What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher – Review

Published: February 13, 2024

Publisher: Tor Nightfire

Series: Sworn Soldier #2

Genre: Horror

Pages: 160 (Kindle)

My Rating: 3.5 Stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
The follow-up to T. Kingfisher’s bestselling gothic novella, What Moves the Dead .

Retired soldier, Alex Easton, returns in a horrifying new adventure.

After their terrifying ordeal at the Usher manor, Alex Easton feels as if they just survived another war. All they crave is rest, routine, and sunshine, but instead, as a favor to Angus and Miss Potter, they find themself heading to their family hunting lodge, deep in the cold, damp forests of their home country, Gallacia.

In theory, one can find relaxation in even the coldest and dampest of Gallacian autumns, but when Easton arrives, they find the caretaker dead, the lodge in disarray, and the grounds troubled by a strange, uncanny silence. The villagers whisper that a breath-stealing monster from folklore has taken up residence in Easton’s home. Easton knows better than to put too much stock in local superstitions, but they can tell that something is not quite right in their home. . . or in their dreams.

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While What Moves the Dead worked perfectly well as a standalone, I was happy to see there would be further stories following Alex Easton and Angus. This time Alex is returning home to Gallacia to meet Eugenia Potter, the mycologist who helped resolve the uh… fungal situation in the previous book. 

Alex and Angus are taking up residence in a hunting lodge that Alex inherited years before so that Eugenia can study the Gallacian fungal population. They arrive in Gallacia only to find the caretaker deceased and the lodge supposedly haunted by a moroi – a creature that haunts dreams and steals the breath from your lungs. The locals all seem to know what’s going on, but no one really wishes to speak of it and so Alex and Angus fumble around blindly trying to fix the situation that released it in the first place.

I think I overestimated how spooky this book was going to be because it was not at all scary. It lacked the unsettling dread and sense of wrongness that made What Moves the Dead such a win for me. I feel like too much of the horror is internalized thanks to the nature of the beastie in question and also happening to someone too distant from our main characters. That remains the case right up until the very end of course, but the ending was a wonderfully dark look into Alex’s time as a soldier and the scars that leaves on the psyche.

Overall, this was an enjoyable read, but the first installment remains my favorite of the pair. I hope there are more stories following Alex and their supernatural misadventures. I mean really, Alex just wants to lounge about Paris and live a comfy life, and every time they leave the city of starlight some supernatural boogeyman pops up!