Title: The Twisted Ones
Author: T. Kingfisher
ISBN: 9781534429574
Pages: 385 pages
Publisher/Date: Saga Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, c2019.
Awards: Dragon Award Winner (2020), British Fantasy Award Nominee (2020), Locus Award for Horror Novel Nominee (2020)

I woke up very slowly. There was a sound that I had been hearing for some time, and gradually I came awake, still hearing it.
It was Bongo. He lay flat at the foot of the bed, his fur standing up in spikes, and he was growling.
His growl was harsh and awful, like nothing I’d ever heard before. I could see the square of moonlight coming through the window reflected in his eyes.
It came to me, rather distantly, that Bongo was terrified.
My first instinct was to sit up, put my arms around him, ask him what was wrong. Being only half awake may have saved me.
I did not move my head. I looked over to the window, where Bongo was staring.
There was a white face in the window. (150-151).

Copy editor Melissa, mostly called Mouse, has been asked by her father to cleanout her grandmother’s house in the deep, rural south after she passes. Mouse’s father’s health is failing and hasn’t been to the house for several years since they moved his mother to an assisted living facility. When Mouse arrives with her hound dog in tow, she realizes her grandmother was a hoarder, with stacks of newspaper, plastic bags, and creepy porcelain dolls among the debris. As she starts cleaning and hauling things to the dump, Mouse finds an old journal of her step-grandfather, talking of strange twisted things in the woods that he thought could be tied to similar beings he escaped from in his native Wales. After visiting a mysterious hill and forest with a warped Stonehenge-like collection of white carvings, Mouse begins encountering these same strange things when they begin visiting her in the dead of night. Are the twisted ones still looking for her step-grandfather, or have they now set their sights on Mouse?

This is not the first T. Kingfisher novel I’ve read, and it likely won’t be my last. Reader beware though, if your first exposure to her writing is the The Saint of Steel series, you might want to read this one in the daylight. Kingfisher develops her settings and stories with an arresting ambiance that leans on heavily on clichés (creepy doll collection in an abandoned hoarding house anyone?). Mouse’s after the fact narration of the events also lessons the suspense, as readers are aware from the beginning that she survives whatever horrors she and the readers encounter in the woods. However, the clichés are comfortable and classic for a reason, and, like the Jaws theme song, most readers will still be drawn in by them, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Inspired by Lovecraft’s interpretation of Arthur Machen’s story “The White People”, I can appreciate Kingfisher’s attempts to realistically write a story featuring a “recreated manuscript”, as her complaints about nearly photographic recall of plots are ones that have similarly frustrated me for years. Much of the backstory behind the twisted ones is left unexplained, contributing to the oral history element of the tale that will leave some readers unsatisfied. Several members of my book group wanted to know more, but I thought it struck the right combination of exploration and exposition, with dangling threads yielding to the “we’ll never know” trope while still shedding a little light with revelations about recent events.

Most characters were extraneous, with the main focus being on first Mouse and then by extension Foxy, an older eccentric neighbor who voluntarily gets pulled into the trouble drawn to Mouse. Foxy’s roommates, bipolar Skip and Thomas who assists Mouse with some of her grandmother’s larger items round out the trio, but along with a dump attendant, a barista, a cop, and Mouse’s father, they are largely background characters. The neighbors’ willingness, most notably Foxy’s, to insert themselves into a horror drama seems unrealistic, especially after they encounter one of the things that has been stalking the house. Mouse’s attempt to see the task through to the end is also unusual, particularly when her father gives her the out to just come home and he’ll bulldoze the place.

Just like the story this is inspired by, pieces of this book will stay with you, while other bits will float away into the ages, leaving behind a relic of remembrance.