3.5 stars rounded up to 4. This is a horror book with a fresh voice, the horror intricately intertwined with Native culture and norms, mixing tradition with the current reality of the rez, the addictions, the cycle of poverty.

Ten years ago, a group of four young Blackfeet men went hunting on the last day of the season, just before Thanksgiving. Their freezers empty from a fruitless year, they were desperate to kill something, to try to be "real" Indians. Finding nothing on the land they were allowed to hunt on, they make the decision to cross over into the elders' land, knowing that better elk lay ahead, even though the price of getting caught is losing their hunting permits for a long time. I won't spoil the rest of the story, but the decisions they make on that fateful day - dubbed the Thanksgiving Classic - will haunt them.

Ten years after the Thanksgiving Classic, the four men are in various states of relationships and jobs, both on and off the rez. But the horror that happened ten years prior are coming back for them, one by one.

I don't know if I would say this book is necessarily scary - although I have yet to be truly scared by a book in the same way I get scared watching horror movies. But the execution was fantastic. Jones's writing is whip-smart, lean and casual and fast, almost like Nico Walker's Cherry but much, much better. The story is woven with the complex ideas of modern Native life, with the ruts of being stuck on the reservation, what sweat lodges are like now, interracial relationships, trying to be a "proper" Indian, etc. Jones fills the book with sharp insights, criticisms, and reflections on what all of this means, and it makes the reading experience much richer than a run-of-the-mill revenge thriller. Even the entity exacting the revenge is deeply tied to ideas of what's right and wrong in Blackfeet culture.

This book was much different than anything else I've read all year, and its differences make it a standout in the horror genre. There were some weak points for me - the ending was a bit drawn out and didn't hit the climax I hoped it would - but I enjoyed it overall and would recommend it for anyone who's looking for an interesting new take on the revenge horror genre. Thank you to Gallery / Saga Press for the ARC!

Do you like the Final Destination franchise? If you say yes, just know this novel is for you.
Did you like Paul Tremblay's The Cabin at the End of the World? If you say yes, this novel is also for you.
Are you a fan of the Charlie Daniel's song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia?" Again, here's your next favorite read.

Now, I am going to say something that may be a bit of a hard sell for horror readers: This is a novel that gets better the more I reflect on it. As a white man, it took me a while to acclimate to the use of storytelling, mythology and folklore used in this book. But Jones is a master storyteller and should be trusted at every step of the way.

This book is also such an interesting piece in the pantheon of horror in how it changes genre. You read the prologue, and you think you are getting a monster story. Then Part I brings you a ghost story. But you hit Part II and find a "cabin in the woods" slasher. And you end on a "demon comes to collect its debts" slow burn. So I find myself able to recommend parts of this book to fans of any style of horror, but only able to push the whole novel into true genre devotees.

This book loses a star for me because two of the central passions discussed in the book (cars and basketball) are not passions I share, so I found parts of the book hard to visualize.

I will end my review with the strangest push I've ever given: Buy this novel for the acknowledgments, ESPECIALLY if you are a writer. These acknowledgments have set a new bar in their amazing stream-of-consciousness look into how a writer gets from Point A to Point B in the writing process.

Do yourself a favor: Preorder this one and save it for a sunny day.

Rating: 4/5

this book was full of twists and turns. I loved every chapter. I loved the tribute to native americans and I just felt sucked in on page one.

This is like the product of your creepiest nightmare! Ten years ago, four Native American men sneak onto the hunting land of the tribal elders and slaughter an entire herd of elk. One young elk desperately clings to life, and they discover that she was pregnant. Now on the anniversary of that fateful hunt, the spirit of the elk returns to exact revenge on the four men, their families, friends, and everything they love.
I had a hard time at first with the writing style of this book, but found myself getting sucked into the story. I thought it lagged a little in between the different characters' stories, but the ending was well worth finishing.
I received a complimentary copy of this book through Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this book!

Stephen Graham Jones never fails to surprise me. I knew I would most likely enjoy this story, but I didn't truly expect to love it... but I did. I've seen complaints about the slowness of the start of the book but that's what makes a good horror story to me- the anticipation.

I know a lot of people are enjoying this book, and I highly encourage readers to give it a chance because frankly there are not enough Own Voices out there, especially for Native American's. I truly believe this book could be excellent horror for another reader but it just wasn't for me. I struggled with the writing style, found it too slow through too many parts (but that prologue was fantastic), and I simply lost interest. Again, I think this was just a "it's me, not you" thing. I will give this author another chance in the future though!

