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. 

This review can also be found here: https://swordsoftheancients.com/2020/07/14/the-only-good-indians-a-review/

And on goodreads.: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3045128151

I really wanted to like this book. However, I struggled with the writing style. The story was okay although a bit confusing. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC.

THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS: Stephen Graham Jones

Published July 14th, 2020

A breathtaking horror: TOGI Is a dark novel full of revenge, vengeance, cultural identity, and the price one must pay to break from ones heritage.

Let me say, that I am just now breaking into the horror category and it’s not as bad as I thought It would be!! I was a bit scared to jump in because I CANNOT do scary movies but It seems as if books don’t fall into that category!!

TOGI is something I would highly recommend. Strictly because of how seamlessly Jones weaves a dramatic narrative with pressing, sensitive, social commentary. I do have mix feelings though about recommending It because it did give me complex feelings. Let’s see if I can be a little more clear:

I have always loved reading about different traditions and cultures, and most importantly, peoples perspectives from where they stand. This is a major reason why I read. So immediately, I was drawn to this book and was super pumped with @netgalley and @libro.fm gernously gave me copies! The first scene in the book is about an Elk Hunt; and then, It lost me for a while. Things got slower and it was difficult for me to pay attention. Once the plot developed thicker into a group of four friends who committed the crime at the beginning of the book are then threatened by some supernatural identity- bam. I was hooked. And majorly creeped out.

So full disclosure, I did struggle with some of the language and progression of the story. However, I do think this author was brave enough to write differently, to show a true look at Native life. There is no idyllic version here and I am grateful to have gotten to peak into the guilt, shame, and degraded expectations that follow a portrait of Native American life. This is a political book. So my recommendation is yes, read It. I’m giving It 4 stars. But it’s not your typical fiction horror easy read so buyer beware!

Along with posting on Net Galley, I will be posting my review to Goodreads, Amazon (when it becomes available), my Instagram (which has over a two thousand book review followers) and my blog. Please find the link to my blog post below. I am very grateful for the opportunity to review such an political, and eerie novel. Thank you very much.

This book follows the story of 4 American Indian men, who after a elk hunting trip turns strange, are now being hunted by an entity who is out for revenge. ⠀
⠀
This was unlike anything I’ve ever read before and I almost DNFd it until a few people urged me to continue. I’m so glad I did! I got really into it towards the end and ended up really liking it. What I struggled with while reading was just the Author’s style of writing. This is very literary which I’m not used to when reading horror. Also, it threw me off when the POV suddenly changes in the second half. Once I did get the hang of the story I found it to be super spooky.. it made me want to look over my shoulder quite a few times. The gore was also spot on! It’s intense though.. so be warned. I also really enjoyed reading & learning about another culture. The sections in which life in the reservation, folklore, and traditions were mentioned were some of my favorite parts. Definitely give this one a try if your looking for something unique to read. ⠀

<I>Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a copy in return for an honest review.</I>

This is a difficult review for me to write because I only got 25% through the book. Normally, I wouldn't review the book at all having stopped at that point, but since this book is from NetGalley I still needed to provide feedback.

This is the first book I did not finish that I have given more than one star to. I didn't stop reading this book because the writing or story were bad. I was actually really engaged with both and would not be against trying another of Jones's novels.

Unfortunately the animal violence was too much for me. Since this was an advanced copy, I pushed on past the first two upsetting instances of it, but once I got to a third in only the first quarter of the novel I decided to stop. If it had only been the scene with the elk, as bad as that was, I could have kept going since that was at least integral to the story. If this is not a deal breaker for you in a book, I do suggest given this one a try since the rest of it was pretty good.

I got an ARC of this book.

This book is something I thought I was hated while I read the first chunk of it. I dragged my feet. I barely read. I would go days without reading a single page. Then out of nowhere I was hit by how much I was in love with this book when I actually sat down to read it for real.

The book is pretty slow to start. The prologue seems a bit disjointed from the book at first, but was enjoyable. After that it felt like the book took FOREVER. That forever was really setting up the whole point of the book, but doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it. It really set things up wonderfully and when that first twist came, that is when I realized I loved this book. It was so different than any other book I have read. It was so new.

