User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
I actually think this book is the first 2020 horror release that met my expectations and I am THRILLED about it!
Rating: really liked it
Another book hit me on the face and gave me complex feelings: I liked it but I also disliked it as well. I hate to be decisive and stay in the middle. I also hate grey. I liked to choose between black and white. So let’s rephrase how this book confused the hell of me!
Firstly this is fresh, inventive, unique, different story and seeing Native American representation always picks my interest because I love to learn more about different traditions, cultures and original, remarkable perspectives. We have so many vivid ingredients in the sea of literature and we need to discover them more by reading those talented, brilliant authors works and help them raise their voices, share their opinions.
So this book made me so excited, especially reading the blurb tells us this is crossover of Paul Tremblay books and There There. And after reading bizarre opening with the incident at the elk hunt, I was captivated and I thought that was it, I was reading something heart pounding, mind bending!
But after that, I slowly drifted apart from the story. I found the pace a little slow and the way of story -telling distracted my concentration. But there are also too many elements still held my attention. The plot about cursed four friends who committed crime at the beginning of the book are threatened by some supernatural identity gave me so much creeps! As a die-hard fan of action packed revenge stories, I kept going and at some parts I jumped off my seat, screamed and checked my back to make sure nobody was sneakily approaching behind me (This kind of stories turned you into a paranoid!) and the ending is also satisfyingly impactful touch!
But I have to admit, it was struggling and compelling reading and I had some trouble with the language and progression of the story. It reminded me of Nic Pizzolatto’s dark, slow-burn, eerie, heart shattering writing style more than Jordan Peele’s horror movies.
So I gave 3.25 stars! But I liked the idea and I appreciated author’s efforts to bring out something fresh, controversial, spooky to the literature jungle by getting the readers’ full attention. I love to read his other works in near future.
I wish I would enjoy this book more than this and because trying something brand new always force you to be brave and take more risks. And I always support those authors who are really brave enough to bring different tastes, stunning shocking, twisty stories. I wish I could focus more but it was dragging and struggling reading journey for me.
Special thanks to NetGalley and Gallery/Saga Press for this ARC COPY in exchange my honest review. Thanks to Stephen Graham Jones for his original work to help the readers experience a brand new journey!
blog
instagram
facebook
twitter
Rating: really liked it
Comanche Chief Tosawi reputedly told [Union General Philip] Sheridan in 1869, "Tosawi, good Indian," to which Sheridan supposedly replied, "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead." - Wikipedia
----------------------------------------
You hide in the herd. You wait. And you never forget.
Payback’s a bitch, with antlers.
Lewis, a Blackfeet, has lived off the rez for a long time. In his 30s, he’s a postal worker, with a beautiful, athletic wife, Peta, friends, a home, a life. An intermittent spotlight seems to be popping on in the house and shining on their mantel. He climbs a tall ladder to check it out and sees on his living room floor the carcass of an elk doe he had killed ten years ago. He still has her hide. Losing his balance, Lewis is plunging straight toward a likely death by skull intersecting brick, when Peta saves the day, tackling him out of harm’s way at the last second. It was not the first close encounter suffered by the crew of childhood friends who had gone out hunting elk where they had no right. His late friend Ricky had already received a very harsh and pointed reception from a large dark elk in the parking lot of a bar.
Stephen Graham jones - Image from Fiction Unbound
There were two other guys on that hunt, one in which they killed more elk than they could ever use, Gabriel Cross Guns and Cassidy. After following Lewis for a while, we track these men. Something else is tracking them, too. There was a particular element of that epic kill that created a monster, and vengeance is sought. I Know What You Did Last Decade.
The POV shifts from third person when we are with Lewis, to that of the avenging elk when she is going after Gabe and Cass, then shifts back to third person for the big finale.
This is a slasher book with a Native American touch. You’ll get enough gore to matter, but it is not the sort of viscera-fest favored by films with the words “saw” in their titles. But it does sustain the ethos, to the extent that there is one, of such entertainments, namely that the dark force coming after you is doing so in response to something
you did. Yes, a vengeful she-elk monster is tracking down these Blackfeet guys for something they did, and her pursuit is relentless, in the same way that Jason, or Michael Myers, Jigsaw, Freddy Krueger, or Leatherface pursued the targets of
their ire. Antlers and hooves can definitely do mortal damage, just as well as metal-based weaponry. She is as impervious to death as the above-named sorts, so just keeps on keepin’ on, regardless. It makes for some
very scary scenes, particularly in an epic pursuit near the end. Definitely something to rev up the blood pressure.
