Review:
When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives a letter from their childhood friend Madeline Usher indicating that she is dying, they immediately travel to the Usher ancestral home. Although Alex has been warned, it's still a shock to see how ill the last two remaining Ushers look. Madeline's brother, Roderick, with whom Alex once served, looks like a strong breeze could blow him away. Madeline looks like she could die at any moment.
Despite being nobility, the Ushers are ruinously poor, and it's painfully evident in the condition of the house and surrounding land. Surely the mold, mushrooms, and algae-infested lake can't be good for Roderick and Madeline's fragile health, but Roderick refuses to leave without Madeline, and Madeline is too sick to go anywhere.
In this reimagining of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," Kingfisher provides an explanation for what happened to the Ushers. Some aspects of it weren't that much of a surprise, considering the cover and the fact that mushrooms have practically become their own horror subgenre, but the creepy atmosphere and skin-crawling descriptions more than made up for that. The hares were particularly creepy, although I do admit that I expected a little more from them.
Kingfisher's main characters are always pretty grounded, and Alex was no exception. Eugenia Potter, a British mycologist Alex encountered on the way to the Ushers, was a similarly solid presence - she could have been a Kingfisher main character in her own right. They're the kind of people I'd want to have around when things are going bump in the night, if only because they might keep me from scaring myself to pieces. Although even Alex was spooked by those hares.
Overall, I really enjoyed this. The short length was perfect - my brain did a great job of filling in gaps and asking questions about things I realized I probably didn't want answered.
No comments:
Post a Comment