I had a very hard time with this book. The beginning was cumbersome and confusing and it took until a third of the way through for it to start sinking in and making sense. The narrative and interactions left a very disjointed and foggy feeling of where the story was going and where it had come from. I felt that the cultural nuances could have been a bit more streamlined and referenced with more clarity instead of inference.

Remember when you first reading The Shining, or It, and the SURPRISES could truly shock you, and the horror was as much psychological as it was real, and that was why the books stayed with you for so long? Now add those emotions and add a Native American supernatural element, and you've got the bones of this story. Both dark and relatable, it's the story of making a bad decision and how it stays with you- karma, in this case CAN be a real killer. But how real is it? With innocents in the crossfire, their is a race for completion. Stay with this book until the end, for a book not to be read at night!

I wanted to read this book because it’s an own voices story and I can’t recall ever reading a book written by a Native American. So when I started reading the book it started out slow but I decided to stick with it and things picked up as the story progressed. Then the book slows down again and all hope is pretty much lost. There is a huge emphasis on basketball and the story goes into great detail about the game. I’m a sports fan but it was overkill. At times while I was reading I felt like the writing was a little disjointed. Some parts left me confused and the chapters would end abruptly. I also wouldn’t consider this book to be a horror story in my opinion. I was expecting to be scared as I read and that didn’t happen. I felt like I was reading a supernatural book. As much as I wanted to love this book sadly it didn’t work out for me which is a bummer.

Ten years after a ruthless hunting trip, four American Indian men face the consequences in The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones.

This novel was beautiful and frightening. It was easy to empathize with the characters; they became real people to me. They were funny, flawed, and broke my heart. The horror in these pages was palpable - I gasped, held my breath, and jumped out of my skin.

The imagery in this novel was superb and would make a fantastic film! Experiencing horror through a different culture's viewpoint is powerful. I'd love to see this story reach a wider audience, too.

This is the first novel I've read by this author, and I cannot wait to get my hands on more of his work.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

CWs: blood, gore, death, graphic animal/pet death, graphic violence

This is one of the darkest, most unsettling stories I've read in quite some time. The Only Good Indians is an effectively horrific look at the destructive consequences of cyclical violence. It's about how a past that is not honored comes back to haunt those who have forsaken it. And it is a horrifying prospect, truly.

I think this story has a lot to say about how the past inevitably colors, permeates, and shapes future generation. It's about how intergenerational trauma, particularly for Indigenous peoples, is a literal entity that ensures the colonized will destroy each other and themselves to continue the work of the colonizers. It's about how ignoring our pain will only give it more power.

And yet, despite the gore and violence, despite the cutting social commentary, it is a story about hope and survival. For a horror story such as this to not end on an image of death is a truly Herculean feat, and not something many authors can pull off.

This story only solidified the respect I have for Stephen Graham Jones' talent, and makes me want to read even more from him.

Stephen Graham Jones has penned yet another winner with The Only Good Indians. Ten years after poaching elk, four men are haunted by that decision in ways that turn not only nightmarish, but deadly. Readers follow the plot through multiple perspectives, providing layers of insight throughout the narrative. The book is well-paced, providing multiple climatic points until the last 20% of the book, which hits the gas and doesn't let up. Readers of horror, suspense, and psychological thrillers will all enjoy the bracing read. Jones centers Blackfeet experience, and Crow are also prominently featured. Woven into the narrative are issues of racism, prejudice, and reservation life. A great book.

Brutal and original horror novel. I can't believe this is my first Stephen Graham Jones novel. After reading The Only Good Indians I'm definitely looking forward to reading more of his work. Maybe it's just me but Jones reminds me of Joe Lansdale. Southern Fried Horror! It's really refreshing reading a Native American story, especially one that falls in the horror genre. Other than Owl Goingback I don't think I've read hardly any(at least none that come to mind) Native American horror stories. TOGI has great characters, and while odd and strange at times, it is engaging(great pacing) all the way. You could probably classify this novel as nature fun amok except on a much smaller scale. As in the scale of a vengeful elk. Yes, it sounds kind of out there and goofy but it works and it's really fun and horrific. There's more to it than just a vengeful elk. Think Native America spirits taking revenge and you're on the right track.. I'll leave it at that and not give away too much. Just read it! It will stay with you long after you've read it!

Dark and beautiful, THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS by the talented Stephen Graham Jones is a stunning work of art that gripped my heart and blew my mind.

