What Feasts at Night follows Lieutenant Alex Easton and Angus back to their homeland of Gallacia. Miss Eugenia Potter joins them shortly after the beginning of the story, bringing together my favorite three characters from the first Sworn Soldier book, What Moves the Dead.

In this story, Alex and Angus fix up and move into a hunting lodge Alex inherited from family. The caretaker has mysteriously died and no one in town will talk to them about what happened. They hire on an older woman to cook for them, and she brings along her adult son who helps around the lodge with heavy-lifting.

Alex hears the tale of an old superstition that's been brought back to life by their previous caretaker's death. Of course, that "tale" tries to repeat itself now that the lodge is inhabited again. Through a series of events, the cook's son becomes ill, and Alex dreams of the "hag" who sits on your chest and steals your breath. From there, bad goes to worse, but you can read the story to find out how it all really happens.

Thought this book is subtitled as Sworn Soldier Book 2, I thought by the description that it would easily be a stand-alone story for those who hadn't read the first book. As a huge fan of T. Kingfisher, I've read the book now considered Sworn Soldier Book 1: What Moves the Dead, which is a retelling of The Fall of the House of Usher. I mention this because one could to read this story as a stand-alone, but the language might be confusing and it might be harder to relate to Alex without getting to know ka in the first book. Gallacia, Alex's (fictional) home country, has a complicated language that includes an abundance of pronouns for people, including different pronouns for pre-pubescent children, for priests and nuns, and "for rocks and God." (I'm not sure how the rocks fit.) Alex is a sworn soldier, and as it's explained in the first book, females aren't allowed to serve in the military. The loophole for this is that one can sign on for military service and receive an alternative set of pronouns and a new identity. To understand the Gallacian culture and language, and Alex, it would be best for readers to read What Moves the Dead first. It'll also give you a good understanding of who Mrs. Potter is and her relationship with Angus.

T. Kingfisher's strong writing: the vivid descriptions, being able to put myself into Alex's shoes, to see and feel what ka is dealing with. (I'm trying with the pronouns, folks. Bear with me.)

Also, Alex isn't a hero. Alex feels real and human to me, with responses and reactions to the bizarre and unbelievable that make it all so believable. It's a story with bad things that happen and hard work that must be done to fix mistakes of the past. I loved it.

The only weakness of the story, which surprises me coming from T. Kingfisher, is the lack of interaction between Mrs. Potter and Angus. We see very little of them. Their characters aren't as strong or as involved as I'd have liked them to be. Mrs. Potter has such a beautiful, wild personality in Book 1, I'd love to have seen more of it in this story. But this story was shorter and may have limited what Kingfisher could do. (I probably shouldn't give excuses, but T. Kingfisher is fighting a very sudden and nasty battle with cancer, which may have affected some of what she was able to do with this book.)

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Created Feb 24, 2024 at 4:20pm • Submit your own review...