Review by Booklist Review
Edgar Allen Poe's short story, "The Fall of the House of Usher," gets new life in a modern retelling. Narrator Easton gets a letter from old friend Maddy Usher and heads to their ancestral home for a wellness check. But, as they say, "this place breeds nightmares," and a host of frights are around every corner. From zombie-like rabbits to a landscape laced with fungus, the environment of the Usher mansion collects terror at all turns. Kingfisher (The Hollow Places, 2020) ratchets up the original story with an interesting cast of associates that help Easton try to make some sense of this dismal, suffocating place. While trying to encourage the Ushers to regain their health, Easton discovers that there may well be an explanation for the lurid illness that seems to haunt them. Kingfisher's neatly built world of otherworldly dread rampant with disease will lure fans of classics like Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, as well as those who like modern environmental terror like Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation (2014) and English folk horror movies like In The Earth (2021). An infectious new spin on classic Gothic horror.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Hugo and Nebula Award winner Kingfisher (The Hollow Places) returns to the horror genre with this powerful, fast-paced retelling of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." As a child, Alex Easton, who uses the pronouns ka and kan, befriended twins Roderick and Madeline Usher and went on to serve with Roderick in the recent war. Now Madeline writes to tell Alex that she's ill and Roderick believes she is dying, and Alex must come at once to their family home in remote Ruravia. There, Alex finds a moldering mansion full of fungal rot and strangeness and two Ushers who are terribly, irreversibly changed. Alex must unravel the dark secret that is consuming the house of Usher--before it consumes Alex as well. Kingfisher adds wonderful dimension and tangibility to the classic Poe story, filling it in with standout character work and scenic descriptions that linger on the palate, while fleshing out the original plot with elements as plausible as they are chilling. It's thoroughly creepy and utterly enjoyable. (Jul.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
A lone, tired man on horseback encounters a mushroom that resembles the severed muscles of dying soldiers as he approaches a decaying manor house, the home of his dear friends, Madeline and Roderick Usher. He has traveled quickly at the behest of Madeline, who is near death. As he reaches for the intriguing mushroom, a traveling mycologist stops him, for this mushroom is not only rare, but also releases a foul odor. So begins Kingfisher's (Nettle & Bone) retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," filling in much of what was left unsaid in the original story with intensely unsettling, claustrophobic fungal details. Told exclusively from the perspective of narrator Alex Easton, Kingfisher's story moves forward briskly, ratcheting up the dread with every sentence. Readers will be rapt as the tension builds to near bursting levels and the true meaning of the title comes into full, skin-crawling view. VERDICT Retold Gothic classics and fungus-themed horror are both having a moment, and Kingfisher's well-paced, immersive novella will satisfy those seeking read-alikes for Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic. Also suggest Moreno-Garcia and Orrin Grey's excellent anthology Fungi and the nature field horror of Jeff VanderMeer.
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