What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher Review

The next installment in the New York Times bestselling Sworn Soldier series, featuring Alex Easton investigating the dark, mysterious depths of a coal mine in America.
 

Alex Easton does not want to visit America.
 

They particularly do not want to visit an abandoned coal mine in West Virginia with a reputation for being haunted.
 

But when their old friend Dr. Denton summons them to help find his lost cousin—who went missing in that very mine—well, sometimes a sworn soldier has to do what a sworn soldier has to do...
 

Book #3 in T. Kingfisher’s Sworn Soldier series, What Stalks the Deep features a great premise of mysterious occurrences and a disappearance at a long abandoned mine in the rural West Virginia countryside. Those that have been keeping up with the series should know what to expect, namely its frank and sarcastic narration courtesy of sworn soldier Alex Easton, a good sense of ambiance, and a grounded approach to paranormal horror beings. Compared to the previous two entries, this one feels like it has snappier pacing and a style that leans more towards a mystery thriller vs foreboding horror. While generally interesting and an overall quick read, I personally found this one to be less stylistic and atmospheric than the previous two books and the series in general, giving me diminishing returns with each new entry.

Picking up a year or so after the events of the second book What Feasts at Night, What Stalks the Deep sees Alex Easton and Angus reunited with the American surgeon Dr. Denton, investigating the disappearance of his cousin Oscar in a poorly charted mine inherited by their family. While the eccentric mycologist enthusiast Miss Potter was the popular scene-stealer of What Moves the Dead’s original characters, I personally quite liked Dr. Denton and I was happy to see his return to the series in this book following his absence in the previous one (though Miss Potter’s absence here is a bit of a letdown even though she likely wouldn’t have a purpose given this novella’s content). The overall premise of the group investigating a deep mine is a great concept and Kingfisher ups the ante with eerie recurring motifs of a red light in the dark and the sound of something stalking them in the dark. Kingfisher gives the mine an almost sentient like feel, descriptive sounds and imagery breathing and constricting around them, particularly Easton who is most definitely “not claustrophobic”; say it enough times and you can will it to become true or something.

Compared to the previous two books that were gothic and desolate themed respectively, What Stalks the Deep has a more rugged and industrial feel. However, whether it be due to half the story taking place underground in the dark or the American Appalachian range provided less distinctive material, I found this book to be a lot less atmospheric and foreboding than the other two books. While the past two were distinctively haunting and psychological horror-based novellas, this one felt more of a bump in the night, creature thriller story which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but is narratively different and noticeably less eerie. While the other two were slow moving explorations of their decrepit settings filled with dread, this one felt faster paced and less stylistic than what I would’ve expected compared to Kingfisher’s other books I’ve read.

In addition to the different tone of the book, I also found the plot and ending of What Stalks the Deep to be a bit of a letdown at best, baffling and random at worst. To summarize (see spoiler section below), part of the reason why I found Kingfisher’s series so interesting is the way it presents plausible and grounded explanations for unexplainable paranormal occurrences. This book doesn’t continue that trend and instead has a reveal that falls more into science fiction/fantasy otherworldly beings that I found to be quite disappointing and less narratively ambitious than the previous two entries, though it is creative. Reading Kingfisher’s acknowledgement section, this story was inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s novella At the Mountains of Madness and while this story isn’t an exact retelling in the vein of What Moves the Dead was to The Fall of the House of Usher, this book shares quite a few narrative story elements aside from the shift of an Antarctic expedition to the Appalachian Mountains. While different and almost wholesome at times, I found the ending to be underwhelming and uncharacteristically riddled with odd illogical oversights or possible plot holes. And despite having a better sense of pacing compared to What Feasts at Night, this book shares the same perplexing issue of all the intense action and visual horror scenes concentrated in even less pages than the previous book, roughly only 25 pages in a nearly 200 page novella.

-Spoilers Below-
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While not exactly a retelling, What Stalks the Deep is very similar in concept to At the Mountains of Madness which both feature a recovery attempt for a lost expedition or individual in a remote underground area. Both stories also involve an unknown foreign mass and being from another age, though Kingfisher’s Wholesome/Fragment is decidedly more sentient than Lovecraft’s Shoggoth. Although I wasn’t fond of the story invoking an otherworldly being as the source of the strange occurrence, a choice that felt cheap compared to the past two books providing far more scientifically plausible explanations, I would’ve been more forgiving of the concept had the book’s ending been stronger. As currently written, I found Wholesome/Fragment/Sentry’s split beings difficult to get behind as well as finding quite a few concepts introduced to be conflicting.

