The Only Good Indians

I'm giving it a 3.5 stars. It started good, then Lewis' part was a bit hard to follow and confusing. I did like the ending for that part of the story but I felt like it dragged a bit. I really enjoyed Gabe and Cassidy's section of the story. The last act felt a little dragged out too me, but overall I enjoyed the story with the blending of cultural relevance and horror.

Good lord the beginning of this book is the classic minority “victim” jargon about how natives to this day face racism from honky “white boys” which is kind of funny because the author can't stop making subliminal derogatory remarks towards white people but it's okay because he's Native. He also talks about how cops are always looking for a reason to give them a ticket for anything. So white people = bad. Cops = bad. White cops = double bad. Got it.
I finally forced myself to read past 50 pages because so many authors love this book, then I started liking it. The chapters were boring but the endings would give you just enough to keep reading, then the middle of the book is just useless page padding to lengthen the book. One chapter was completely about someone playing basketball and there's several basketball references throughout the book. This is supposed to be a horror book that can get me away from reality. If I wanted to read about a basketball player that thinks he has it rough I'll ask Lebron James to write a book called “I Will Not Shut Up and Dribble” I made it to page 185. Maybe if I would have read more I might have enjoyed it enough to possibly give it an extra star but this is all I can do.

I really wanted to like this book. I read the whole thing instead of sending it to the DNF pile. I just couldn't get with it. The things that I liked were exactly that...liked. I didn't love anything about this book and I found myself confused way too often. The premia was great but I feel it wasn't executed amazingly. I'm just gonna say it wasn't for me and I'm jealous to those of you who rated it higher.

I don't know man.

I'd been having trouble connecting with the voice of the thing, the loping regional vernacular. I'm nearly 100 pages in before its weird paranoid rambling just goes from 0 to holy crap in a few short pages. The following act is filed with so many uncanny contrivances and over orchestrated set pieces that it starts feeling encumbered and I'm almost relieved to have a basketball game to turn to.

Just a little lost I guess. It's weird to frame the native deaths at the hands of angry white bar patrons and police as a reckoning for their own past acts. The innocents made bloody collateral in this karmic war. How the circle gets closed. It's scattered and uneven, the pacing hiccupping along in sporadic bursts instead of truly building tension and clarifying the stakes.

*4.5 stars. Brutal. Bizarre. Dark. Unique. Stephen Graham Jones can certainly write and he is certainly a purveyor of horrific in The Only Good Indians. I was immersed and enjoyed it - even the B-Movie like violence of some critical scenes - very much.

4.5 stars

I have really weird feelings about this book. My main problem was the writing; it was so hard to track and weird to follow along with. For some reason the writing made it so hard for the story to hold my attention. I also had a problem with the way this book was set up. The first half of this felt completely separate from the second half. I would've either liked the story to be just the first half and be a short novella or to have the two storylines tracking alongside each other in some way. Having them divided was just so weird. I don't know, this is such a weird book to explain my feelings on because I really did like the writing sometimes, it could so beautiful, but it would also do this Stephen King-esque thing of rambling about things that weren't pertinent to the story and being super overwritten. I also didn't connect to the characters and I felt like I was supposed to?

Damn SGJ can write. A ripe shocking decent into vengeance and retribution. Elks. A solid horror read even if I feel no closer to narrowing in on what the psychological horror genre really is. #bookclub4m

Loved it.
Hated it.
Almost McCarthyesque in its bleakness.
The horror is real, it grates your skin like a rusty blade.
Really struggled with the writing style.
Felt absolutely nothing when I'd finished.

Wow. This book took some surprising turns and I loved it. You think you know what it's about but you just don't. At least I didn't.

Killing things for fun
ten years, no consequences
now they'll pay in blood.

This book was a mixed bag for me. Whether it would have been better as an eyeball read, I'm not sure. I picked it up as I wanted to broaden my horizons, so to speak. In 2021, I wanted to read/ listen to books that were outside of my normal genres and also that had characters that were not primarily white. So this seemed like a perfect a choice. Unfortunately, it fell flat for me. At times, it was hard to follow the story. To know whose head we were in and when. It felt like it was dragged out longer than it needed to be. That being said, it was entertaining, definitely creepy, and thought-provoking.

The narration was good, I felt the Shaun Taylor-Corbett had a lot to contend with, and he handled it well. His performance was engaging and he gave everyone a unique voice. I'd definitely listen to him again. Unfortunately, the production had some issues and I'm not sure how it got through QA there is static sound throughout the entire audiobook. It was distracting and almost caused me to DNF a few times, but I pushed through as I wanted to see how the story would end.

Not that I ever planned to go hunting but now I'm DEFINITELY not going.

This is good horror.

Minus one star for all the basketball I didn't care for.

