This was an utterly chilling and twisty novel. I loved the unreliable narrator aspect of it and what really sets this above so many other horror novels is that, short as it is, the characterization is perfection.

Night of the Mannequins is a fun little horror novella that took me in a completely unexpected direction. We meet Sawyer and his friends, who have an old mannequin that they set up as a prank, and from there, things get pretty wild. Stephen Graham Jones does a fantastic job of writing yet again, but this one left me wanting more. Perhaps it would have worked better in a longer format, and for me, I am not always a huge fan of the unreliable narrator. I did feel that I lost connection with the characters during the last 1/3 of the novella. Still, it is a fun summer horror read.

Night of the Mannequins follows a prank gone wrong, leading to bloodshed and disaster. When Sawyer and his friends leave a mannequin in a theatre as a prank, they don’t expect things to go so wrong.

I didn’t know what to expect going in to Night of the Mannequins other than great writing, because Stephen Graham Jones is a brilliant writer. Honestly, knowing he wrote something is good enough to sell me on it forever now because I’ll never doubt his writing skills and style will be something I love, and Night of the Mannequins didn’t let me down. The writing somehow manages to be beautiful, and campy all at the same time, which just fit the story so perfectly.

For a novella, there’s a lot packed into the one, yet it doesn’t feel too short, which some novellas fall in to the trap of. The plot and the characters are fully realized, and you don’t find yourself floundering wanting more from either. It’s an over the top horror that takes you places you don’t expect, but it still has a solid story line. There were a few spots that I had to read back on because I would think I was losing the thread of what was going on - but no, I wasn’t, it’s just that wild of a story in some spots. The craziness is part of it, you’re not misunderstanding anything.

Horror lovers of campy over the top horror and B-movie style horror will love this one. It’s such a fun read, and despite being pretty dark, there’s some seriously laugh out loud parts too. Lovers of Stephen Graham Jones will probably already know they’re going to need to read this one, but for everyone else who hasn’t given him a shot yet, this great little novella will sell you on him.

I might be the only person in the universe who didn’t love The Only Good Indians, and that’s not to say it wasn’t a good book. It was. It just didn’t click for me. This one did, however. From the first page, Jones nails the group of teenagers aesthetic, creating an array of characters that is easy to care about and to worry about when things start to go downhill.
Sawyer, the first person narrator, tells us how the group finds a mannequin, affectionately dubbed Manny, and makes him part of the crew for a bit before inevitably growing bored of him. The group brings out Manny for one more prank, and as they tend to do in books that are horror or the like, things begin to go badly.
I’m not sure where I expected this story to go when I picked it up, but definitely not where it ended up. The journey that Jones takes us on through the chaos happening in a small town, the thought process of the narrator, and makes us wonder what’s really going on all the way up to the ending is mastery. There are some authors, and Jones fits neatly into this group, that are utterly brilliant for their ability to manipulate their audience and play with them like marionettes. Not to mention, have the audience thankful to have paid for that experience.
This book is five easy stars. A two-day read that unpacks like a 90 minute movie. Action-packed and madly paced, but thoughtful as well. Coming up with groups I’d highly recommend to is a little rough. Stephen Graham Jones fans, of course, but beyond that telling you what kind of genres/tropes it hits does get a bit spoiler heavy. If a murder-y, monster-y, psychological mash-up that reads cinematically sounds up your alley, I’d definitely pick this one up.

If you follow Stephen Graham Jones long enough, it becomes clear the man has an unabashed love for slasher horror. With Night of the Mannequins, he puts his own distinctive spin on this particular subgenre, creating one hell of a compelling work.

With their high school years fading, Sawyer Grimes hatches a plan for one last prank against their friend, Shanna, and her managers at the local movie theater by employing the mannequin they discovered some past summer. The prank fizzles and, to make matters worse -- and stranger -- Sawyer watches the mannequin get up and leave the theater of its own free will. How could such a thing even be possible? And then Shanna dies a grisly death, and Sawyer has it all figured out. The mannequin is going to kill him and his friends, unless he saves them all.

Night of the Mannequins is a wild ride, one that never quite goes as you expect it to. Jones's authorial voice is strong and assured, and he writes Sawyer with an incredible wryness, turning in a number of brilliant phrases that begin straight off with the book's opening paragraph before chalking up several more highlighter-worthy sentences. This is a strong and easy read, and I loved the conversational tone Jones strikes here, switching with supernatural ease between friendly comfort and disconcerting insanity.

