Cover Image: The Only Good Indians

The Only Good Indians

Pub Date:   |   Archive Date:

Member Reviews

I had shelved this book for a good six months. I felt like the beginning was boring and going nowhere. I decided to pick it back up and realized I had stopped right before the horror hit (literally pages away). I was floored! This book went from mundane to gruesome quickly! Once it started it didn’t stop.

The Only Good Indians is a horrifying read, in a very good way. A supernatural Native American horror story, I have not read anything like this book and I will be looking for more.

Was this review helpful?

Thank you to NetGalley and Saga Press for this free ARC.

Oh Stephen Graham Jones how I love thee. This books stuck with me long after I finished reading it. It's such a mix of horror, fantasy and realistic fiction. Just when you thought you knew where it was going BAM Stephen comes at you from another angle. I would absolutely LOVE to see this made into a series.

Was this review helpful?

This is about a 3.5 for me. I really enjoyed the story and especially the authenticity of the characters. It felt a bit drawn out to me (I like a tightly written book) and I struggle with violence perpetrated against women/children/animals in order to punish men, a very problematic trope in horror that de-centers the personhood of women/children and is constant throughout this book.

Was this review helpful?

Honestly an incredible book all in all, kept me up at night when I literally couldn't sleep. Beautiful and engaging prose, fun at impossible turns, and terrifying in every way that matters.

Was this review helpful?

I grew up reading Stephen King novels so I'm no stranger to horror. But wooo, I was not ready for this book! It's creepy, it's bloody, it's full of Indigenous mythology, and I definitely shouldn't have been reading it late at night home alone.

Was this review helpful?

I was quickly pulled into this story of revenge. This is my first SGJ book, and it wont be my last, I did start another one of his novels but then remembered this one, and wondered why I had not started this book, I regretted waiting so long to read this one, the characters are strong, the mythology is solid and atmospheric and the madness, all too real. It did take a while to get into but it needs time to set things up and I am glad I stuck with it.

Was this review helpful?

I felt like I was reading a classic horror story that I had never heard of. Well done. I also really love a good revenge story. We figure out very quickly that revenge is playing a big role in the story. I will continue to read all of this authors books. This was a wild ride and I really enjoyed it.

4.5 stars from me. I would recommend to any old school and new school horror fans.

Was this review helpful?

I. Loved. This. Book. From start to finish, it was incredibly unsettling. Despite feeling attached to some of the characters, I loved the revenge aspect of the story. It was brutal and unrelenting. Overall, this is exactly what I wanted from a Stephen Graham Jones book!

Was this review helpful?

Such a weird, wild, and wonderful horror novel. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but when it hooked me, it was fully and fast—and it was nothing like I expected. I don’t want to give away anything about the plot, because my description will give no justice to how insidiously creepy this story is—believe me, I tried to tell my husband about it, and it was not translating at all. 💀 The best I can do it to say that it was the perfect way to wrap up October and that there’s no danger of me becoming a hunter anytime soon. 🦌😳

Was this review helpful?

A short amazing read with an antagonist that will cause you to shiver. Will make you wish to play basketball. Scary and sad enough to make you a vegan.

Was this review helpful?

I would give this book 3.5 stars rounded up to 4. I wouldn’t call it creepy but it was a really unique and interesting story. I loved the cultural elements. However the structure and pacing left a lot to be desired. The multiple points of view didn’t bother me but having each as a separate story, telling one character’s story, then the next, then the next instead of having them progress side to side made the pace slow down every time a new story started. I understand what I think he was going for, chronologically following the elk’s victims, but it made the book drag in several places. Nevertheless I really liked the story and I am a sucker for a unique one plot.

Thank you NetGalley, author and publisher for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Was this review helpful?

4 stars
I started this book back in November 2021 and was reading it physically. It took me a while to get into the writing style that Stephen Graham Jones uses. I will say once we go more into the action of the story it really took off and was genuinely scary to read. This is my first Stephen Graham Jones book I have read and I am now wanting to go and read more.

Was this review helpful?

I enjoyed reading this book and loved the plot. It was a great dark read that I brought on vacation!

Was this review helpful?

This book was not for me. It has been represented as a horror novel, but it is actually literary fiction novel, and a confusing one at that. The writing actively feels like it is trying to shove the reader back and confuse them. A specific instance of what I am talking about is early in the book when the main character hears a huge roar and describes it very poetically and makes the entire experience feel sudden. But then he turns around and explains that "oh yeah it's just the train that goes by every night at this time." The writing felt difficult and incredibly random in its structure.

Was this review helpful?

Tried and tried again. And finally, with the help of an audiobook I read this one. It is still SO not for me. Literary fiction is hard for me to like, to enjoy, to process. Add that this is a horror book, and it went over my head.

First, it is gruesome. It has detailed animal deaths and mutilations, but it just did nothing for me. If you're not paying attention, it passes without leaving anything behind. What I did appreciate was the Own Voices story of how a tribe lives, what kind of struggle it faces in current society with racism, hate crimes, constant berating. It is horrible. But the haunting of the deer was.. weird and not in a good way.

I'm still a fan of this author and the way he weaves stories. I'll pick up the next book from him, and hopefully it will work for me better.

Was this review helpful?

I really wanted to love this book and although I ended up learning some indigenous history (yes I cross referenced it to make sure it was proper folklore) I just had a really hard time getting into this book. I felt it choppy at times and how it jumped from story to story.
I do hope to read more by this author hoping it was just a mood I was in while reading or possibly the book before it was still left in my mind.

Was this review helpful?

I'd like to disclaimer before I start this review that my rating is based off my enjoyment level of it, it may be that the tone of it didn't mesh well with my current mood. However, I will say it's a very intriguing story as a whole and it will stick with me into the future regardless of the rating.

In this we experience something a series of happenings that might have connections to an incident that happened 10 years prior. This event seems to stick with one of the men, Lewis, even after he's moved on with his life off the reservation with his non-native wife. For the others, not so much, which left him as the only one aware of the possibility of what was happening.

His paranoia of the elk's spirit haunting him is a rollercoaster ride of trying to understand what exactly is going on. If it's all in his mind or if there is genuinely an Elk Head Woman hunting him and his friends.

It's a slower pace and written in a way that reminds me very much of a gothic horror with its looming, bleak atmosphere and the slasher elements. These combinations of genres mixed with the cultural aspects, gives this novel a very unique take. Genuinely not a book for everyone but definitely a gem of its own kind.

Was this review helpful?

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.

Was this review helpful?

The premise of this book is excellent and the opening is very compelling. A group of four young men from the Blackfoot Nation decide to hunt on land reserved for tribal elders and find a herd of elk there. This event causes them to lose the right to hunt on reservation land ever again. Then they move on with their lives. Ten years later, something is hunting down these four young men, intent on revenge.

For me, this book might have suffered from high expectations and much hype. I thought that it was an interesting story but it didn't blow me away. The pacing was inconsistent and I had a hard time really caring about most of these characters, especially the men who felt mostly like the same character. The supernatural aspects of this book were eerie but didn't really make much sense in several spots. Overall, I would say that this is a good book--not great but good.

Was this review helpful?

This was not the book for me. I went in excited to have another indigenous book...but ultimately found myself unable to connect with the symbolism and violence in the text.

Was this review helpful?