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Tag Archives: Stephen Graham Jones

The Angel of Indian Lake: A Review

It’s Halloween in Proofrock, Idaho, and all of the ghosts are coming home.

It’s been almost four years since Dark Mill South rampaged through the town, just over eight since the Independence Day Massacre. Jade Daniels, survivor of both of these incidents, is now out of prison and back in her home town, finding a new place to… well, to exist. She can’t be said to be thriving, but that’s to be expected in a town that still largely blames her for the slaughters. She’s taken a position teaching history at the high school, carrying on the legacy of her favorite teacher. History’s a good subject for the girl who needs to know about all of Proofrock’s dangers, after all. Stacy Graves. Ezekiel. Drown Town. After all, she faced down killers twice and lived. Now she’s got medication and therapy, and she’s finally working her way through her trauma (at least as far as the murders go).

But now, The Angel of Indian Lake is the third book in Jade’s story, and that means it’s time for Scream 3’s trilogy rules:

1.) “You’ve got a killer who’s gonna be superhuman. Stabbing him won’t work, shooting him won’t work. Basically in the third one, you gotta cryogenically freeze his head, decapitate him, or blow him up.”

2.) “Anyone, including the main character, can die.”

3.) “The past will come back to bite you in the ass. Whatever you think you know about the past, forget it. The past is not at rest! Any sins you think were committed in the past are about to break out and destroy you.”

On Friday, October 13th, 2023, two of Proofrock’s teens went missing, along with one’s younger brother. Because it has to begin on Friday the 13th. Those disappearances become more significant when bodies are found on Halloween. Jade herself initially dismisses the vanishing teens, even though the older two are her students. Before the bodies are found, she can write it off as a young couple who have taken off to find their fortunes somewhere beyond Idaho, or maybe to save a little brother off to find his errant father. She tries to convince herself that it’s only a coincidence, that a new slasher cycle isn’t starting. It can’t start now, not when Proofrock’s final girl, Letha Mondragon-Tompkins, is out of town. But things are starting to pile up.

There’s a wildfire burning in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest and many of the residents of Proofrock are leaving town. The wealthy soon-to-be residents of Terra Nova, across the lake from Proofrock, are desperate to save their under-construction homes from the blaze. They’ve offered a cash reward to anyone who stays to help create a firebreak: $1500 to anyone taking an axe, $3000 to anyone taking a chainsaw. Soon, an impromptu fire brigade has assembled out in the woods, and someone—or something—is stalking them. Local game warden, Seth Mullins, was supposed to be in the fire watchtower, but he’s gone off-grid (and may be the source of the fire). Banner Tompkins, Letha’s husband and Proofrock’s current sheriff, is hoping to set out to the far side of the lake to find Mullins, leaving his and Letha’s daughter Adie at the police station with his secretary. What Banner knows, though, is that several dead bodies have been found, and all signs indicate that they’re Jade’s missing students. Despite Jade’s insistence that there’s not a new slasher in town, Banner isn’t so sure. As the day wears on, things are only going to get worse, and as the rules state, anyone can die this time around.

Stephen Graham Jones has knocked it out of the park with The Angel of Indian Lake. It’s a spectacular, gory finish to the series that instilled me with a love of slasher films. I’ve been a fan of Jones’ writing since I first picked up Mapping the Interior, and this book is a brilliant showcase of his skill. Setting the primary action over the course of a single night and shifting narration fully to Jade’s first-person perspective, he’s pulled all the stops and no punches as Jade breathlessly races toward her destiny. The time of Proofrock’s reckoning is at hand, and for Jade, it’s personal. Let’s go.

My utmost thanks to Saga Press and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. The Angel of Indian Lake is out today. Go get yourself scared.

Don’t Fear the Reaper: A Review

It’s spooky season!

Yes, I know it’s February, but the joy that is Halloween cannot possibly be contained in a single day, let alone a single month. Especially not when there’s a new Stephen Graham Jones book to be had.

I’ve read a lot of SGJ’s work over the last few years. From Mapping the Interior to The Only Good Indians to My Heart is a Chainsaw to Night of the Mannequins. He has rapidly become my favorite modern horror writer, and Don’t Fear the Reaper only serves as further evidence of his brilliance.

When I first picked up My Heart is a Chainsaw back in 2021, it started a string of slasher movie viewings as, like Jade, I immersed myself in things like Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Candyman, Scream, and Children of the Corn. Unlike Jade, I wasn’t trying to hide from my trauma within the slasher genre. But at the end of that novel, Jade had faced her demons, triumphed over the threat to her home. She had faced the killer and survived. She was the final girl.

But as any slasher fan knows, there’s nothing more common in the films than a sequel…

Now, four years have passed since the Independence Day Massacre shattered the town of Proofrock, Idaho. Four years since Jade opened the dam above Indian Lake, saving the town from a rapidly spreading wildfire. Four years since she was accused of murdering her abusive father that night on the water. Going by her birth name of Jennifer again, our final girl has come back home to a town that has tried to move on, but is still obviously traumatized. Jennifer herself has tried to move on as well. She abandoned her collection of movies, finished her associate’s degree (it looked good for the courts, after all), and strives to connect with people and events in real life. She wants to find a home again, to reconnect with Letha and Sheriff Hardy, and even her mom.

