The Only Good Indians

3.5
The past will sometimes come back to haunt, reminding of deeds forgotten. However, sometimes it comes back with revenge and an eye-for-an-eye on its agenda. So goes the story of 4 young men...haunted by a past...one they want to forget. However that past has come to collect...and there is only one way it will be satisfied.

I really enjoyed the lore and the creepy vibes of this one, however I wouldn't say this was a horror book. I did enjoy the short glimpses of gore scattered throughout, but it was pretty slow and hard to get involved in. Most all the action being placed in the last few chapters had it dragging for me. That being said this would still make for a creepy Halloween read.

Full video review here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZOJoeok10o

This was a great brutal literary horror fiction of revenge and cultural identity. I loved the tension, the build-up and then the release. The hunters become the hunted.

Stephen Graham Jones is an outstanding author everyone who reads horror should know. I enjoyed his book Mongrels and was therefore excited to pick up The Only Good Indians, and it did not disappoint. The Only Good Indians is a thrilling story of the past coming back to haunt you. Jones' is a Blackfoot author and tells the story through the lens of his culture in a way I've never experienced in fiction before. The book is fascinating and horrifying. Highly recommend.

The first half is immaculately crafted creeping terror, and the back half is a gloriously blood soaked and propulsive sprint. Give us a movie!

Initial thoughts posted immediately after finishing:
What an incredible book. That ending was just.... wow.

———–

After sitting on this book, consuming reviews by Indigenous reviewers (check out Native Lady Book Warrior, Et Tu, Brody?, and Weezies Books!),and just surrounding myself with this book I want to come back with some concise thoughts.

SGJ does an incredible job slowly seeping fear into your veins. He brought a new take to the ‘entity/slasher comes back after x amount of years and the group of friends still hasn't resolved their issues' trope.

Within the first act, we get an understanding of what happened during that Thanksgiving Classic and how it touched every other part of their lives. I loved how SGJ toyed with us as readers and gave us a moment to question whether what Lewis was experiencing was real or not. He does not stray away from being gruesome already.

The tension during the second act is wild. There is just this foreboding sense of dread over everything that the guys are doing and they don't even realize it yet. You are just waiting for the shoe to drop.

DO NOT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THAT ENDING! I didn't know how he could possibly end this book. I did not expect tears and my heart rate skyrocketing.

I am looking forward to reading his whole backlist because what a ride! SGJ can freak me out any day.

Hmmm. Mixed feelings on this one. My biggest gripe is that the structure is a bit off. Most of the first half is spent pretty tightly inside one person's head but somewhere around halfway this changes, the perspective pulls back, and we're dealing with a group of characters. This means the book loses some focus and immediacy just at the moment the true nature of what's going on is becoming clear. By the climax you're (supposed to be) rooting for someone who barely featured in the first three quarters of the novel. I was a lot more invested in the first half than I was the second, and that isn't right.
On the plus side, a relentless unstoppable supernatural force is well depicted, and the author gets the tension between quiet moments and full on horror pretty much right. I also liked that it is a realistic (well, apart from that relentless unstoppable supernatural force thing) look at contemporary Native American* lives. It's not something you see very often at all in genre fiction, and it's good to put a different perspective in your head every so often. So yeah, I don't think this is the five star work of genius some reviewers are proclaiming it as, but it's an interesting and worthwhile, albeit somewhat flawed, book.

*there's a line where a character explains why they are called Indians throughout the book, and it's a good point, but I'm in the UK and it's more ambiguous term here. Even more so in India itself I'd have thought...