The way the rest of the story was told after the first twist was jarring and confrontational in a way that just gave the story life. It ebbed and flowed with the emotions. It was really wonderfully written. The characters and their motivations were clear. There were clear paths of actions, nothing was 100% out of nowhere. Everything had a place even if I didn’t know that the story was going to that place. I never felt cheated by a twist. The ending was even pretty wonderful.

The biggest issue I had with the book was the amount of gore that the horror aspect relied on. I can get behind some human torture gore when it makes sense. I really can’t get behind graphic deaths of dogs. This book had four graphic dog deaths (though it might be almost safe to say five honestly). The amount of time spent building up the suspense and the gore using these dog deaths really got to me. I can understand why the dogs had to die for the story to make sense, but most of the dogs could have been erased from the book without the story changing at all. So it just felt gratuitous. The horror in the second half was a bit more amped up and felt more terrifying, but the first half really can’t be discounted despite the slow start. The horror relied on gore in human and canine form for most of the horror. It was annoying and I felt like there could have been more, but murderous rampage is a genre I guess. I am just not the biggest fan of it. I adore the villain so I can forgive the methods (outside of the dogs).

The cover felt too plain to me when I first saw it, but it is probably the best fitting cover for this book. It is direct. It is raw. It really is the perfect cover. The ending really just sealed it for me.

Overall, the book was a wonderful read. The characters were vivid, things made sense, and the villain’s motivation made the most sense which is super rare in a horror.

Thanks to NetGalley and Saga Press for an ARC of this title.

I requested this title because of the praise from Tommy Orange, whose [book:There There|36692478][book:There There|36692478] I read and loved last year. Like Orange, Stephen Graham Jones is a native author writing about native characters, and it gives this horror story a distinct flavor that really captured details in a way I think authors without that lived experience might fail to do.

The first section took a little bit to "click" for me, but the two sections that followed picked up the pace and felt nailbiting. This is a book about nature taking revenge on the men that wronged her, and it truly shocked me in places I didn't expect it to go.

The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.

Imagine if Jordan Peele merged with Native American culture and they had a horror baby. I loved this one. At first, I was so perplexed by the strangeness of the novel. This entity that follows these men and what happens to them truly had my jaw dropped and I could not stop reading this book. On the surface, this book is confusing and weird and scary. When you look deeper, this book has such symbolic significance that I couldn't stop thinking about it, even now. It bringing up such poignant themes about what it means to take from nature and how nature bites back. It brings up social issues about stereotypes and crumbling life on reservations creating when Native Americans were forced onto them. I would dare to classify this book as literary fiction/ horror. SGJ did a masterful job and, as this is an own voice novel, I loved his perspective he brought. I would encourage you to have an open mind and dig deep when reading this book and DO NOT just take it for what it is on the surface. Really dive deep and think about the themes of this book. They are so important.

I could not get into this, I read for 20% and had no idea what was going on. The writing was beautiful but I am not a native so it was confusing.

Thank you for accepting my request, I am sorry I couldn’t give a better review.

This one is a fast read that felt like a mashup of The Killing of a Sacred Deer and Final Destination, following four friends as they face the (bloody) consequences of a mistake they made ten years ago. While this is seemingly a simple revenge plot, one thing this book excels at is providing the literal, surface-level horror story and the allegorical one just beneath it. In this way, you get the fun ride along with a tale of intergenerational trauma and the steps we take—and don’t—to heal past wounds.

The way these characters succumb to casual violence is breath-taking and haunting. Stephen Graham Jones knows just where to press to make you squirm, and though the body horror scenes are short, they are precise and effective. For those not familiar with SGJ, be aware that he has a succinct style of writing—minimalist and transgressive. I always group him in my mind with authors like Chuck Palahniuk rather than more horror-heavy writers. This may have to do with my involvement with site Lit Reactor where (almost 10 years ago now) these two were practically required reading in order to sit at the cool kid’s table…but I digress.

Because this is an #ownvoice story, there is a lot that is left unexplained. If you are non-Native (🙋‍♀️) and want to go into the novel with some context, I’d suggest googling deer-headed women and the importance of basketball to Native communities as these are both key components to the story. And, it is a story fully worth sinking into.