But there are other elements at work here as well. It is not merely a frightfest. Jones is giving us a look at Native life. Not a rosy, people-of-the-land idyllic vision. This is a world in which old trucks sit on cinder blocks in family yards, a world in which sweat lodges are small, three-person, makeshift tents, a world of orders of protection, and degraded expectations.
There is guilt about having moved away from reservation life. Lewis has even married a Caucasian woman.
The headline kicks up in Lewis’s head on automatic, straight out of the reservation: not the FULLBLOOD TO DILUTE BLOODLINE he’d always expected if he married white, that he’d been prepping to deal with, because who knows, but FULLBLOOD BETRAYS EVERY DEAD INDIAN BEFORE HIM. It’s the guilt of having some pristine Native swimmers…cocked and loaded but never pushing them downstream, meaning the few of his ancestors who made it through raids and plagues, massacres and genocide, diabetes and all the wobbly-tired cars the rest of America was done with, they may as well have just stood up into that big Gatling gun of history, yeah?
As seen in the above quote, Lewis maintains a running wry commentary on his own actions with imagined self-deprecating newspaper headlines. INDIAN MAN HAS NO ROOTS, THINKS HE’S STILL INDIAN IF HE TALKS LIKE AN INDIAN. Not exactly ha-ha funny, but there
is a vein of humor throughout.
There is also recognition of Native American stereotypes,
Really, Lewis imagines, he deserves some big Indian award for having made it to thirty-six without pulling into the drive-through for a burger and fries, easing away from diabetes and high blood pressure and leukemia. And he gets the rest of the trophies for having avoided all the car crashes and jail time and alcoholism on his cultural dance card. Or maybe the reward for lucking through all that—meth too, he guesses—is having been married ten years now to Peta, who doesn’t have to put up with motorcycle parts in the sink…
Jones applies genre tropes, like (view spoiler)
[killing a pet before going after its owner (hide spoiler)], or a young female taking on the beast. Where it breaks from the Jason/Mikey Myers physical form is in giving the monster the ability to shapeshift. The monster’s targets are not bad people. They are decent people who did a bad thing. And it is something that Lewis has suffered years of guilt over. It would have been an easy out to have written them all as dark-hearted souls. I particularly enjoyed a gem of a sporting contest, the biggest game of the year, (view spoiler)
[that is a roundball version of The Devil Went Down to Georgia (hide spoiler)]. It is riveting!
I had one particular issue with the book. Why the time differential? Ricky is killed a year after Lewis leaves the rez, but the rest of the onslaught takes place much later. There
is an explanation in the book, but I found it unpersuasive. Other than that, I’m good. Minor aside: the book was originally titled
Where the Old Ones Go. I can understand why it was skipped. Sounds like the latrine at the senior center. Next up was
Elk-Head Woman, which is certainly descriptive, but might have been a bit too open to snarky intentional misinterpretations. FWIW, I am not sure the title they finally settled on is the best of all possible titles either, as the story is more about the misery that these Indians have brought on themselves than the misery inflicted on them by Eastern invaders. Not that I have anything better to offer.
So, overall, this is a pretty good, substantive horror read, offering some spine tingles along with a portrait of a segment of Native American life. And some serious twists and gut-punches, as fear descends into madness, enough to generate out loud exclamations of “Oh, shoot!,” or something very like that. But no lost winks for me from this one, which is par for the course. But that is a very high bar, as it is exceedingly rare for horror books to keep me up. It’s the
political ones that do that best. But for most humans this should be plenty scary.
Death is too easy. Better to make every moment of the rest of a person’s life agony.
Review posted – April 10, 2020
Publication date – April 7, 2020 (what is on the spine of my ARE) or maybe May 19, 2020 (What shows up on the GR page for the book), or, who knows? Maybe July 14, 2020 (on Edelweiss and in Simon & Schuster’s digital catalog) - Looks like the last one is for real. Many books got pushed in this year of the plague.
----------Trade Paperback -January 26, 2021
I received this book from the publisher in return for a reasonable review, but I wonder, if they disapprove of what I have written, whether some years hence I might be pursued to a dark end by a vengeance-crazed editor, armed with a sheath of sharpened colored pens.
