What Stalks the Deep (Sworn Soldier, #3) by T. Kingfisher Narrator: Avi Roque
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Dark Fantasy, fantasy, Gothic
Series: Sworn Soldier #3
Pages: 192
Length: 5 hours and 52 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tor Nightfire on September 30, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
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...
My Review:
Lieutenant Alex Easton (Retired), late of the Gallacian Army, would much prefer to remain in Paris. Among the very tempting fleshpots and far, far away from the cold and dreariness back home in Gallacia. A place they never wanted to return to, and really don’t want to go back to ever again after doing just that in the adventures detailed in What Feasts at Night.
However, as a ‘sworn soldier’, even a retired one, Alex will override their preferences when a clear duty is presented to them. Which has just occurred in the form of a telegraph, from America of all places. One of the people who aided Easton during the dire events of What Moves the Dead, Dr. James Denton, has asked Alex for his help.
Denton hasn’t told Alex much – after all, it’s a telegram. Meaning that a) every Tom, Dick and Harry can read the contents every single step of the way, and b) every word costs a pretty penny and neither Denton nor Easton has ever been able to throw THOSE around with abandon.
Easton remembers all too well the horrors of their first meeting with Denton at the house of their mutual friends, Madeline and Roderick Usher. Alex knows nothing about America, and has no skills as an investigator. Which means that Denton needs them for the dubious skills that they do have. Or more likely the skills that they have with dark, dubious and dangerous things, such as the fungus that made the dead walk at the Usher house.
Which is, as Easton and his redoubtable aide-de-camp Angus discover upon arrival, EXACTLY what Denton needs them for. Denton’s cousin is missing, seemingly lost in an abandoned mine. After sending Denton a series of increasingly bizarre letters about missing supplies, marvelous caverns – and lights in the deep. Culminating in a long, EXPENSIVE telegraph telling Denton to forget the whole thing.
Which, of course, he doesn’t. Who could after all that?
Denton needs the help of someone who isn’t going to waste time pretending that whatever is happening isn’t what’s actually happening. He needs Easton’s proven ability to accept the impossible – and they both will likely need the hyper-competent and long-suffering Angus to get them both out of the mess they ALL know they’re going to get into.
Because there are red lights in the deep, and whoever is behind those lights appears to be stalking them when they are in the mine, and leaving warning notes in their basecamp while they’re sleeping.
And it all comes down to yet another curious incident of a dog in the nighttime, and someone who just wants to go home every bit as badly as Easton wants to go back to Paris. If they all manage to get out of THIS horrifying situation without falling down a mineshaft. Or being eaten by a monster from the deep.
Escape Rating A-: I will read pretty much anything that T. Kingfisher writes – and I’ve been diving back into the stuff I missed before I found her. That includes her books that are in genres I’m not necessarily all that fond of, like this Sworn Soldier series which is Gothic horror.
It helps that the emphasis is on the ‘Gothic’ part of that equation rather than the horror, meaning that a lot of the story is about the dark atmosphere and the creeping dread. The end result isn’t necessarily horror, although it certainly feels like it as the story tiptoes forward with bated breath on the part of the characters as well as the reader.
Or, in this particular case, that impression is increased through the audio version, read marvelously by Avi Roque, as she has the whole series so far.
The story is told from inside Easton’s head, and Roque does an excellent job of embodying Easton’s voice and the constant meanderings and continuous asides that make the character so distinctive. If you like Easton as a character, it’s fascinating to see the action from their point of view, including the times when Easton is going through a situation common to soldiers, stuck in ‘hurry up and wait’ mode. If that voice doesn’t work for you, the series might not either.
(I am personally convinced that Easton’s voice in this series, like Anja in Hemlock & Silver, Sam in A House with Good Bones and Halla in Swordheart, IS the voice of and avatar for the author herself. If you like her voice through one of her protagonists, you’ll probably love them ALL as much as I do. But the reverse is probably also true.)
Clearly it works for me. I was more than happy to ride along inside Easton’s head, even though their situation was one that I wouldn’t want to be in. On the other hand, neither do they, so I was right there with them every step of the way – no matter how faltering those steps might occasionally be.
Ironically, in my review of the first book, What Moves the Dead, I commented that I wouldn’t have been surprised if Cthulhu turned up because the Great Old One would at least be a monster that they could simply kill. While Cthulhu isn’t at the bottom of the Hollow Elk mine, the horrors of this story are based on the shoggoths of Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, just as What Moves the Dead had its roots in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and What Feasts at Night owes its monsters to Eastern European folklore.
Like all the books in this series so far, the horror isn’t exactly what it appears to be – until it is. And even then, it still isn’t. Exactly. Which is what makes this series so much fun for this reader. I get the thrills of horror without getting too deeply into the actual horror. That’s partly because so much of Easton’s fear is wrapped up in their circumstances, in this case the very real dangers of mines and mining in the late 19th century. There are plenty of real fears to contend with even before they get to the thing that might or might not be a monster.
It’s even better that I get to take the journey with a character I find wryly amusing in the worst circumstances, and fascinating throughout. Which means that I’ll be right there with Alex Easton again, the next time they find themselves in the middle of something they’d really rather not be in the middle of. Again. No matter how much Easton would rather not be there themself.
What Feasts at Night (Sworn Soldier, #2) by 
Escape Rating A-: I’m not sure whether to say that What Feasts at Night isn’t quite as creepy as 
What Moves the Dead by