"The land claims what you leave behind."

July is shaping up to be a horror-centric reading month for me. I read Paul Tremblay's latest novel last week, and plan to read Riley Sager's newest haunted house story later this month. In between is the work of new-to-me author Stephen Graham Jones. The blurb for The Only Good Indians compared his writing to that of Tremblay, so I knew I would be in for a treat. I quickly requested a copy of the book from the publisher and was pleased when they sent one my way. It proved to be a visceral exploration of coming to terms with the past and dealing with all the grisly consequences.

Years ago, a group of young American Indian men made a reckless decision. The foursome snuck onto land that was protected by their native Blackfeet tribe. The light of the moon illuminated a herd of elk peacefully grazing amongst the sacred field, unaware of the slaughter that was about to come. Each of the boys killed one of the animals in cold blood, breaking the bond between man and nature that their ancestors had protected for so long, an irreversible rift that would follow the boys for the rest of their lives.

Years later, Lewis and the other guys all feel as if they've buried the past. None of them speak of the horrible things they did that fateful night. Lewis is still haunted by the mother elk that he killed, still sees the lifeless body of her unborn calf. He's on the ladder in his living room, fiddling with a light fixture that seems to have a mind of its own, when he notices the figure. His eyes must be playing tricks on him. Through the circling blades of the ceiling fan, Lewis swears he saw an elk standing there in the middle of his home. Only this was no ordinary animal. She was standing on two legs with an almost human-like quality to her. Is his mind playing tricks on him, or is this the beginning of something more sinister? Is nature finally seeking revenge?

There is something completely unsettling about The Only Good Indians. Stephen Graham Jones has written a novel that feels almost ritualistic in its brutality. It is the kind of horror that makes you feel as if you would be better off not witnessing what is unfolding but dares you to keep looking. After a wild opening that completely sucked me in, the novel stalled for the first quarter or so. There was character building, but I can't say that I was invested in Lewis or his life. It was the strength of wanting to know more about his mysterious vision that kept me reading. Fortunately, a violent event at the end of the first act really turned up the momentum. From then on, the novel maintained a perfect balance between gory horror thrills and well-drawn character building. I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the book features graphic descriptions of violence, death toward both humans and animals. Still, The Only Good Indians delivers as a gory horror thrill ride and interesting take on culture and revenge.

This was unfortunately a DNF for me. I made it about five chapters in before I pulled the plug. I was very excited to read this based on the synopsis and my love for horror, however I find the author’s style of writing extremely hard to follow. I felt like I was not understanding the point that was being conveyed or whether the character was having a flashback or not. I often had to reread several sentences to try to follow along. Five chapters in and I still had not made a connection to the characters, which is usually my cutoff point. The premise of the novel sounded amazing, and I could definitely picture this book being a top read for someone else, but it unfortunately did not work for me.

This book is spooky as hell. The kind of glance-over-your-shoulder feeling. The premise: four young Blackfeet men go into the woods to poach elk on a snowy late-autumn night. Now, ten years later, they are reaping the consequences of that fateful night. That sounded interesting enough to me. I was intrigued if not scared. This one creeps up on you. It took about a third of the book to hit, but hit me it did.

As with any horror, the plot involves a lot of suspense so I won't go into details. There are plenty of content warning for this, I'm sure, so check them out before going in if you are sensitive. I will say that the story is gritty and dark. It's a book about Native Americans and leans into that hard, in the best way. The Blackfeet identity of the main characters is central to the story and the author is very direct about the brutal realities of existence as a Native American in modern America, whether it's mass-incarceration and over-policing, racial violence, poverty or substance abuse. I appreciated the author's frankness and allowing this to be a truly "American" story with all our numerous flaws. Equally, the horror is closely tied to Blackfeet folklore making this truly unique (to me, at least) to the traditional horror you might usually see.

I did lose my footing a bit at one point due to an abundance of basketball references. As someone not terribly familiar with any sport, I found myself struggling to picture some of the goings-on as they related to the game. The inclusion of lots of basketball descriptions was a bit of a confusing choice to me in general and took me out of the horror a bit but this is a personal preference.