And thanks to MC
=============================
EXTRA STUFFLinks to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages
Interviews – The first two deal mostly with
Mongrels, but are still interesting
-----Muzzleland Press -CUT MY FINGERTIPS, THEY BLEED TEXAS: AN INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES ON HIS NEW NOVEL MONGRELS - by Jonathan R
-----from Westword - With Mongrels, This Is Stephen Graham Jones's Time to Howl - by Jason Heller
-----Ghoulish - December 15, 2019 - Slashers with Stephen Graham Jones! - Max Booth – audio – 28:20
-----Fiction Unbound – March 7, 2020 - Dead Dogs and Final Girls: An Interview with Stephen Graham Jones - by C.S. Peterson
-----Los Angeles Review of Books – July 13, 2019 - Writing in the Shadow of “V”: Adventures in Speculative Fiction with Stephen Graham Jones by Billy J. Stratton
-----More2Read - Interview: Stephen Graham Jones on Writing, The Only Good Indians, and inspirations by Lou Pendergrast
My reviews of other Stephen Graham Jones books-----2016 - Mongrels
-----2021 - My Heart is a Chainsaw
Songs/Music-----The Charlie Daniels Band - The Devil Went Down to Georgia
-----D.A.D - Trucker - from the Special album – SGJ listened to this a lot when he began writing this novel
----- D.A.D - Jonnie- ditto
Items of Interest-----Electric Lit - November 27, 2019 - Being Indian Is Not a Superpower
-----Philip Sheridan
-----James Dickey - A Birth - one of the works that inspired SGJ
-----Stephen Graham Jones - Crimereads - July 15, 2020 - Why Exposing Kids to Horror Might Actually Be Good for Them
Particularly in the world today, we need to learn the lesson that, while there is certainly evil in the world, it is possible to overcome it. I have always had a fondness for horror. When I was seven years old, my mother took me to see The Crawling Eye, a cheesy sci-fi/horror flick that I loved. The Tingler came out when I was still seven, and I saw and loved that one too, maybe with my older brother. A few years later Mr Sardonicus. I can recall no trauma, although clearly I had mom’s DNA and enjoyment of horror films to support my interest. Jones makes a strong point about why it is important to stay the course while exposing your kids to these things. Well worth the reading.
-----NY Times - 8/14/20 - ‘We’ve Already Survived an Apocalypse’: Indigenous Writers Are Changing Sci-Fi by Alexandra Alter
-----You might want to check out Jeffrey Keeten's excellent review
Rating: really liked it
The Only Good Indians is a
brutal, haunting and visceral piece of Horror fiction. Luckily, that's exactly how I like it.
On the last day of hunting season, Lewis, Ricky, Gabe and Cass, young Blackfeet men, do something they will ultimately regret.
They knew it was wrong, they felt it at the time, but spurred on by each other and the adrenaline of the hunt, they went against their better judgement.
Close to the 10-year anniversary of that event, which came to be known amongst the friends as the
Thanksgiving Classic, Lewis, now living far from the Reservation, begins to be haunted by images of that day.
When a new colleague, a Crow woman, reaches out to him and a friendship begins, Lewis confides in her, thinking perhaps due to her heritage, she'll understand what he's going through.
From there, shit hits the proverbial
haunted ceiling fan pretty quickly.
This is my first novel by Stephen Graham Jones and to say I was impressed would be putting it mildly.
His writing has such
texture and grit. Often I feel like you can wait for a novel to take it all the way and it never does. This one goes the distance.
It is
bloody, brutal, fast-paced, genuine and horrifying. The nature of the storytelling feels so traditional, whilst also being cutting edge.
The only issue I had while reading it, which is completely a personal taste issue and nothing to do with the quality of the writing or story, was a lot of the animal content was hard for me to make it through.
Particularly the (view spoiler)
[the doggie (hide spoiler)] related scenes. I acknowledge this is 100% a personal taste issue, I still rate books based upon my reading experience.
With this being said, I will mention that I do not think in anyway that the author added those scenes recklessly. They definitely served a purpose in the narrative.
Overall, I think this is a
purposeful, creative and engaging Horror story. I will absolutely be picking up anything else SGJ writes.
Thank you so much to the publisher, Gallery / Saga Press, for providing me with a copy of this to read and review.
