my husband to horror books, he finished reading The Hollow Places and he loved it, so I will recommend this one to him. Thank you for the review 😊

I just read A House With Good Bones by the same author and it was brilliant. Absolutely loved it.

"What Moves the Dead" was one of my favourites last year. I recently finished "Nettle and Bone" and thought it was a delightful whimsical fantasy, but not quite as good as WMTD. Looking forward to reading "The Hollow Places" soon.

Just finished this book today and saved this video when you first posted it because I knew I would be Buddy reading it with Michelle from Michelle’s Melancholia. I had read the Poe story and thought to myself, “this doesn’t feel complete to me.” And then someone told me I would like this book because Kingfisher really fleshes our the story (pun intended hehe). Glad you enjoyed it!!! The descriptions just had me grossed out and that last sentence! The title made sense for me in that moment like right at the end 😂

Read this one last week and loved it. The atmosphere was really top notch.

Really glad that you loved it. T Kingfisher is one of my favorite authors. I had only read her fantasy before this book came out, so I wasn't sure what to expect from her horror. It turned out to be a lot like her fantasy: characters that feel like real people, dry humor, and delightful creepiness (less in her fantasy, but it's still there).

I've read Nettle and Bone which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I so want to read this one! I've just recently managed to start carving out time to read more print and digital books as opposed to audio, so I am going to bump this one up the list.

So far by T. Kingfisher I've read The Twisted Ones, Nettle and Bone and What Moves The Dead. WMtD is my favorite of this bunch(NaB coming in second) and plan to read her whole backlist.

You have convinced me to read What Moves The Dead! Thank you for this video! Love the concept and the collab!

I really loved The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher, and I would recommend starting with that one. I also recommend The Twisted Ones.

Just finished "What moves the Dead". Loved it. It was small but mighty.

Thanks for the recommendation, Olly. I've picked it up for the Kindle but The Journey is damn hard to find though, even in the e-book format.

I read What Moves the Dead in March too and really enjoyed it too!! I ate it up in one or two sittings!!

I have this book in my cart I’m hoping to purchase soon! So glad to listen to your review

Glaf you were able to discover a new favorite book. This one sounds creepy, but I am interested in T.K. Fisher.

Whenever anyone brings up any Usher homage, I always point to Usher's Passing by Robert McCammon. It's a somewhat hidden gem in his back catalog. Cheers!

I enjoyed this book. I think it works as a good companion to the original Poe. And agree, the usage of alternative pronouns here was fascinating

I read her duology, Clocktaur War, and remember enjoying it a lot, but also thinking that it felt a bit rough around the edges. It's sort of sci-fi fantasy adventure with a lot of comedic elements, found family, interesting world-building, and a different take on gender in some places (maybe a theme for her?). I'll have to read it again, though, because I read the first one in 2017 and the second in 2018. So it's been a while. I only remember bits and pieces and one of the characters always calling one of the main protagonists "Crazy Lady". It's why I can't give a better description than what I have above. Also, at the end of book two I remember really wanting there to be another one.

I read Nettle & Bone last month. I did enjoy

I've LOVED the fantasy I've read by T. Kingfisher, so happy you enjoyed this one Olly! I feel like in general you can't go wrong with any of the fantasy I've read by her, but some of my favorites are The Seventh Bride and Nettle & Bone!

I just fiished this, such a good retelling, with really interesting ideas that expanded on the original story. I did reread the original right before so maybe that increased my enjoyment even more!

I still need to read something by Kingfisher so it's good to hear that the hype isn't wrong here. Maybe this'll be the first I pick up! Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us :)

T. Kingfisher falls onto my diminishing returns list with other popular authors like Rachel Harrison. Loved the first thing I read of theirs and then have been chasing that high in a lot of subsequent books.

I did read What Moves the Dead and enjoyed it, though now I feel I missed a bunch of stuff and will have to revisit. I have since tried rereading The Fall of the House of Usher, which like you I'd read as a teen. It is ...well the TL:DR version is that it's not my favorite Poe. Very dense prose. Next I am thinking of reading Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, because Kingfisher said she was also inspired by that book. I have to admit that What Moves the Dead is not my favorite from Kingfisher, She does have other horror novels, which I have not read -- because horror is not my genre at all (and yet I am subscribed to your channel, Olly!). But her fantasy books are so delightful -- Swordheart in particular is fantastic, if you ever want to try her other stuff. She also writes (under the name Ursula Vernon) some of the best middle grade fiction out there.