Jones's killer is absolutely freaking nuts, with some wildly twisted motivations. A number of passages, and, yes, a few of the kill scenes, left me open-mouthed at just how messed up and mentally deranged this killer is. This might just be the most wonderfully twisted slasher killer I've read about in 2020 thus far, so hats off to Jones for that!

Equally compelling are the metaphors for growing up and being left behind. At its heart, Night of the Mannequins is a slasher through-and-through, but it's also a coming of age story. Sawyer is an immature sort, and his circle of friends are growing apart and finding other interests, yet become bound together through tragedy. There's a certain desire to stop the clock and crystallize these last days of high school revelry that are not just affecting but downright effective and sympathetic.

Night of the Mannequins is a unique and supremely twisted horror novella, coming hot on the heels of Jones's other Summer 2020 release, the excellent The Only Good Indians. Both of these books are equally compelling and showcase this author's range and talent, as well as just how scarily good he is at crafting some seriously shocking moments that take you by complete surprise. This particular book, though, is a wicked, and wickedly fun, descent into madness. Highly recommended.

As always, Stephen Graham Jones delivers an inventive and mind-blowing story that both completely disturbed and delighted me. Sawyer and his best friends are growing up. The end of high school is looming, and they've long since stopped playing games like they did as kids. But when they decide to prank one of their own at her job in a movie theater using an old mannequin they used to play with, Sawyer feels like they're kids again. But then the mannequin stands up and walks away by itself, and only Sawyer sees it happen. Shortly after, people start dying. This novella has quite a few twists, and I was left with several questions that I would love the answers to, but overall it's a tight plot with a heartbreaking end. Night of the Mannequins is a delusional and demented coming of age story with Jones' distinct tone (lighthearted and messed up, all mixed together). It also is very reminiscent of fun 80s B horror flicks, which adds a bit of campy fun. This novella should be on the tbrs of all horror and thriller fans!

A night at the movies, a prank gone wrong and a town turned on its head. I never know what to expect from Stephen Graham Jones, and this novella is no exception!

Told in the first person, Sawyer explains how his group of friends found an old mannequin in the mud near the river and how they dug him out, dressed him up and put him in a bunch of different situations. They named him Manny. As teenagers often do, they quickly tired of him and now he, (it?), resides on top of Sawyer's dad's old motorcycle, parked in their garage. Manny is resurrected though, to play a prank on a movie theater manager. A prank that, tragically, goes wrong and now Sawyer has to right that wrong-and soon. Will he be successful? You'll have to read this to find out!

It's really hard to discuss this tale without spoilers, but, as usual, Stephen Graham Jones threw me a curveball. Everything I thought this story was about was wrong. What I thought was going to happen? I was wrong. What I thought Sawyer would do? He didn't. Why? I can't tell you, you'll just have to read it.

Easily read in an hour or two, I've often mentioned that I think the novella form is one of the best ways to present a horror story. Every word has to count, every action leads to the next. It's tight, it doesn't waste time, and when it's done well? It's a perfect little package of darkness that leaves you thinking for days. Bravo, once again to Stephen Graham Jones!

Highly recommended!

*Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for the e-ARC of this novella in exchange for my honest feedback. This is it!*

This was Scream meets Toy Story but with a main character that has OCD.
I thought that the inner monologue of the main character felt really realistic to how a teenager talks. They never said that the character had OCD but I felt like all of the characters action fell in line with someone who has that disorder.
I thought that the plot was really fun and inventive but I wish that the side characters were more fleshed out. I think that the book needed just a little bit more time at the beginning to show some interactions between the friend group.
A quick, fun read overall
3.5 stars

3.5, but Stephen Graham Jones deserves the higher of the rounding possibilities. After the incredible highs of THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS, this novella is a much smaller-scale nightmare, but still a gripping read. Chronicling how a simple teenage prank goes wrong and elicits a horrifying aftermath, NIGHT OF THE MANNEQUINS effortlessly illustrates not just the mounting terror of the primary story, but also how the anxious and angsty internal voice of adolescence can magnify misunderstanding and turn into madness.

Jones writes in the voice of his teenage protagonist Sawyer with ease and black humor, even when things are at their most hideous. Coming to its climax at a drive-in theater (reminiscent of Joe R. Lansdale, which I appreciated), NIGHT OF THE MANNEQUINS is ultimately something of an emotional slasher, which will make sense when you read it. It'll also be clear that you shouldn't fuck with mannequins.

