Review: The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publication Date: October 1, 2019


Upon the death of her grandmother, a freelance editor grabs her glorious dog Bongo and heads off to to clean out her grandmother's rural North Carolina house. Said grandmother was quite a bitch, which isn't really relevant to the plot (except in one somewhat hilarious way that I kept expecting to be expounded upon or subverted, but never actually was). Said grandmother was also a hoarder, which definitely is relevant to the plot, as it turns a quick clean-up into a much longer affair. And as the days pass and the shadows lengthen, our oh-so-unlucky narrator discovers certain eldritch truths lurking in the forest surrounding the house. And then she discovers that certain of those has decided to follow her back to the house. (She also discovers that Bongo is both the best and worst of dogs. You'll see what I mean there.)

The first three-quarters of The Twisted Ones is one of the best horror novels I've read in a long, long while, the sort of book I kept reading late at night and then yelling at myself for reading late at night, because every wind gust and house creak was suddenly causing me to freeze in place while trying not to glance in shadowed corners.

However and most unfortunately, as we reach the home stretch, that carefully-built sense of dread just up and dissipates, like fog hit with a fan, until I suddenly felt like I was reading a far more generic slasher-esque chase story than what had come before. I knocked off a star for that, where I'd have cheerfully given this five stars and beyond had the promise of the earlier sections been maintained through to the end.

There is a tie here to a . . . I wanted to say a horror classic, but I'm not sure the book in question qualifies as that. (Certainly not in the sense of being a 'shorthand' novel among horror fans, one of those books whose quotes, plot, and references any good horror reader would immediately recognize.) Rather, this is tied to a lesser-known book by the same author as a clear cosmic horror classic, so it'll be familiar to some readers but definitely not all. In any case, I myself hadn't read the book in question, and didn't even realize what was being tied into the plot while reading the book, and I certainly had no trouble following the plot.

If you're any kind of horror fan, definitely pick this up. Just be forewarned: the ending might disappoint you.