What Stalks the Deep by T.Kingfisher

Book Review

Pauline Morgan

There are many authors who have reworked fairy and folk tales either to put a new spin on them or to bring them up to date. Kingfisher has used this idea successfully a number of times in books such as Hemlock and Silver, which reimagines Snow White. In her ‘Sworn Soldier’ series of novellas, she has turned her attention to classic gothic tales. In the first of the series, What Moves the Dead is an exploration of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’. What Stalks the Deep is the third and pays homage to H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘At the Mountains of Madness’.

            Alex Easton is the Sworn Soldier and the common character in all the books. In Easton’s home country of Gallacia, the language has an abundance of pronouns. Soldiers have their own – ka and kan. Even rocks have their own pronouns. Easton first met De James Denton in What Moves the Dead, and now he has asked ka to come to America to help solve a problem.

            Denton had inherited an old coal mine, and his cousin, Oscar, had gone to see if it was worth reopening. After several highly descriptive letters, Oscar disappeared. Denton wants Easton and Angus, who had been in the army with ka, to help investigate Oscar’s disappearance. Mines are often thought to be haunted and are dangerous, not just because of the dangers of rock falls but due to the accumulation of poisonous gases. Denton wonders if Oscar’s description of a chamber lined with pearl is the result of hallucinations caused by the gases.

            At the site of the mine, there are a number of mysteries, not least being Oscar’s disappearance.

One of the techniques for getting information across is to have at least one ignorant character who needs the situation explained to them. Easton is the novice here, and Denton’s friend, John Ingold is the expert that can do the explaining. It isn’t quite an info dump as the information is needed later in the novella, especially when everyone goes into the mine. It does show that Kingfisher has done her research well.

The Deep is what the lower levels and further ends of the tunnels in a mine are referred to by – the further you go, the deeper you get. As can be imagined, there is the suggestion of a monster in the tunnels, but as can be expected with Kingfisher’s work, the outcome of the tale is not what initial stages of the story are leading to.

This makes a good addition to the Sworn Soldier series.