Vivid characters and locations brought this sometimes shocking story to life for me, and I devoured the second half of the story in a wild-eyed frenzy.

This is the kind of book that lingers with the reader long after the final page is turned. I highly recommend this haunting masterpiece!

I did not finish this galley. The number of editing and grammar errors bothered me enough and made it tough to read without concentrating on the errors.

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.

The Only Good Indians is the story of four friends desperately trying to escape the consequences of a night ten years in the past. A night where they took too much from the hunt and now an entity is out to get its comeuppance. A horror story woven with American Indian culture. A sizzling tension… a low growl for dozens and dozens of pages until a snap of the teeth. I was shocked by the frequent twists. Told is an urgent style that puts the reader in the hip pocket of the narrator, lodged in there with a skinning knife and a history of violence.

I read many horror novels and stories of the supernatural, and this one blended the real and the mind-f*cking so blisteringly well. There are several scenes at the beginning of the book where one of the men, Lewis, sees a ghost or image of a long-lost nightmare. He spends parts of several chapters trying to recreate the imagining in an effort to find its origin. Jones describes this obsession with such a circular way that I felt all wrapped in the character’s mind. A nightmare of justifications and promises to change and move on start to turn Lewis on himself and others in his life. This is just one character, but Jones follows through in the rest of the novel. Gore and all!

Read this one for a shock or six. And plenty of excellent writing that will get you into the heart and head of evil.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley, Saga Press, and the author for an advanced copy for review.

I'm not really sure how to feel about this book. It was SO weird. An elk woman coming back to enact revenge against God 4 men who killed her, many of her herd, and caused the death of the calf she was carrying? It's such an odd premise and was super slow to get started. The last 10% of the book was what really saved it for me, so if you can stick it out til then it becomes a blood rushing pulse pounding terror filled nightmarescape and then just....ends. It's a pretty good ending, I would have given this 5 stars were it not for the achingly slow build up and just overall oddness of the plot.

An entity born of a tragically violent incident from the youthful past of four American Indian men leaves them fighting for their lives and their sanity. Ruthlessly hunted, the friends are caught in the spotlight as their actions and traditions they thought they didn't believe in anymore render them powerless against the tidal waves of rage that lied dormant for years.

"It was so easy. He was so fragile, so delicately balanced, so unprepared to face what he'd done."

I love randomly finding out that the author of a book I've wanted to read actually lives in my home state, I'm not entirely sure why it makes me so happy but there it is. I also enjoy learning new things - I surprisingly didn't know about elk ivory. It's something that's never come up with anyone that I know of that hunts elk. I have always been fascinated by Native American culture and beliefs. Some cultures and places just have that pull for me - the other that comes to mind is Egypt. My grandmother told me that our family had a American Indian ancestor but honestly, I would have to do a DNA test to believe it. If I actually do, what then? Claiming it or wanting to research it more would just make me feel like an impostor. One thing I will always wonder about is what this country would look like if the Europeans hadn't been *insert choice word here*, bringing sickness, death and religion with them.

"These are the kind of wrong thoughts people have who are spending too much time alone. They start unpacking vast cosmic bullshit from gum wrappers, and then they chew it up, blow a bubble, ride that bubble up into some even stupider place."

The prologue of the book sets the tone for the rest of the novel and the newspaper headings are a tragically comical way to break up what's currently happening. Really the only portion of the book that I struggled to get through was Lewis even though the events are interesting his character is a little dry. The interactions with the garbage disposal though - seriously I couldn't help but laugh out loud. The way The Only Good Indians is written definitely leaves you wondering if the entity inflicting its wrath upon the men in this story is a facet of guilty imagination or real. This book gives a interesting approach to herd mentality and collective memory. There is so much grief wrapped up in this novel - on both sides. Stephen Graham Jones does an amazing job transferring the character's uncertainty, horror and confusion to you - the reader. The ending for this book - seriously... all the feels like a sucker punch to the gut.

The Only Good Indians does have it's fair share of sensitive topics - gore/death/murder both animal and human, alcohol/drug use being the main ones that stick out. I highly recommend this book to readers who love slow burn horror, American Indian culture, supernatural/paranormal and thriller novels. I would like to thank the publisher Gallery Books for granting my wish for this book through NetGalley.

I have picked this book up at least 5 different times now and I just can not force myself to keep reading. As soon as I start my eyes glaze over and I start daydreaming. So like many other reviewers have said.....this one just isn't for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Gallery / Saga Press for kindly granting my wish for an arc.