What Stalks the Deep

The latest installment in T. Kingfisher’s Sworn Soldier novella series sees Alex Easton and Angus travel to the USA. This, inevitably, is cause for hilarity. Gallacia, the small, European country whence Alex hails, could not be more un-American. Its people are quiet and reserved, its landscape mountainous and forbidding. No one would ever dream of shaking anyone else by the hand, let alone doing so with gusto.

Equally, the USA is profoundly un-Gallacian. Alex elects to keep kan status as a Sworn Soldier secret because goodness only knows what the Americans would make of that. Thankfully ka passes for male and does not have to try to explain. It also means that Kingfisher doesn’t have to delve to deeply into social attitudes to gender, which might be interesting to me, but would probably detract from the main narrative.

Angus, being a dour Scotsman, does not hold with Americans at all, but loyally tags along to keep his employer out of trouble and/or social embarrassment.

Thus to Boston Alex must go. Ka has received a telegram from kan old friend, Dr James Denton, with whom ka faced the horrors of the house of the Ushers in What Moves the Dead. Denton is clearly in need of urgent help, and what is left unsaid suggests that supernatural horrors are the source of his troubles.

So it transpires. Denton has come into the ownership of an abandoned coal mine in Virginia. His young cousin, Oscar, has taken it upon himself to investigate the property and see if it can be re-opened profitably. But Oscar has disappeared and his letters back to Denton are sufficiently lurid to suggest that he might have been reading fiction by that Lovecraft fellow.

Alex, Angus and Denton head off to Virginia, accompanied by Denton’s friend, John Ingold. He’s a great character. He’s part native by birth, so has equally acerbic views of Americans to Easton, but for very different reasons. He is also a chemist, and thus fond of experiments that are prone to explode spectacularly. You need a chemist if you are going to explore a coal mine, because it can be full of all sorts of gases that you can’t see, and are reliably deadly in a variety of horrific ways.

Once at the mine, things evolve towards a conclusion, but probably not in the way you might anticipate. Firstly the very lovely UK cover of the book has absolutely nothing to do with the story. The US cover is more appropriate, though looks like it would be more at home on a Jeff VanderMeer book.

Alex turns out to be quite claustrophobic, but being the only actual military person in the party ka obviously cannot show weakness amongst civilians. And there is a definite air of horror about the proceedings. But the story has a twist that takes it in a very science-fictional direction. That is, if you think about it, quite in keeping with the Lovecraftian nature of the story, but possibly not what you would expect having read the two previous books in the series.

Personally I love these books. I am, of course, a sucker for stories with a trans hero. And Kingfisher writes very well. Quite what her fans will make of this one remains to be seen, but I hope they love it too because I want more Alex Easton stories in this world.

Title: What Stalks the Deep
By: T Kingfisher
Publisher: Titan
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
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