Reviews with content warning for Animal cruelty - The Only Good Indians

Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

332 reviews

ticklemetiff's review against another edition

dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

If you can’t handle animals brutally dying, this is not the book for you. If you aren’t a fan of basketball, this is not the book for you. It wasn’t a bad book, I just couldn’t get behind all the animal brutality. & that’s a me problem I guess. How the antagonist is set up is pretty cool, it was a little confusing in the beginning. I think switching between main characters so early on threw me off for a minute. But again, probably just a me problem.

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meagand's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I found three guys who were the main characters hard to sympathize with at times, though I liked all the women. The animal violence is pretty graphic and keeps coming up. Like another reviewer said, justice for Harley! Oh and there’s like so much basketball talk! Like a lot of basketball.

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throwback682's review against another edition

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emotional tense medium-paced

Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

The ending was a tearjerker for me.

Shout out to Chuck Tingle for introducing me to this author.

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kellsbells374's review against another edition

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challenging emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

In terms of craft, I think this book is really well done. I have two things that held me back from giving this 5 stars.
1. The pace felt a little off at times. I think it came from switching between "protagonists" but it took me out of the story a bit.
2. For a book that had sortve a revenge plot where a female character was exacting revenge on men who did something shitty, there certainly were a LOT of women who got killed (horribly) as collateral damage. I feel like that maybe fit the horror genre but it kept making me frustrated because I couldn't relate to the "antagonist" destroying all these women almost as pawns or punishment for the men.

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refrejarator's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

The first I've ever read by Jones. Holy hell. It was devastating, it was brutal, and painted a horror story vastly different from any I'd ever read before. Had me freaked out from the first chapter, which is very rare for me!

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wispy_reviews's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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heynonnynonnie's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

A decade after a hunting transgression, a supernatural entity haunts a group of Blackfeet men and starts taking them and their loved ones out one by one.

This was very meh for me. I love the concept. I mean, indigenous supernatural karmic war sounds metal as hell for a horror book, and the first chapter smashed my expectations. It's a perfect combination of concept, style, and pacing. But the next 100 or so pages moves at such a slow pace before giving the reader sporadic moments of action. The voice takes some effort to fully appreciate and can be cumbersome during the slower parts of the story. I didn't care for the basketball scenes and their inclusion left me confused. I'm holding out hope for this author's other works because there were several chapters that were 5 star standalones for me, and I'm so in love with the concepts from his books.

TW: Animal death (hunting and pets), animal cruelty, murder, gore, violence, racism

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chriswoody94's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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pressedlupine's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This book made me care about basketball. But only when women play it. Or elk

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stephanieluxton's review

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dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

A lot of dogs die or are injured in this book. They don't all die at the same time to it's not like ripping off a bandaid. It's actually pretty upsetting.

Without giving too much away, this book is about a few native american friends who broke a rule while hunting 10 years ago and now an entity/elk/person/vengeful spirit is hunting them down for revenge. This book follows each of the four friends as they encounter the vengeful spirit.

Something this book did well was giving a unique perspective into the characters lives. It haven't read many books about modern day native americans/indians but I felt the characters were written well. Nothing felt super political.

The story starts off with mysterious things happening to Lewis and it's a lot of fun watching his paranoia grow. Then the story gets dark and something crazy happens.

Basically all the main characters are killed violently. I actually enjoyed how shocking this part was.

T

The second half of the story introduces Lewis's old friends in more detail. Some of the pacing gets weird here. This is when I stopped having fun reading. Theres a lot or time spent talking about basketball even though it's not very relevant. When we start to see the spirit, what I was imagining in my head while reading was so goofy that I couldn't feel scared or appreciate any tense moments.

The spirit is described as a woman with an elks head and I kept picturing a woman wearing one of those goofy plastic horse masks chasing the characters.

My biggest problem with this book that is

that I didn't feel like there was any justice. None of these characters deserved to die.

Now to spoil the general story so that I can elaborate on my previous sentence:

Four indian friends go into the woods 10 years ago to hunt elk but all the elk are in an area of the woods that is restricted to them. It's near the end of the season so they decide t go and find a large herd. They kill multiple elk and Lewis kills one that has eyes that almost look human to him. She fights to live but he kills her and finds out the elk was pregnant. He vows to use evey part of the elk as a sign of respect and remorse. They are discovered and kicked out of the woods, forbidden from hunting ever again by the elders on the reservation. 10 years later the spirit of the elk (disguised as a human or elk/human hybrid depending on the day, begins hunting them and killing them one by one. She doesn't just kill Lewis, who was her killer. She (directly or indirectly) kills Lewis, his dog, wife, and his friend from work. They she kills the other men who were on the hunting trip as well as their dogs and basically anyone else they care about or who just happen to be in the area at the time. None of these people were evil. Most of them were just living their lives the best they knew how to. It's not a satisfying tale of revenge.

In the end, I have no idea what exactly this book was trying to say. I also have no idea why it's named what it is.

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