It will haunt me for a long time to come!
Rating: really liked it
I’d like to start by stating that I’m not from the Blackfeet tribe so this is not a true own voices review. However, as the effects of settler colonialism permeate the lives of tribes all across Turtle Island, as an Ojibwe woman I’ll relate to this story more than a non-Indigenous reader.
In The Only Good Indians by Blackfeet author Stephen Graham Jones we see the effects of intergenerational trauma, substance abuse & racism while also seeing the resilience of familial/friendship bonds, community ties and traditional ceremonies.
I’m a huge horror movie fan and Jones has written a novel that managed to give me a horror movie experience. I was often engrossed, sometimes repulsed and steadily anxious with anticipation. Numerous times I thought I knew where the plot was going and then would be hit with a huge, “oh, never mind!”
The depictions of rez life really made this a welcoming read amidst all of the horror. I saw my cousins in these men: imperfect, loyal & in a society that won’t let them be and has separated them from their tribal ways (which we we come to find out leads to huge repercussions.) If you’re neech & have been to a lot of sweats like I have, you’re going to want to yell at certain characters.
PS: everyone is entitled to their own opinion but I was confused at the amount of yt reviewers who said they couldn’t connect to certain elements & it felt like they weren’t the target audience so they DNF’d this & I mean....
I kept wondering what they want from Indigenous authors. This book doesn’t isolate yt readers by any means. I wouldn’t hesitate recommending this to a non-Indigenous person.
I think that a lot of yt reviewers have preconceptions of what Indigenous authored books & their reading experience should be. I couldn’t help but think of a certain scene in TOGI, when Denorah is told to draw an NDN ledger scene in class that depicts a fave holiday, so she drew a basketball trip, a sport that many rez kids have clung to as a beacon of hope, and the teacher is disappointed and remarks while grading, “Is this really Indian, D? Shouldn’t you do something to honor your heritage?”
This sentence reminds me of reviews I’ve seen and it’s startling.
Rating: really liked it
THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS is a masterpiece. Intimate, devastating, brutal, terrifying, yet warm and heartbreaking in the best way, Stephen Graham Jones has written a horror novel about injustice and, ultimately, about hope. Not a false, sentimental hope, but the real one, the one that some of us survive and keeps the rest of us going. And it gives me hope that this book exists.
Rating: really liked it
Four young American Indian men find themselves fighting for their lives against an entity who wants revenge after an event that occurred during an elk hunt ten years earlier.
Many are really enjoying this book and I encourage my fellow readers to read those reviews. This book just wasn't for me. I struggled with the writing style, I found it slow in parts, and overall just not my cup of tea. I love a good horror book, but this one just didn't work for me- end of story. I thought the book started on a high note, and really grabbed me but then it lost me, and I never found my footing with this again.
We all can’t love the same book, and this is the case here. I am in the minority on this one, so give it a try and decide for yourself.
Thank you to Gallery, Pocket Books and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.
Rating: really liked it
normally, a 300 page book would only take a few hours for me to read. this took me nearly two weeks to finish. i just could not get into the story. i wanted to DNF is several times, but the glowing reviews/ratings made me push through it.
i cant pinpoint anything specific that made me struggle with this. the premise is interesting, the commentary on native american culture is eye-opening, and the characters are likeable. perhaps its the writing style? i just couldnt go more than 5 sentences without my eyes starting to glaze over. my attention was never fully grabbed and it felt like i had to constantly work at trying to understand what was going on.
so, this just wasnt for me personally. but based on how many positive reviews this has received, i still feel like i could recommend this to horror fans.
↠ 2 stars
Rating: really liked it
this was absolutely fantastic. i’m going to collect my thoughts before attempting to review but if you’re curious about this book definitely check out some reviews by Native reviewers!!
mallory's review: https://www.instagram.com/p/CCoDh93AY...
autumn's interview with the author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbsaT...
Rating: really liked it
DNF at 140 pages in. This is just not good. The writing feels more like rambling and its incredibly hard to follow without having to reread and decipher, which is too much work for a horror novel. I don't understand how this is so hyped-up by so many respectable authors, it makes no sense to me. Essentially this is about an elk that was killed at a hunt and comes back 10 years later to get revenge on her hunters, from what i could tell at where i stopped. Maybe i'm just not smart enough for this one, but I have a feeling this will be a very polarizing book and you will either love it or loath it, like i did. Since I forked over almost $30 and purchased this one, maybe i'll go back and force myself to read it later down the road, but too many good books lay on my bookshelf for me to waste any more time on this one.