I Really enjoyed this one. I read The House of Usher just before reading What moves the dead. Some of the best written "creepiness" IMO. Love the Fungi. I did think it fell a little flat at the end, pardon the pun. I was hoping that Kingfisher would talk more about the weird relationship between Rodrick and his sister (blanking on the name).

I like all of Kingfisher’s horror novels. The Hollow Places riffs on Blackwood’s “The Willows”, “The Twisted Ones” on Machen’s “The White People”, each finding a way for modern manifestations in America of the stuff originally revealed back when.

I really loved What Moves the Dead, honestly I want a book centered on the mycologist, because she was just fantastic of a presence. Also, Alex's horse was such a good horse. In general, the pets in T. Kingfisher's books are lovely. I'm going to echo other people and recommend The Twisted Ones and The Hollow Places. I don't scare easily, but those two did something to me! Nettle & Bone is more of a dark fairy tale, but I also loved it, it had a coziness to it around the dark core of the story. Edited to add that she writes so much! which is great. There is a huge backlog of books of hers that I want to catch up with, the fantasy books, but I mostly keep up with her new releases for now haha

Haven’t got The Journey but have a signed copy of ‘Upstairs and Downstairs - a tour of my town’ by Wee Willie Winkie

@Criminolly have you read THE TWISTED ONES? Would love to hear your review

You had me at « This is an absolutely fantastic book. » 🤗 - MJ

Two book that have totally blown me away recently are The Enterprise of Death by Jesse Bullington. Horrific , disturbing, gross at times and great fun (in fact any of his books fit that category ) and The Necromancer's House By Christopher Buehlman Truly a unique bizarre book that is impossible to put down Highly recommend both

I adore everything T. Kingfisher does - not all of it gothic/horror. But this is definitely one of the creepier ones :D The Twisted Ones is wonderfully creepy in a different way and The Hollow Places is dark and strange and distressing.

Your mask slipped a bit there Olly, I saw a small smile! I have a signed copy of Willie Wilson, You can have it for a nine bob note.

I wouldn't call it being fooled, I'd (jokingly) call it "betrayed by booktube" the one that got me the worst was the Midnight Library by Matt Haig and this year the one that got me was The Water Shall Refuse Them by Lucey McKnight Hardy

I throughly enjoyed this book, it was actually my favorite book for the month of March. Well written and memorable characters. A short sweet read.

I agree I thought this book was fantastic! Glad to hear you loved it 😁

I may well regret asking this but where will I find a copy of The Journey by William Willie Wilson?

Thanks to you, I too love this book!

I read somewhere that James Franco, of all people, has the film rights to The Journey

I clicked on this video ready to fight for this book....so glad I didn't have to!

I really enjoyed the book and it is not my usual genre. And of course I had to order the UK cover over the US

Do you think it would benefit the reader if they (re)read Poe's story before reading What Moves the Dead?

Better than Bomber ? No way ! 😮

I really enjoyed this novella as well. Glad it was a success!

I've loved Kingfisher's fantasies but I'm such a chicken, I have to be very choosy with my horror, but the more I hear about her horror, the more I'm like... maybe I could try... I'm so glad you got a hit!

Sounds good!! I will put it on my TBR list I liked The Twisted Ones. I recommend it if you haven't read it.

Hi Olly! Have you read Shards by Bret Easton Ellis?

I've never been disappointed by T. Kingfisher.

I loved this book, it was one of my favourite reads last year. Creepy with great prose. I also enjoyed The twisted Ones and The Seventh Wife. But the author also has quite funny books like "Nine Goblins" which was simply cute and funny (ok except for one scene...)

