What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1)

by T. Kingfisher

I had a strong urge to step back from them, and an even stronger urge to poke them with a stick.

I am delighted by obscure passions, no matter how unusual.

(Look, if you don’t make a fool of yourself over animals, at least in private, you aren’t to be trusted. That was one of my father’s maxims, and it’s never failed me yet.)

“Perhaps that’s it. But this place has made me afraid. This dreadful house. I think I would rather face a line of rifles, even now. At least that’s a human enemy.”

Could you even burn a lake? I know there was a river in America that caught fire once, and had made the papers as an amusing footnote about how the Yanks could even make water burn, but I vaguely recalled there had been some kind of chemicals involved.

“You must think me a bit mad to be so obsessed with the kingdom of fungi, but it is a fascinating world. And an important one. Our civilization is built on the back of yeasts.”