It’s December 12th, 2019 in Proofrock, and the snow has complicated things for the citizens. Not only has it disrupted the usual Thursday by blocking most of the traffic through town, but it also interrupted the prisoner transfer of one Dark Mill South, a hook-handed serial killer. Given where his convoy was when an avalanche wiped out the escort, Dark Mill South should be dead too. No one thinks to look for him in town until after the first high schoolers start turning up dead. And tomorrow is Friday the thirteenth…

“The way I see it, someone’s out to make a sequel. You know, cash in on all the movie murder hoopla. So, it’s our job to observe the rules of the sequel. Number one: the body count is always bigger. Number two: the death scenes are always much more elaborate. Carnage candy. And number three: never, ever, under any circumstances, assume the killer is dead.” – Randy Meeks, Scream 2

Caught in between the desire the move beyond her past and the need to protect her friends and family, Jennifer is forced to confront a killer again, but this one knows the rules just as well as she does. After four years away from the movies that she used to wield as weapons, there may be some new tricks she hasn’t learned. Don’t Fear the Reaper is a pitch-perfect follow-up to Chainsaw, and a solid second entry in a planned trilogy, leaving readers eager to learn what’s next for Jade and the people of Proofrock. It’s out in stores today.

My utmost thanks to Gallery Books and NetGalley for providing an eARC of Don’t Fear the Reaper in exchange for an honest review. This one was an absolute treat.

And yes, I started reading this one in the middle of a power outage, by kerosene lamp light, as is only proper for good horror.

The Only Good Indians: A Review

Stephen Graham Jones wrote one of the creepiest novellas I’ve ever read, Mapping the Interior. Naturally, I leapt at the opportunity to grab an eARC of his new novel, The Only Good Indians. I’m glad I did, too.

Ten years ago, four young Blackfeet men went on their last hunt together. One last chance to get an elk before winter. Ricky, Lewis, Gabe, and Cass. It was supposed to be their shot to prove that they weren’t the screw-ups that so many folks on the reservation thought they were. One opportunity to prove that they were good Indians. Only it all went wrong, didn’t it? They weren’t supposed to be hunting in that part of the reservation. They would pay the price.

Ricky died the next year. “INDIAN MAN KILLED IN DISPUTE OUTSIDE BAR,” the headline had read. But he’d run from home. Left the reservation after his little brother overdosed, looking for work. He never made it to Minneapolis like he’d planned. But what if the headline didn’t get it quite right? What if there was more to it than a handful of roughnecks getting drunk and angry in a parking lot? More than a lone elk wandering into the lot, trashing the men’s pickups, leaving them to believe that Ricky had been causing the damage?

Now the tenth anniversary of their hunt is coming up, and Lewis is trying to find the courage to tell his wife the truth of what the four men did that day in the snow. The truth about the elk they killed, and the fate that they sealed for themselves with each rifle round. Lewis left the reservation too, though he never went as far as Ricky tried. But lately, Lewis hasn’t been feeling quite right. He’s been seeing things, impossible things. A cow elk dead in his and Peta’s living room. Dead? Or was her eye following him as he climbed the ladder? And it couldn’t be the same cow. Lewis killed her that day. Distributed her meat to the reservation elders. Still has her skin balled up in his freezer. Was it an elk that he saw? Or was it a woman with an elk’s head?

Meanwhile, Gabe and Cass are still at home on the rez, preparing a sweat lodge for a friend’s kid who needs to get put back on a proper path. A classmate of Gabe’s daughter, Denorah. The sweat will be a chance for Gabe and Cass to embrace their heritage, and pay respect to Ricky’s memory. Teach the kid, Nathan, a little too. Maybe a little bit of atonement for their elk hunt, now a decade back. At the very least, the kid’s dad will throw Gabe some extra cash that he can use to buy something for Denorah. But then, Lewis is in the headlines too…

Something survived that day, ten years ago. Something vengeful. Something patient. Something with horns.

Elk, the Blackfeet elders say, have a long memory.

The Only Good Indians is a fabulous novel. Stephen Graham Jones did not disappoint with this heartbreaking work. Part contemporary commentary on Native American lives, part slow-burning horror, it’s everything I could’ve wanted.

Happy publication day at long last, Mr. Jones.

My thanks to NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

 

Novellas

This has been a hectic year for me, as evidenced by my rather sporadic posting schedule. Despite this, I’ve been attempting to take in as much literature as is humanly possible. That means that I’ve been tackling a lot of novellas. Tor has been publishing loads of new novellas over the last few months, and I’ve loved every one that I’ve read this year.

Among my favorites:

The Builders by Daniel Polansky
Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones
River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey

The Builders is a revenge story at heart, about a group of friends attempting to overthrow a corrupt leader and identify the member of their group who betrayed them the last time they tried. It’s gritty, violent, and dark, and it’s fabulous to watch the team come back together. Why? Because they’re all animals. That’s right. The Builders is essentially Redwall crossed with your favorite grim western film.

Mapping the Interior starts humbly, introducing the reader to a young Native American boy whose mother, following the suspicious death of their father, has moved him and his younger brother into an off-reservation trailer house. Junior sleepwalks, and one night he sees someone while in the middle of his wandering. His father. It’s a haunting story in the truest sense, and the voice is one that’s sorely missing in much of contemporary literature.

River of Teeth hooked me on premise alone. A debut piece from Sarah Gailey, River of Teeth is an alternate history of the Deep South, a what-if tale in which hippos were imported to the bayous of Louisiana to be bred for meat in areas that were too swampy for cattle. Much like The Builders, this one is a tale of revenge featuring a motley crew of adventurers, trading the galloping stallion of the more traditional western for the lumbering but ferocious hippopotamus as a mount. This one has a sequel, Taste of Marrow, that picks up immediately where the first leaves off, and I can’t wait to read it.

Next in line to read: All Systems Red by Martha Wells, book one in a series called The Murderbot Diaries. I’m hooked!

Do you have a favorite novella? Tell me about it in the comments!