OK, so I was conflating this author with another whose name I cannot at the moment recall, but clearly to my mind it was similar. THAT writer is/was very popular, but I just Could Not get into any of the 3 or 4 titles I tried. So I was dubious until this review, and then I looked back over Kingfisher's list and no - haven't tried any of them. But I probably will, starting with this one. That done, the pronouns. First time I ever ran into pronouns as a topic outside grammar class was in a novel I read for one of my feminist college classes - I took a lot of women's studies courses starting in the late 70s and moving forward for a number of years. That book was Woman On The Edge Of Time, by a writer called Marge Piercy. I really loved it, and it was a completely new kind of book for me. It's a restructuring of society, and one of the things they did when they rebuilt was to take out the old pronouns and insert a singular new one - "per," which applied to everydamnbody. She based that on the traditional use of pronouns, which is as a step back from individually identifying or referring to someone, or some THING. She took that a step further with the people part and subtracted gender from it. To me, that made some sense. That purpose in language was maintained, but the problematic (from Piercy's POV) differentiation by gender was removed. It SOUNDS like Kingfisher has a similar approach in some ways in that there are specific rules applied to the pronouns in this book - but I'd have to read it to be sure. My thing with the current pronoun furore is that it ignores the fact that as a part of language, pronouns are MEANT to be a step away from personalization and unique identifiers. They're meant to be generic. That's what they do for language. It's like right now we're mashing up pronouns and names and even titles (and I mean in the Lord/Lady type sense here, as containing information about social roles) into kind of a linguistic paste and smearing it all over how we talk to and about one another. To me, it's a march AWAY from clarity in communication, which is generally speaking what I use language for. When approaching people I'm not pretty close with, I could give a f*ck less about most of the data people are trying to convey to me with the new pronouns - generally I consider that kind of information about most people to be not my business, and I'm not usually eager to learn it about those who are otherwise strangers to me. If I have a question for the person selling me new car tires, I don't care if that person is male or female, or their race or creed, let alone who they prefer to sleep with or whether they think they're actually Elvish or they go to Furry Conventions. Car tires is our business, and I prefer to stay in that lane. So. I guess that means I'm a number of disagreeable and unsympathetic things, but oh well. I'm accustomed to that. And I expect I will still read this book.

I read this, not long ago. It was really creepy. The book wasn't great, but I still enjoyed it.

I may try this one. I read The Hollow Places. It was just ok. I didn’t hate it. Didn’t love it. Then I read The Twisted Ones. I did not enjoy it. I didn’t find it creepy and was just a bit boring. It was more bizarre than actually creepy. It felt like about 2/3 of the way through the author realized they had no idea where they would go. I know some authors just write with very little planning. That doesn’t always work.

The book sounds good

Will you be reading her new book?

I enjoyed it, atmospheric but a little draggy at parts. I prefer T Kingfisher’s Twisted Ones and Hallow Places, I found them creepy and I thoroughly enjoyed the characters since the setting reminds me of where I grew up.

Try “Leech” by Huron Ennis

Good thing it's the 1st of April It always bethels me all the great reviews she gets. I've tried a couple of her books before and they read as the worst kind of fanfiction

I just read this and did like it, although I thought Mexican Gothic was better. But this one was quite good. Those creepy rabbits were creepy! The pronoun thing was specific to Alex's country and language. There were other special pronouns - for example, a specific pronoun for children and siblings, and if you used that pronoun for a grownup it's considered very perverted, like sexualizing of children. There are a number of languages in the real world that do not have gendered pronouns - Finnish is one, and at least one Filippino language as well. I read Kingfisher's Bluebeard book, and was not terribly impressed with it, but I really enjoyed this one. Will have to try some more!

I tried 2 books of hers without success. she seems to have a thing for all things gross no matter what genre she writes. I read one of the Paladin series which was just odd to me in tone... A mix of romance, fantasy & horror that didn't make either interesting to me and A wizard's guide to defensive baking which sadly bored me and I just couldn't get interested...People say its cozy fantasy. Don't know why though. Sounds like a description from adults for adults despite this being a middle grade. I don't find murderous monsters very cozy👀... I don't think that author is for me.

I actually read that one! There were parts I really liked - the infection aspect was great, as was the last scene at the lake. And it did manage to make me feel uncomfortable. As to the pronouns I found the concept interesting but the execution was imo a bit ... clumsy might be a right word. I thought there was a bit too much exposition.

Uh...Plagued By Visions did the Wilson April Fools joke last year.

The Journey definitely falls into the category of book that I can't recommend at all. Completely unable to even finish a single page of it!

I must read this soon! Excellent review!

The Troop was overhyped

I've just read this and I thought it was ok but I did'nt like it as much as most people seem to do... I did like the idea of having the multiple pronouns

I like your cover better than the one that I got. I'm glad this book was short because I was not a big fan. The pronoun thing was as complicated as the hares

Pass. I'll happily reread Poe.

Can someone please explain this retelling trend that I keep seeing? You stole an idea from someone else and changed it slightly? I don't get it.

Nice try. Not falling for that non existant book.

You lost me at the pronouns thing.