Overall, just a super enjoyable read, I flew though it.

This one is 3.5 stars I'm rounding up. You know from completing the phrase that is the title of this book that it's going to involve death, and it really does. The premise is a little bit like, what if the adage that Native Americans use every part of the buffalo/deer/etc has an "or else" tacked onto the end?

The book weaves through many subgenres of horror, starting as a haunted house story and ending with a monster. It's the beginning and the end that buoyed this story for me, because that's when it's at its most vivid and weird and horrific. The middle just sagged for me, and I almost put it down. I'm glad I didn't.

Apart from the middle not grabbing me, I thought the book had a couple other weaknesses. For something that's marketed as horror, I was never more than very mildly spooked, which was something of a disappointment. There is a lot of gore and so much vomit in this book, which you know, it's a horror novel, but it's maybe a little overly reliant on it instead of building actual dread.

The other thing was the voice of the writing. I will say this is my own issue, but it has that "tough guy with an MFA" style that I find a little too precious for my tastes.

All that said, I'm intrigued by the ideas in this novel, which I don't think are interested in being neatly resolved. I hope I can read some criticism of this book by Indigenous writers who have more insight than I on what this book has to say about the state of Indigenous people in the U.S. and Native women in particular.

***Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.***

The Only Good Indians was like one of the rides at a theme park that is not really a rollercoaster. You just kind of roll through it and then, just to keep it interesting, there is a plunge just to get your heart going. That's what reading this book felt like. It just kind of meandered along and you looked at the scenery. Then something would get exciting. You kept cycling through this ride. We had a thrilling premise, though not completely original. And we had the intriguing aspect of Indigenous people being the main characters. But, it just slowed down so often and seemed familiar enough to not really be a 4 or 5 star read. If I could do 3.5, I would. There is nothing really bad about the story, but it doesn't seem to hit any new highs or have the suspense I was hoping for.

The Only Good Indians has been quite a wild and unique ride. This own voices horror novel presents the story of four Native American friends who are haunted by an incident that happened ten years ago. They now suffer the consequences of their actions, while also coming to terms with their own personal traumas.
I really enjoyed the atmospheric and beautiful writing, and how the inequalities and oppression committed against Native Americans is explored through the means of the horror genre. Be wary of very gory and violent scenes, that will creep you out and make you jump out of your seat.
The only thing that made me disconnect at times from the story were the constant references to basketball. I understood that the sport was important for the characters, but since I am not a big fan, those frequent references and descriptions of the matches made me struggle a bit to remain focused.
All in all, this was a very solid and original horror story that I would totally recommend, especially if you are fan of those more gory stories.

More than a horror story, there is a social commentary to this novel. Jones gives the reader a very raw look at the internalization of harmful behavior, not only outside of the reservation but from within as well. But more than how the Native Americans are treated and seen in the United States, there is the monster too, creepier and scarier, more because of what it begins as something we would never think of as frightening as a werewolf or vampire.

Bored with the zombie, vampire, and werewolf stories out there? Looking for something different for the monster story? Looking for characters more fleshed out than just fodder for the creature? I think The Only Good Indians will provide that for you. There will be some confusion, some convoluted, all over the place story, but it does begin to flow with a creeping dread, slow burn, unhinged reality to grab if you are patient.

The Only Good Indians is one of the most viscerally satisfying horror novels I've read in a while. Jones' stripped-down prose delivers plenty of gore, but even more gripping are his descriptions of the Blackfeet reservation in northern Montana. The stark winter landscape rolls through the story in uneasy companionship with a poverty so pervasive and unrelenting, it becomes nearly unremarkable, nearly, in the context of a story about a supernatural elk-demon on growth hormones methodically hunting down and killing all the main characters.

I couldn't stop thinking the whole way through about the epidemic of missing Native women--maybe because of the nuanced and tragic character development of Elk Head Woman, or the arguably gratuitous violence done on women's bodies throughout, or the identity of the story's hidden protagonist.