While The Only Good Indians turns an excellent spotlight on the themes I???ve mentioned, I do find myself wishing that some thought had been given to the theme of feminism in the context of the American Indian experience, both past and present. While the fact that the Final Girl is a daughter of one of the four who participated in the instigating event says some very interesting things about generational guilt and how young women tend to pay the price and bear the consequences of it, I think it would have been nice to get a little more development for the killer - who is, in fact, a woman. The importance of this is difficult to explain in full, given that to do so would require diving into spoilers, but suffice to say that I wish more time had been devoted to really fleshing her out as a character - though I suspect that, given her nature, there is only so much characterisation that can actually be done, and Jones has done what he can without sacrificing the other aspects that make this novel such a good read.

Full review here: https://wp.me/p21txV-J9

Stephen Graham Jones is a feat of an author. There's so many elements to this novel that still pops up in my mind randomly and for me that's a sign of a great book. However, his writing style outright gives me a headache. I can't pinpoint my finger on it exactly unfortunately and there's plenty of smarter people than myself that can push through the nuance and fully immerse themselves in it but I found it taxing. I will continue reading his work but this and now his novel ‘My Heart is a Chainsaw' and that being a similar experience I will just take my time to pick up the others.

There's something about madness that makes for terrifying stories. You're not sure if the narrator is seeing/feeling/hearing what is truly there or if it is simply madness. This was devastatingly sad, more thriller than horror for me, but tense and nail bitingly good!

This is classified as horror, but for me, it fits better as straight fiction. I didn't think this was scary, but it is gruesome and there is a huge supernatural component to the entire story. Maybe that is the definition of horror.

ANYWAY, I enjoyed this book and the story of why these men are being haunted/stalked by an elk which becomes much more impactful as the story progresses. I appreciated the blending of traditional and modern perspectives on Native American culture and the reconciliation of these modern Native American men dealing with their past and how to handle not only this supernatural force, but life as a Native American in the 21st century.

This book is intense, brutal, bloody, and haunting. Nature and history meld and time overlaps as the past catches up to these characters in the worst, most literal way. Jones writes with such velocity and movement that you just get swept away in the story, kind of like the unstoppable, building cycle of violence these characters have tumbled into. And yet, somehow, Jones threads just enough hope in there, too. Quite a work.

We're from where we're from, she says back. Scars are part of the deal, aren't they?

Four hunting buddies make a mistake that comes back to haunt them, and so much more. I plowed through this novel. Is it horrifying? Yes! From the opening chapter to Lewis and his Elk Woman...it just goes and goes. There is a lot to unpack here, and much of it is about tradition and loyalty. This is my second SGJ read and both times I have been really impressed. He underlies all of this tense storytelling with a sense of humor, alleviating the tension. I appreciate that. His characters are so real, I think I was even a notch more terrified than I should have been by how realistic these characters are. Such a good read.

2.5

4✨ my full thoughts can be found in my summerween reading vlog https://youtu.be/O1cBuAoUMS0

An excellent horror novel with a thoughtful message about cycles of violence. Stephen Graham Jones creates memorable characters and haunting images in this story that will remain seared into my imagination.

Pros: very tense, interesting characters

Cons: is a bit gory at times

Ten years ago four friends went into the forbidden elder's section of the reservation for their end of season elk hunt. Now the spirit of one of the elk they killed is back for revenge.

This is the first contemporary fiction book I've read in years so it took me a while to get into (in part because I'm not conversant with the shorthand for car names so spent some time trying to figure out what the character was talking about). The book is split into 4 sections, each dealing with a different point of view character involved with the elk event.

I wasn't a fan of Ricky and Gabe, but really enjoyed reading Lewis and Cassidy's stories, hoping they could shake the horror coming their way. The pacing was great, really ratcheting up the tension in all the right places.

In the first sections the author makes you doubt what's going on, especially with Lewis. Is there really an elk spirit or is he having a psychotic break from reality? Either way things get horrifying fast. I almost stopped reading it was getting so intense.

While the horror is mostly one of anticipation, there is some gore. Thankfully the descriptions aren't overly graphic. Part of the earlier horror is simply seeing the level of everyday, casual racism natives face. The characters are constantly double checking their surroundings for danger, ignoring slights, conscious of how ‘native' their actions appear, due to criticism from others: natives and non-natives alike, for being both too native and not native enough. There's a strong undertone that no matter what the characters do it will never be ‘enough', whatever ‘enough' even means. Because the characters aren't just up against the supernatural, they're against the biases and prejudices of themselves and everyone around them.

I was shocked by some of the people who died. Which made the ending, that last section, very tense. I DID NOT want that character to die. Not this way. I was on the edge of my seat urging them on, not to give up, just one more step.

The ending fits the story.

If you can handle horror this year (no shame if you can't, 2020's horror enough for a lot of us), this is a good read.

Horror, intergenerational trauma and cycles of violence. And I'm also VERY creeped out.