Reviews tagging 'Racism'

The Angel of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham Jones

12 reviews

nightmarebees's review against another edition

fast-paced

• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

oh my heart. not gonna be okay for a while after this one. i gobbled up book 1 in less than two days, while here on book 3 i was dragging my feet just bc i didn’t want it to be over. i love you jade daniels. i love you letha mondragon-thompkins. i love you josie seck.

this third installment hits every note you’d want from a slasher trilogy: the kills are both wilder and more visceral, old secrets are laid bare that have been behind the scenes the whole time, even those characters you love the most aren’t guaranteed safety. SGJ accomplishes all this alongside critique of Indigenous genocide and colonialism and brilliant first person narration, finally, from our final girl herself. 

as with most series finales, there’s not much i can say that wouldn’t be a spoiler, so i’ll leave it at this: if you love wes craven, fear street 2023, the films of radio silence, etc., i need you to pick this series up. it’s a modern classic and i know i’ll be rereading it for years to come.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Violence, and Blood

Moderate: Racism

Minor: Pedophilia, Rape, and Sexual assault

salixtheseawitch's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence and Blood

Moderate: Child abuse

Minor: Addiction, Pedophilia, Racism, Self harm, Sexual assault, and Suicide attempt

mlovesbooks's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark tense slow-paced

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

3.0

Unfortunately, this is the weakest of the trilogy for me. It just goes too off-the-walls crazy.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Child death, Gore, Gun violence, Racism, Blood, Murder, and Colonisation

Moderate: Pedophilia, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide attempt

shedevls's review against another edition

dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

5.0

the only downside to this book is that the series is over and i'm really going to miss jade 😭 she's easily one of my all time favourite characters and, even though i'm someone who can never seem to reread books for a number of reasons, i know this entire trilogy is going to be the exception.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Drug use, Gore, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Vomit, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and Classism

Moderate: Animal death, Child death, Self harm, Sexual assault, and Grief

Minor: Ableism, Child abuse, Confinement, Pedophilia, Rape, Forced institutionalization, Cultural appropriation, and Colonisation

itsheyfay's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Death, Gore, Violence, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Child death, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Racism, Sexual assault, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, and Classism

fkshg8465's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional 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? No

1.75

I get that this book is a metaphor, but I couldn’t get past the plot itself. I feel like I suffered through three books because of a false promise that my life would be altered for the effort. It was nice to see Jade grow up, but really, a last resort kind of book for me - to be read if there’s nothing left to read.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Drug abuse, Gore, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Torture, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Abandonment, Colonisation, and Classism

pbraue13's review against another edition

dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Racism, and Murder

ehmannky's review against another edition

dark emotional medium-paced

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

5.0

I think this might be one of the best conclusions to a trilogy that has ever existed. The incorporation of horror rules (the Scream 3 rules are references explicitly by characters), the emphasis that the Final Girl does not exist without a community and family supporting her, the idea that to truly cure what ails a toxic society requires you to go and right the original wrong that was committed there and that the original wrong is violence against Native people, specifically Native women...everything is flawlessly done. The prose is beautiful, I was so invested in the characters... truly one of the best endings of a trilogy I could imagine. It is ridiculously violent, with so many deaths that are pointless in that if the characters had just listened or been more careful, they would have lived, but again serve to emphasize the point of a toxic culture leading to more and more easily avoidable deaths. 

 

It has been a while since a character's death hit me so hard, but Banner's had me spiraling in the kitchen at 11:30 p.m. I was so, so sad about it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Blood, and Death of parent

Moderate: Rape and Sexual assault

Minor: Pedophilia, Racism, and Self harm

siobhanward's review against another edition

dark mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

 

This was a solid end to the trilogy, and I really liked how things wrapped up. Once again, it was chock-full of horror references that went right over my head, but I still enjoyed finding out what happened to Jade and her friends and how Proofrock finally recovered (?). Jones has a gift for creating narratives that move quickly and and catch you off guard, and this book was a great example of this. My only real critique is that so much happened in the previous books that it was sometimes hard to remember events or who was who when they came up in this book. More than anything though, that makes me want to re-read the series from the beginning and read all three books back to back.

 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Violence, and Murder

Minor: Racism and Death of parent

catsandbookstacks's review against another edition

3.0

*Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for the eARC and physical ARC.* 

Book three of the Indian Lake Trilogy pulls no punches with the esoteric horror movie references and elaborate deaths. I love Jade in My Heart Is a Chainsaw and Don't Fear the Reaper, so I had really high hopes for the final installment.

The first 30% had me riveted but then fell flat. With the change of POV between all the books, the first person point of view in this ended up being my least favourite. Jade wasn't back to her fever dream dialogue of book one but she just couldn't keep my attention with the meandering. There ended up being too many out of nowhere threads to wrap up and I lost my sense of caring. I don't know how I managed to be bored with chainsaws, bears, and "Chucky" but it happened.

Happy to have read and finished the trilogy, but I think I'll be imagining that it's only a duology.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Death, Drug use, Gore, Pedophilia, Violence, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, and Murder

Moderate: Mental illness, Racism, Self harm, Medical content, and Kidnapping

Minor: Ableism, Rape, Sexual assault, Forced institutionalization, and Colonisation