But summing up Jones' work as an exercise in social commentary is a mistake. White readers expect BIPOC writers to concern themselves almost exclusively with questions of identity, which this book certainly does to an extent, but Jones has always worked against the grain, subverting audience expectations of what a Native writer should and should not be writing about. Jones is a horror writer, a damn good and prolific one, and he straddles the porous border between literary and genre fiction in a way that very few writers can pull off, even as more and more writers are trying every year it seems to do so.

Thank you to Gallery/Saga Press and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

As one of Jones's characters muses about the prospect of having children with a non-native, the guilt comes rushing in. After all, if he goes through with it, then "...the few of his ancestors who made it through raids and plagues, massacres and genocides, 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?"

However, while the characters in this book do struggle with guilt over various misdeeds, they're not just lumpy sad sacks. Jones fully fleshes out his characters, making them not just compelling to follow, but real. I don't know these guys, obviously, but I've known guys like them. So it hurts to watch them mess up and it hurts more to watch them face danger. 

And they face a lot of danger. Each man has varying degrees of awareness of what is coming after them. But they've got so much on their plates already. They struggle with being good men, being good fathers, and being good natives. The last one is a struggle to which many natives can relate. Whether you're reconnecting, an urban native, or too rez for you, bro, life can sometimes feel like a balancing act between tradish and just trying to thrive.

And that's all without having something hunting you down. To that end, the book at its core is a fairly simple story. However, Jones, whom I've not read before, is immensely talented at coloring in vivid details. There's a game of 21, for instance, that reads as gripping and as suspenseful as anything I've read before. (If that seems unusual, it's not. Natives love basketball.)

The monster at the end of this book (and the beginning and the middle) is no snooze, either. It's awesome, in the older sense of the word, sympathetic, and wholly original. So even as you feel for the men, you also feel for their stalker. That's quite a trick to pull, but Jones pulls it off. 

Overall, as you might have guessed, I loved this book. It's not traditional horror--I cried at the end and it didn't give me nightmares like Aftermath of an Industrial Accident--but it is a bloody masterpiece. And beyond the violence, just like the bigger story of natives, it's a bright and moving portrait of a people who didn't crumple, who still fight, who still live and love. If you've never read Stephen Graham Jones before, as I hadn't, then this is the perfect time to start.

Fans of graphic supernatural/creature horror take note: Stephen Graham Jones's 'The Only Good Indians' is an interesting read. The primary narrative behind the horror story is fairly simple and straightforward: a decade ago, a group of friends did something wrong on a hunt, and now their past is catching up to them, with grim consequences. Suffice it to say, there wouldn't be much value to the reader for me to reveal more details about the plot than are present in the jacket material. That said, the interest in this story lies in the manner in which it is told, and the implications of the details.

The author's narrative style is very colloquial; without having read any of Jones's other work, I can't say whether that is consistently his style, or if it was used intentionally to add to the sense of a quasi-storytelling tone, or as a reference to American Indian oral storytelling tradition. Either way, it feels unusual and idiosyncratic, but effective. Further, the author has an interesting way of fluidly shifting narrative perspective between characters and shifting voice between third-person and second-person, sometimes even within the same paragraph, without transitional markers. This has the at-times exciting, at-times confusing effect of pulling you in and out of various characters' heads, bouncing back and forth between being "in" a character, being "addressed as" a character, and being a "reader/listener". Some may find this off-putting, and it did have the effect of preventing the reader from becoming fully invested in any one character (because there was no central protagonist). I found that this actually helped balance the simplicity of the plot by adding an element of uncertainty, making it more difficult to predict exactly where or how the story was going.

Another layer of interest came from the color of the details. The characters were complex, very flawed, and believable, at least to someone with very limited experience in or around indigenous reservations and peoples. The setting of the Blackfeet Reservation was presented in a rather bleak manner, and the author's humor swung wildly from lighthearted to sharply sardonic. Adding to the general feeling of instability lent by the shifting perspectives and voices was the deceptive quickness with which the author slipped from both light and darkly humorous tones to abrupt, grisly horror. The effect was quite shocking, and the imagery was often disturbing, but it never felt gratuitous. Jone's detailed and descriptive writing was quite provocative, rife with cultural commentary and questions of agency, identity, and generational trauma, lending a depth and poignancy to the story not found in many horror novels.

Four stars out of five; recommended for mature readers.