Rating: really liked it
It's always tough to write a middle-of-the-road review for one of your most anticipated releases of the year, but I hope to do so with the respect and honor that the author deserves. What it comes down to is this: my 3 star rating is more a case of my not being wholly compatible with the story than any fault of the author's. Going into this expecting something along the lines of The Ritual, I had to adjust my preconceived notions on this being straight up horror, when it is indeed more literary. The social commentary and own voices writing about Indigenous life in the United States is top notch, and I connected more easily with this portion of the story than the actual horror plot. I have another of the author's books here to read on my backlist shelf, and while The Only Good Indians didn't end up being my favorite book of the year, I'm sincerely excited to pick up All the Beautiful Sinners and experience his version of an own voices detective procedural. If you enjoy the more disturbing side of literary fiction, I highly encourage you to give this one a try for yourself, and take the opportunity to support a diverse voice.
*Many thanks to the publisher for providing my review copy via NetGalley.
Rating: really liked it
There are not many Indigenous writers (or Native American, as they say in the United States) penning speculative fiction, though Moon of the Crusted Snow and other recent titles are changing the panorama. Stephen Graham Jones has been at this for a while and as usual it is great to see an author that writes about his culture without apologies or peddling to the white gaze. Jones craft a story that is very much horror, is very much Indigenous, and full of raw, powerful prose.
Rating: really liked it
Review originally published May 5th at Cemetery Dance
https://www.cemeterydance.com/extras/...
...
I read an interview with Stephen Graham Jones where he said, “I just figure I am Blackfeet, so every story I tell’s going to be Blackfeet.” (Uncanny Magazine/Julia Rios)
This one, simple statement is manifested in SGJ’s body of work; each book wildly different from the last, but distinctly identifiable as his own because they bear his fingerprints, unique storytelling voice and personal context.
Over the last few years, I have been a fan of his short fiction (“Dirtmouth”), novellas (Mapping the Interior), novels (Mongrels), and experimental fiction (The Last Final Girl). I will gladly show up for anything he has to offer.
The Only Good Indians begins with a swiftly-paced narrative, aptly balancing social commentary and real-time drama. Readers are drawn into the life of a Blackfeet Native American named Lewis. It takes only a few sentences to fall in love with him. He has an infectious personality when he’s interacting with those around him, but it’s Lewis’ inner thought life that reveals his sense of humor and vibrancy I found so endearing.
The narrative is two-fold: Lewis’ present day circumstances peppered with flashbacks to an elk hunting trip with his friends. It becomes increasingly clear that whatever transpired during this hunting trip almost a decade ago has haunted Lewis all of his days. Something bad happened there.
As Lewis goes through his day-to-day life, unsettling suspense begins to build surrounding Lewis’ past; it’s almost unbearable as Stephen Graham Jones expertly winds the tension tighter and tighter and tighter until there is an unexpected break. We finally learn Lewis’ secrets and once the reader sees the truth—you can’t unsee it. It colors everything from that moment forward.
This is the magic of SGJ’s storytelling—everything comes at you from all sides. A barrage of human experiences told through people who feel real to you, their feelings uncomfortably tangible. Stephen Graham Jones expertly switches POVs, head-hops, transitions the entire story into a new one halfway through, kills his darlings with unflinching decisiveness, and basically is able to get away with everything authors are told to never do. SGJ makes his own way, by his rules. And thank goodness for that.
This is a story that is shared so intimately, it’s hard to separate and let go of the connection that is formed when it’s over. I almost feel possessive of it—this book is mine! Nobody will engage with it the way I did!
I wonder if other readers will experience that same feeling of ownership over this story? There is something so devastatingly heartbreaking as a reader to feel a kinship to a protagonist and his story but at the same time, know that the stakes are too high—the hunter has become the prey. I wanted to jump through the pages and protect Lewis from what I was sure was coming for him.
I loved the time I invested in this story. There were some major payoffs—the ending is spectacular. This will likely be the book that catapults SGJ’s name on the lips of all readers, not just die-hard horror junkies who already know and love his work. He’ll be everyone’s new favorite and it is well deserved. This is the new benchmark for slasher/revenge stories—SGJ just flipped the script and staked a new claim. A gold standard for the genre.
