What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher
SERIES: Sworn Soldier #2
LENGTH: 151 pages
GENRES: Horror, LGBTQIA+, Fiction
PUBLISHER: Tor Nightfire
RELEASE DATE: 13 February 2024
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Alex Easton, retired soldier, returns in this novella-length sequel to the bestselling What Moves The Dead.
When Easton travels to Gallacia as a favor to Miss Potter, they find their home empty, the caretaker dead, and the grounds troubled by a strange, uncanny silence.
The locals whisper of a strange breath-stealing being from Gallacian folklore that has taken up residence in Easton’s home . . . and in their dreams.
My Review
Soldier’s heart doesn’t know the difference between terrible things. Fungus or cannon fire, it’s all just the war.
Though not as good as its predecessor, What Feasts at Night is still a great follow-up to What Moves the Dead. Unlike the latter, it isn’t a retelling of a classic story, but an original story.
I still enjoyed reading about Easton and Angus and Ms. Potter, as well as the new major characters. Angus and Ms. Potter especially – their little romance is still absolutely adorable. But I felt that this book was missing… something that was prevalent in the first book.
I believe it had to do with the novel’s atmosphere. When reading What Moves the Dead, I could feel the story slipping downhill. Weird things kept happening and kept getting worse and worse, and you knew it was building up to something terrible. But here, in the sequel, there isn’t really any of that same pervasive horrific tone. Sure bad things happen – but never to the degree of book one.
And I didn’t really like the monster twist in What Feasts at Night. The fungi thing that the first novel had going for it was interesting and sinister. But the creature in the second book was more… supernatural in nature. And I didn’t really like that. I wanted it to be another mushroom monster – heck our marvelous mycologist Ms. Potter was even here and she found a strange fungus she hadn’t seen before. I thought it was all building up to another fungus thing, and then it didn’t.
So yeah, the lack of more creepy mushroom stuff disappointed me, and colored my perception of the book, unfortunately. Which is why I didn’t rate it as highly as I did the first one. I just didn’t enjoy it as much; it also felt slower than book one. And those of you who have been reading my posts for a while know how I love a good, fast-paced romp.
But I still recommend What Feasts at Night to fans of What Moves the Dead, as well as other works of T. Kingfisher. It’s a fine, well written book, and even though I criticized the decision not to have another horrifying mushroom adventure, I did still enjoy the monster we got. Just… not as much. (Also, we got to visit Gallacia for the duration of the story and got to learn more about it in a natural way, which I really loved.)
My Favorite Quotes
May he shit pinecones in hell.
“You know,” I said to Angus, “we could still be in Paris right now.”
“I didn’t force you to come,” he said.
“You blackmailed me.”
“I most certainly did not.”
“There was guilt. I distinctly remember guilt being involved.”
If this was a fairy tale, it was the kind where everyone gets eaten as a cautionary tale about straying into the woods, not the sentimental kind that ends with a wedding and the words, “And if they have not since died, they are living there still.”
You really don’t want to drink our wine. We export it because we don’t want to drink it either.
Tomorrow, in my experience, is only worth worrying about when there’s something you can do about it.