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A review by magicalghoul
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
I picked up this book completely blind just based on the fact that it was horror and that it was being heavily talked about. I wasn't familiar with the author before this so discovering as I read that
it was basically a slasher featuring a revenant elk was a wonderful surprise.
The quasi stream-of-thought narration took me some time to grasp but the visuals were really good. That coupled with the way it worked up the tension made me feel like in the middle of a slasher movie, and I could see this being easily adapted as one— There's more than one scene that I couldn't help but picture as a cinematic in my head, specially when they had tinges of other well known horror tropes.
Like Denorah sitting in class and looking out the window only to find Elk Head Woman there, bringing up a similar —and often emulated in horror media— scene with Laurie Strode and Michael Myers from the Halloween franchise, in case anyone was doubting at that point that Denorah would be our final(s) girl
Basketball being so prominent kinda threw me off but that's on me for not being big into sports, although I see what it was going for. And if the match at the end lost me, the following scenes got me back anyways and that's what matters.
And God, that ending!We love closing the cycle of violence and we love women being compassionate to other women and we absolutely love Denorah, whom we're welcoming to the final girl hall of fame.
The fact that I kept at it despite my HUGE aversion to animal death is a testament to how good this book is, I think. It made me feel like I needed to see it all to the the end, and when I put it down between reads it kept haunting me— I saw echoes of it in other media and situations, and I suspect it will keep happening.
After this I'll be reading more books from the author in the future and also going down the list of influences he mentioned in the acknowledgements, that's for sure.
The quasi stream-of-thought narration took me some time to grasp but the visuals were really good. That coupled with the way it worked up the tension made me feel like in the middle of a slasher movie, and I could see this being easily adapted as one— There's more than one scene that I couldn't help but picture as a cinematic in my head, specially when they had tinges of other well known horror tropes.
Basketball being so prominent kinda threw me off but that's on me for not being big into sports, although I see what it was going for. And if the match at the end lost me, the following scenes got me back anyways and that's what matters.
And God, that ending!
The fact that I kept at it despite my HUGE aversion to animal death is a testament to how good this book is, I think. It made me feel like I needed to see it all to the the end, and when I put it down between reads it kept haunting me— I saw echoes of it in other media and situations, and I suspect it will keep happening.
After this I'll be reading more books from the author in the future and also going down the list of influences he mentioned in the acknowledgements, that's for sure.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Racism, Violence, and Vomit
Moderate: Child death, Racial slurs, and Police brutality
Minor: Drug abuse
Descriptions of gore: All over the book in every death caused by the antagonist. This includes women and children.
Animal cruelty/harm/death: Protagonist shoots a calf that turns out to be pregnant when he later opens her up. It doesn't die at once and both the killing and the gutting process is described.
-A dog almost chokes to death and is later finished off by the antagonist— there's explicit descriptions of the gore.
-Descriptions of gored dog corpses.
Animals attacking people: The dog bites the cheek of one of the protagonist's friends when they rescue him from choking.
-Implication of horses stomping a teen to death.