I don't even know what to say about this book!! The writing was unbelievably entertaining and funny...but the subject matter was not funny at all so I was constantly feeling guilty for laughing. The opening sentence is probably my new all time favorite first line. I loved the voice and internal dialogue of the main character. The story had me on the edge of my seat as to what is happening (is there a speculative element or not??). Overall, this was weird...brutal...melancholy...funny....and surprisingly thought provoking.

Delightfully brutal and mentally horrific.

Jumping into this Stephen Graham Jones novella, I wasn't sure what to expect. To be honest, I never even read the synopsis. I see his name and immediately pick books up. It's a compulsion.

Night of the Mannequins follows Sawyer and his group of childhood friends when a prank goes horribly wrong. Disguising a discarded mall mannequin as a patron at the local movie theater seemed like the perfect way to get back at the stuffy assistant manager, who happened to recently punish the friend group for sneaking into a movie unpaid. What starts off as a fairly innocent prank, however, turns more deadly than this group of teens could have ever imagined and it seems Sawyer is the only one with a plan to limit the destruction.

First, let me just swoon for a bit over how much I love SGJ's writing. I promise not to let it go on for too long. The style is edgy AF, yet feels like classic horror all the same. I love the humor and witty dialogue that he is able to bring to such dark tales. Also, his books always go there, all the way to the deepest, darkest crevices of the human mind. It's weird. It's powerful. It's freaking disturbing.

With this being said, I was really into this novella, loving everything about it until about the 70% mark. Then I started feeling lost. While I understand the ending, some of the choices of events leading up to the ending didn't seem to fit. It made the ending seem a little abrupt and disjointed for me.

Overall though, this novella is fantastic. You cannot deny the level of creativity it takes to write a story like this. One that leads you in one direction, flips that on its head and then smacks you in the face with a healthy dose of depressing reality.

Sawyer is a very special protagonist. He's one of those characters that can do horrible, terrible things, but still you feel like you are on their side. One whose inner thoughts will stick with me for a while. I would highly recommend this to any horror fan or any person who just enjoys a bizarre tale.

Thank you so much to the publisher, Tor, for providing me with a copy of this to read and review.

I was really looking forward to more SGJ and this did NOT disappoint!

Over the course of Night of the Mannequins we see the world through the eyes of Sawyer, a teenager on the brink of adulthood at that strange moment when you know your whole life is about to be changed either for the better or for the worse. Sawyer and his friends undertake one last prank which ends up having disastrous consequences - but not in the way you expect. This whole story subverts expectations constantly and is essentially a narrative of a complete and utter descent into madness and depravity with one hell of an unreliable narrator.

With shades of, and references to, Frankenstein throughout this is a self aware horror novella that ends up sitting somewhere between Maniac and Scream if you look at it in film terms. Essentially it is a teen slasher with one eye on the foundations of the genre.

Night of the Mannequins is a weird, darkly funny novella that keeps twisting and turning in increasingly more bizarre directions as the story progresses. Sawyer's voice throughout is the long, breathless outpouring of a man on the edge but through his wry coming-of-age observations the book is given the hint of a heart among the chaos. I really enjoyed this book, tearing through it in less than two hours, and while I've not read too much of Stephen Graham Jones but I'll definitely be seeking out more of his work in the future.

This was fantastic. Went in a direction I did not expect, completely b-movie bonkers whilst still being very creepy.
Plus I just love SGJ's writing - consistently so good! Recommended.

This is a short, sweet smack of a novel that opens with one of the greatest lines ever: "So Shanna got a new job at the movie theater, we thought we’d play a fun prank on her, and now most of us are dead, and I’m really starting to feel kind of guilty about it all." You get everything you're going to need to know from this line - you're instantly in the story and you know what you're going to read will be a little bit funny as well as a little bit horrifying; really, I adore Jones' writing and character voice, and I read this in about two hourd with a sort of hybrid between a wince and freaked out grimace on my face but also laughing out loud at Sawyer's observations (that mannequins would like to eat "bubble wrap and packing peanuts and mayonnaise"; that Tim's dad "for sure had a lot of thoughts"; the gem "Is it just automatic to steal any mannequin you happen to encounter?") while still utterly appalled by his logic. I've read a lot more horror than usual this year (maybe because *gestures broadly at everything*) and a lot of it has been disappointing, but Stephen Graham Jones is on the scene knocking creepily inventive and disturbing fiction out of the park.

Night of the Mannequins is a fictional fever dream of a demented teen, written so well that you can see it happening.

This whole novella is a devilishly campy teen slasher that had me covering my eyes and busting out ugly-laughing in equal measure.