It is stated that Wholeness’s being is some sort of siphonophore that can only consume small material or liquids, given its lack of structure and strength to process solids. It is proposed that Wholeness has protected itself by creating the iridescent shield that acts as the underground room’s floor that Eaten and co. walk over to prevent itself from dying out and exposed to environmental hazards. If that is the case, how are both Fragment and Sentry capable of persisting unprotected above the barrier for so long? If a mining explosion fragmented Fragment off from Wholesome, how did Fragment surface without some type of breach either in the underground rock formation or protective barrier? To reunite Fragment with Wholeness (or at least most of it given part of it opted to stay within the mine as a new sentry lookout), it would’ve needed to pierce the protective layer which now is an opening and hazard for Wholeness to the above world, defeating the purpose of the barrier.

The questions pile up even further when it is revealed that Roger’s dog is the detached part of Wholeness that was left as a “sentry” to guard the rest of it. It’s specifically noted and discussed that Wholeness and Fragment are unable to digest solid food due to the lack of stomach and musculature needed as well as lacking structural support as a siphonophore like being. Yet Sentry is shown to consume organs, solid material, and incorporate bones into their form in order to take the appearance of a large dog. In the form of a dog, Sentry also tears at bodies using their jaw, teeth, and other parts, and can digest food by using stones similar to a bird’s gizzard. While it’s mentioned that Sentry likely got its bones from either animals, past victims or potentially Roger’s real dog, it’s unclear where and how its teeth were sourced. Even if Sentry has a stronger internal structure than Fragment due to the bones collected vs Fragment’s stick-based frame, physiologically speaking it would also need muscles to contract and push in order to exert any sort of force as Wholeness’s gelatinous makeup would not support this movement unassisted. While consuming stones to act like a gizzard makes sense in theory, this concept has the same issue of lacking muscles; gizzards do not function without the muscles contracting around the organ, crushing food particles between the stones. As previously stated, looking like they have muscles is not the same as having actual muscles. Finally, how can Sentry make audible noise when Fragment and Wholeness can’t? Although Sentry visually looks the part of a dog, Fragment’s explanation and Dr. Denton’s observations confirm that looking the part is not the same as having the actual biologically functioning part, meaning that Sentry should’ve been mute and incapable of the threatening sounds heard in the story. And when Sentry is damaged, black strings attached to their bones twist and stitch together to reform. When and where did these black strings come from, some sort of bizarre adaptation? That’s a rhetorical question as adaptation requires slow development through randomized genetic diversity, Sentry is a singular being with no defined generations.
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Perhaps it may appear like I’m looking too far into the logistics of how it’s “stalker” which should get a free pass and be written off as something humans have never studied and therefore cannot understand how they work. That, however, feels like a poor argument and lazy explanation given how well-researched and plausible the rest of What Stalks the Deep and Kingfisher’s books are, the discussion of the dangers of underground gas and geology being quite detailed and informative. Even What Moves the Dead’s otherworldly and sentient fungus was considerably more plausible and had concepts loosely based in real-world theories. This one feels like Kingfisher is just making up new rules and mechanics on the fly, whatever is needed for the otherworldly being to fulfill the necessary roles in the story, believability and logistics be damned. The longer I sat down and thought about it the story’s plot twists and details, the more perplexing and conflicting the ending as written seems.

While still an above average horror book and featuring Kingfisher’s expectedly great writing style, What Stalks the Deep was a bit of a disappointment for me and decidedly my least favorite of the three Sworn Soldier novellas. Compared to the previous two books in the series, I found this one to be less atmospheric, less immersive and believable, and the plot surprisingly shaky with questionable explanations. And on a similar note to what I critiqued in the previous two books, this story has the same tendency to repeatedly write “In Gallacia we do this, in Gallacia we do that” in situations that don’t often enhance the story: this recurring quirk either being a perk or drawback depending on one’s interest in the fictional wild country. Although I like Alex Easton as a character and narrator, I’m slowly realizing that I’m enjoying this series despite the Sworn Soldier theme and Gallacia’s influences, rather than because of it. A concerning takeaway on top of this book’s lackluster ending, I’ve found each of these books to be less enjoyable and impressive than the previous one and I’ve recently discovered I prefer reading Kingfisher’s other books more than this series. For those that are invested in this series’ characters and tone, What Stalks the Deep is likely to please and is still a well-written book. However, should this series continue (likely given the way the ending suggests another adventure is soon on the horizon), I’m not sure if I’ll be continuing unless there’s a noticeable course correction.