Blurb: "WHOAAAAAAAA!!!
Writing up my review for Cemetery Dance but mark my words: It's this book by SGJ that is going to be made into a movie (I'm already calling it) This is the kind of horror people want right now. The characters are memorable, interesting, flawed, funny--REAL.
This horror has something to say.
A modern revenge story with biting social commentary that eats away at your soul. My heart and my mind ached after I finished."
Rating: really liked it
oooh, goodreads choice awards finalist for best horror 2020! what will happen?*******************************
fulfilling book riot's 2020 read harder challenge task #24: Read a book in any genre by a Native, First Nations, or Indigenous authorbut more importantly, WELCOME TO SPOOKTOOOOBER!!
*****************************
this book opens big and strong and violent, but then it sort of shifts, taking a moment to readjust its focus, and in that time i started to have doubts about whether it was going to return to the early promise of those opening pages, but then WHOOOOOO BOY.
if this happens to you—this slackening of reader engagement because you're confused about or not really into where the story’s going, don't worry—it's a temporary dip and once it settles into its groove, it's rich and dark and relentless, kinda like
It Follows but with elk.
the story will shift, and shift again, because of REASONS that are for me to know and for you to find out, but it was only that first shift that dislodged me; once i was invested, i stayed invested and every subsequent turn or diversion was earned and appreciated.
i’d heard so many good things about this book, but i was still unprepared for how much i would love it. it is astonishing; the atmosphere, the imagery, how real the characters feel. it’s a horror novel, but it’s so much more than its horror. it’s splattery, but it’s also smart.
there's a very thomas hardy-esque sensibility driving the narrative arc; the longtailed memory of promises made and not kept, the necessity of paying for long-ago sins—in this case a youthful indiscretion committed by four friends growing up on a blackfeet reservation; an act which violated both tribal law and custom, resulting in the kind of waste that nature abhors and will ultimately demand parity.
the repercussions of that event are a long time coming, but when they do, revenge is inevitable and merciless; the brutality of nature given supernatural determination. the experience of being haunted by one’s past is both literal and figurative here, manifesting in the physical and psychological dimensions; characters are haunted by guilt while being stalked by a past that remembers.
the bulk of the story follows lewis, who has long since moved away from the reservation and married a white woman. lewis feels the burden of his past strongly; troubled by guilt and regret as well as the existential dilemma of what it means to be blackfeet in the wider world; the clash between tradition and modernity, the expectations put on him by his own and other people.
it’s a tricky straddling of two worlds, and fate will rush into that space, filling the chasm between doubt and belief, fact and superstition. lewis catches eerie glimpses bridging the past and the present; prickly suspicions giving rise to a simmering paranoia before escalating sharply into deliciously horrific episodes.
but, hey, it’s also funny.
the humor is often self-deprecating or ironic, playing on stereotypes and cliches, but there are also plenty of sly reference points and genre subversions, and when gabe muses,
“One little, two little, three little Natives . . . doesn’t really sound right, does it?”, you know he's invoking agatha christie's second, slightly less offensive, title of the book now known as And Then There Were None, with cheeky intent. and when he superimposes a ceiling fan with an animal in a living room, you can almost hear grace zabriskie screaming.
it's brilliant work about identity and heritage and loss, setting up several mirrored oppositions and power dynamic reversals across nature and history, predator and prey, white man and indian, and all of the collective memory passages are sublime.
i tried to avoid learning too much about the specific plot points of this book before reading it, and i think that was a good move, so i'll say no more. but, damn. DAMN.
gutting perfection.
**************************
i went into this half-blind but full-hearted—i fell hard for that cover at first sight, and i was anticipating its release for what seemed like ages. when it got covid-delayed, i was INCONSOLABLE, but then ended up sitting on it for a couple more months anyway, knowing it would be the perfect book to ring in spooktober. it did not disappoint.
review to come!
come to my blog!
Rating: really liked it
Jones has written a chilling and original story of revenge set in contemporary Indian Country that had me staying up late turning pages as fast as I could. The book is bloody and brutal at times, but also intimate, heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful. Jones boldly and bravely incorporates both the difficult and the beautiful parts of contemporary Indian life into his story, never once falling into stereotypes or easy answers but also not shying away from the horrors caused by cycles of violence. I highly recommend.