All Sawyer Grimes wanted to do was pull a prank on his cousin Shanna. I mean, his best friends were all in on it, too—so it wasn't totally his fault when shit hit the fan, right? There's nothing he could've done to stop them from being picked off, one by one, by the mannequin that should've been a hilarious joke, but ended up turning into their worst nightmare... right?

Three years ago, Sawyer, JR, Tim, Shanna, and Danielle fished a pasty mannequin they dubbed Manny out of a mucky pond. For one glorious summer, Manny was one of them—the (cherished) butt of their jokes, a willing participant in their irreverent teenaged antics.

Then they forgot about Manny. Neglected him. The group changed (Danielle's dating some loser outside the squad, for one) and so did Manny: now, he's out for revenge.

SGJ’s writing is just so. damn. entertaining. This was the gory, black humour I saw also in The Only Good Indians, but somehow even campier. Like, I should not be sniggering at a sentence containing the words “strangled,” “decapitated,” “burned” AND “drowned.” I shouldn’t laugh about little boys discovering their brothers crucified to walls. And I definitely shouldn't be cackling when Sawyer calls one of the victims a “raging pube.”

Here's the terrible (awesome) thing: Night of the Mannequins made me do ALL those things—with relish.

And for all you cool cats and kittens who’ve read this and know the twist—(view spoiler)

Part cautionary tale against reading into everything that happens to you, part ABSURD and brutal slasher—this book is utterly ridiculous and so, so good.

Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones is a twisted little gem. I had read and enjoyed, The Only Good Indians, so when I saw this novella I was excited to see what he could do in a shorter story, and Jones does not disappoint. There is a level of creepiness throughout, first with the supernatural element and then with the total craziness of what is actually happening…. And I didn’t even think of it as an option to the death and destruction until it was revealed.

As with many horror short stories or novellas, the reader is often dropped right into the action without a lot of background. Jones does give us some background throughout the story and there is just one mention as to why this may be happening (at least that I caught). It is a brief sentence and isn’t brought up again, but for me at least, this added to the trepidation. I really enjoyed that Jones didn’t dwell on the why and just gave us the horror filled action.

Jones has a lot of other books published, which is great for those who want to read more of his books. A few that look good to me are; The Last Final Girl, Zombie Bake-Off, and The Least of My Scars. If you have a favorite by Jones, I would love to hear about it.

This book was one of those quick reverberating chilling suspense kinda supernatural kinda surreal stream-of-thought novels that left you floating in the thick of the brutality in it. It was also such an eerily "gentle" horror in that the violence wasn't just gore for gore there was this genuine love the main character had for the people involved and you, as the reader, deep in their thoughts are just veiled from the real and not real and lingering in all the thrumming unknowns. And that kept me going and going trying to unravel this great mystery and terror. The voice was strong and pulsed real well in your head. It's always a delight to sit with the weight of fear and back of the neck anxietythat Stephen Graham Jones calls up.

Stephen Graham Jones is the best. As with everything he writes, this book is deeply unsettling, darkly funny, and unputdownable. His writing has a way of making the reader dig deep into their soul and wonder...what’s really down there, beyond our reach, our comprehension? This book is short and I think best approached with minimal introduction. What begins as a group of friends playing a prank...ends as something disturbing, horrifying, and cinematic.

Jones new novella is interesting and reads like an overactive narrator who seems to be on the edge which is what I think the author’s was going for.

The novella is has an interesting premise dealing with horror film norms and mixing them into a first person narrative. The book does hinge on how you find this narrative and for me, I found it a bit erratic and distanced me from the story. I do admire and understand as it does work in the confines of the story but also found me slightly irritable with the narrator.

The plot is very well constructed and it does work well. As we are dealing with an untrustworthy narrator, this works well with the story. The ending felt a bit forced and would have personally liked a more satisfying conclusion but as this is a first person narrative, it does fit in with the construct of the novel.

The characters are interesting though they are shadows of personalities and are not fully formed. I would have liked a more concrete presence of the characters and feel a bit more empathy for them. They fell a bit flat for me and when they meet their demise, I sort of felt nothing. If I do flip this, this does seem to be the fodder that we do find in horror films but as this is book form, I would have liked more well-rounded characters.

Overall, this is very well constructed novella that works within the ideas for which it is written. I was not in love with it but admired it for what it was trying to do and I think it does accomplish this. It was not a book that I loved but I did enjoy and I am interested to see what Jones comes up with next. A book to be admired and hits what it is trying to do but did not really do it for me.