Review: The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

A creepy old house, a lost & mysterious book, intrusive thoughts and there’s something in the woods…

With the long delays in the 2023 Hugo Finalists being released, I made some dents in my to-be-read list this year. The Twisted Ones is from 2019, so the backlog is still there but it all counts.

Our protagonist finds herself having to clear out the ageing house of her unpleasant and recently deceased grandmother. There she discovers the diary of her step-grandfather, which is a strange and unnerving account of psychological abuse from her grandmother but also a repeated and unsettling mantra about “the twisted ones”.

The book makes no apologies and shows no respect for genre boundaries. With a chatty, out-going narrator, multiple sections about the trials of clearing out the home of a hoarder, friendly neighbours and a welcoming coffee shop, the story has many elements associated with, dare I say, “cosy” fiction. The latter sections head more into the realm of portal-fantasy. However, these elements are simply flesh hung upon the bones of the horror of thoughts that overwhelm you.

Like much supernatural horror, when the fantastical becomes more manifest, the level of fear diminishes. The Twisted Ones exploits that by accepting it and following the gravity of its own plot. By setting the start of the story in a genre of domesticity and the end in another realms, it deftly identifies its own horror as the that transition or intrusion of the otherworldly into the mundane.

Eschewing easy genre classification and trusting to its own plot may alienate fans of multiple genres but it makes for a better story. Well worth a read. There is a very good dog who is alive and well by the end (not a spoiler as the narrator makes that clear near the start).