A House with Good Bones (Kingfisher)

A House with Good Bones
by T. Kingfisher (2023)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

I would not have expected to have read another T. Kingfisher book so soon. The last one I read, What Moves the Dead was good, not necessarily great, nor something that screamed "read more" to me. However, I needed something to listen to on my phone while I was out walking. I went to Libby for ideas. I wanted a short, fantasy audiobook, preferrably under 8 hours. Many were much longer.

Anyway, "A House With Good Bones" appeared, and I gave it a shot. It sounded good enough that I borrowed the ebook, caught up to the audio, which then got left behind.

Instead of mushrooms, this book gives us ladybugs and roses and vultures and some old magic.

Samantha Montgomery is an archaeoentomologist, someone who studies insects and other arthropods recovered from archaeological sites, usually associated with human remains and middens (aka "dunghills"). Her site is shut down but her room has been sublet, so she has no place to go except to her mother's house (which belonged to her mother before her) in North Carolina, traveling across most of the country to get there. When she gets there, things are a little strange and her mother is behaving oddly. And there are weird things about the house.

Sam thinks her mother is started to develop dementia or something similar. She doesn't understand why the interior of the house was repainted ecrue or why there's a portrait of a Confederate wedding hanging in the hall.

And, more weird, there are no insects in the yard on the rose bushes. But there is a sudden infestation of lady bugs that she can't explain. And then there's the portrait that shows what clearly seems to be a child's hand coming out of the ground beneath one of the rose bushes.

Mom's not crazy, and grandma's not gone. Others on the lane know that there's something wrong with the house.

If I have a quibble, it's with the climax of the book, which takes all the action ... somewhere else. I'm not exactly sure where it was or how any of the vultures managed to find their way there. I understand that they didn't need realism at this particular point, but the book went to extraordinary lengths to make the creepy, unimaginable into real, believable things. This was a little disappointing and could've been closer to home, as it were.

One last side note: I have to say that "a house with good bones" isn't a common expression in the Northeast, USA. At least, I don't think it is. It's not one that I've heard. The only other reference I have is the song "The Bones" by Maren Morris, where she sings "the house won't fall when the bones are good", which made me wonder right from the start if the house was going to fall. (Oddly, I assumed that the song was talking about a personal relationship with two people, not the actual structure of their dwelling, allegorically speaking.)

This book was written before "What Moves the Dead" and contains a preview for it at the end of the book.

I enjoyed this, both in audio and ebook, although I abandoned the audio once I caught up reading.

What Moves the Dead (Kingfisher)

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher (2022)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a book club selection. I read it a month before the meeting, so I may update this with group thoughts.

TV Tropes, of all places, tells me that T. Kingfisher is a pen name of Ursula Vernon.

This was the thinnest of the nominees for the monthly selection and I don't remember if it was my first choice. It might not have been because I'm sure Good Reads would've told me that it was an update on "The Fall of the House of Usher". I wasn't aware of this when I started reading it, but as soon as we get to the decrepit mansion owned by the Ushers, I had an inkling.

I'm sure that I read the original story, that is to say, it was read aloud in class, in 11th grade English class, but I couldn't remember any particular details, except for allusions to the story in various sci-fi books and stories, and possibly snippets of a Vincent Price film. (Just checked. Price did a film in 1960, so it would've been on local TV stations many times in my childhood, and my oldest brothers would've likely watched it every time.)

The book starts a little awkwardly because the narrator isn't identifited much beyond a soldier and a friend of Maddie. There is a little confusion with pronouns, which are used before they are explained, so when I saw a phrase like "under kan heel", I didn't realize that "kan" was a pronoun in that case. I thought "kan heel" actually meant something as an expression. "Under one's heel" went straight out of my mind.

In the kingdom of Gallacia, where the narrator in from, va and van refer to he/she and his/her, respectively, for children. This continued to confused me because I see va and van and I think of Spanish 1, where those are verb conjugations. Then there's ka and kan which is reserved for the military. And during the war, they started allowing women to join, but didn't add new pronouns. After one leaves the service, one has the option of keeping "ka" or reverting back to whatever.

This preface is to criticize the fact that unless there were subtle references that flew by me, it was a good chunk of the book before you discover the former soldier narrating the book is, in fact, female. I think it was a reference no longer to binding "kan" breasts, or something similar. Alex is actually Alexandria. This also explains why she's such good childhoos friends with Madeline, but not her brother Roderick, who was in Alex's unit in the war.

The other thing that throw me was the year. References to the war had me thinking World War I, originally, but it was older than that. The appendix places it (from the story's context) to be in the late 1800s.

That confusion dealt with, it was an interesting update on the story (as much as I remember the original). A fungus expert is introduced, fairly knowlegdable but considered an amateur because women can't be mycologists in England.

All I can think of now is all of the tropes, because I hit the page. There isn't much to say that isn't a spoiler for something or other. Madeline is so sick so wouldn't survive traveling from the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania off to, say, Paris. But the house will be the death of her. Seriously. There are strange goings on in and around the house, like rabbits that don't act like rabbits shot -- even after you shoot them in the head.

Cool new word: tarn, which is the biolumimescent lake outside the house which was infected with a fungus.

This was a very quick read. Luckily, I put the ebook on hold as soon as we knew what the choices would be, so it was available early. I enjoyed it. I may go back and reread the beginning before the meeting, if I still have a copy of it.

As it turns out, all three choices became available so I checked them out. Now I have to read them quickly because I don't know which I'll be able to renew. Not really a problem. I'm already enjoying the next book, which will show up on the blog sooner or later.