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Book Review: The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

Gallery/Saga Press

ISBN-13: 978-1982136451

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

 

The past year, for me, has been the year of menacing deer. After encountering the demonically controlled deer that trap unwitting victims in the Pennsylvania woods in Imaginary Friend and the unsettling antelope shapeshifters in The Antelope Wife,  the vengeful, shapeshifting elk out for blood shouldn’t have surprised me.  Stephen Graham Jones has given us his version of  I Know What You Did Last Summer, taking place on reservation land.

Ten years earlier, four stupid kids stampeded a herd of elk meant to be left in peace, and shot as many as they could. One of them was a pregnant mother. Unable to take advantage of the meat of all the elk they had killed, they left their slaughter behind. After the incident, the park ranger banned them from hunting. It’s a horrifying scene to read, and anger-inducing, but who, and how long, pays for sins like these? Is forgiveness even possible?

Two of the boys from that night escape the reservation and are gone for years, but the first evidently doesn’t go far enough– chased by some white guys looking to pick a fight, he encounters an elk that escalates the situation and is brutally killed. The second, Lewis,  returns to the reservation with his wife for the funeral, only to have things escalate as he enters a hallucinatory, murderous state. The remaining two, Gabe and Cassidy, who have stayed on the reservation, decide to hold a sweat in memory of their friend, which turns out to be a poor decision for everyone involved. It is up to Gabe’s teenage daughter, Denorah, to outrun the Elk Head Woman and resolve things.

I had to read this strange, supernatural slasher tale more than once to understand what was going on, but it was totally worth it. The character development is well-done, the unsettling aspect of the supernatural getting more and more entangled into the destruction of these men and their families really sinks in, and the reservation setting and its conflicts felt very real. It is kind of reality-bending to see an animal that I think of as being generally peaceful out for violent revenge. Yet Graham Jones makes it all work. Highly recommended.

 

Contains: violence, gore, murder, body horror.

 

 

Posted on May 5, 2020 by , 2 comments

Book Review: Shapeshifters: A History by John B. Kachuba

Shapeshifters: A History by John B. Kachuba

Reaktion Books Ltd, 2019

ISBN-13: 978 -1789140798

Available: Hardcover

 

 

Do you know the origin of the word berserk?  Have you heard about a community of vampires in Buffalo, New York? Do you think of Jesus as a shapeshifter? These are some examples of information from the ancient past to the present that you will find in John B. Kachuba’s Shapeshifters: A History. This is a short book packed full of interesting details from myths and legends from around the world, historical research that sifts through the beliefs about shapeshifters in different cultures, and many brief stories of the exploits, drama, and dangers associated with these sometimes frightening creatures whether animal, human, or supernatural in form.

 

Kachuba presents a wide-ranging array of shapeshifters that stretches the definition of the word from physical transformations to psychological anomalies. He branches out to consider masks and costumes as ways people attempt to shape shift. Individual chapters suggest narrow categories such as the shapeshifting powers of gods, goddesses, and faeries, even gender transformations, but within the chapters, there is an attempt to pull in so many different categories, time periods, cultures, and religions that some sections become descriptive lists interspersed with storytelling and repetitive analysis. The vampire and werewolf chapters contain mainly information that will be familiar to most seasoned readers, but even so, there are fresh perspectives and analysis.

 

As Kachuba takes us back and forth through the centuries, he provides historical perspective and takes time to examine the origins of the beliefs and how they have been related to morals, values, education, and parenting. He notes the positive and negative influences that a belief in shapeshifting has had around the world and over time. The section on literature and the media provides young adult readers with information on related books, films, art, and television shows that will reveal how shapeshifting is still interesting to us today. Overall, this entertaining book is the type you’ll want to dip into according to your whims and use to further your own explorations on the topic. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

 

Editor’s note: Shapeshifters: A History was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction.

Posted on April 7, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: The Wild Inside by Jamey Bradbury

The Wild Inside by Jamey Bradbury

William Morrow, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-0062741998

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

 

Mother’s rules: never lose sight of the house; never come in with dirty hands, and most importantly, never, ever, make a person bleed.

The Wild Inside is a different kind of thriller. It’s been compared to a mix of Stephen King and the Bronte sisters, but that’s an unfair deal. What Bradbury has done is something unique, and should stand apart from those names. It truly is a wild novel both in narrative and story, something that adventurous readers should devour this spring and summer, despite the arctic bite that infects every chapter. It should also resonate strongly with the YA crowd and would do well to infiltrate that market, too.

Tracey Petrikoff is an unusual young woman. Kicked out of school for fighting, she harbors a darkness that usually can be contained. She seeks to please her parents and loves her little brother, even if things get a little crazy. When her mother passes away, Tracy is forced to grow up and help her father, an Iditarod musher who has been suspended. She also races, and aches to make the profession her life, although her behavior steps in and keeps her sidelined.

She is forced to focus on her hunting and trapping, skills she excels at, as she has a natural sense of what the prey feels and thinks. She keeps her mother’s warnings at the front of her mind, yet impulsiveness often rears its ugly head. When a stranger crosses her path in the wild, her knife flashes and blood spills. Her father saves his life, unaware that it could be his daughter who nearly killed the man. After a discovery nearby threatens to change her life, Tracey finds her world slowly unraveling. Then a boy steps out of the same woods to rent a room on their property: a character who holds more secrets than she.

What sets The Wild Inside apart from other contemporary YA fare is Bradbury’s narrative style. First person narrative is common, but while it’s not always well done, here the author excels. Bradbury’s style is both razor sharp and claustrophobic, resulting in a tense, but welcoming read. Dialogue tags are thrown to the side, often clashing with internal thoughts, forcing the reader to discern which is which: a heady, often trippy, experience that may put off casual readers, but for the dedicated, will bring rewards. Tracey is one of the more memorable characters in recent YA literature due to her moral makeup and her struggles both within herself and with the outside world.

Recommended for the thriller lover who craves something different, much different and can handle a different kind of narrative.

Contains: gore, violence, murder, descriptions of child abuse, LGBTQ+ themes

Reviewed by Dave Simms

 

 

 

Posted on April 19, 2018 by , Reply
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