The Only Good Indians is a three-part
horror novel that deals with the trauma of losing one’s cultural identity with very dark and violent
consequences of supernatural revenge.
Stephen Graham Jones has a wonderfully
readable style of prose. He takes on grief, shame, and generational trauma
themes, weaves in folklore and horror in such a way that the book is incredibly
difficult to put down.
His
character Lewis Clarke would frame darkly comic newspaper headlines in his mind
to showcase his insecurities: “Former Basketball Star Can’t Even Hang Graduation Blanket in Own Home,” and, “The Indian Who Climbed Too High. Full story on
12b.” These headlines get darker and
less comic as his paranoia ratchets up into a crescendo of tension that
brutally breaks in a way that I did not see coming.
"Thrilling, literate, scary, immersive." -Stephen King
The Stoker, Mark Twain American Voice in Literature, Bradbury, Locus and Alex Award-winning, NYT-bestselling gothic horror about cultural identity, the price of tradition and revenge for fans of Adam Nevill's The Ritual.
Ricky, Gabe, Lewis and Cassidy are men bound to their heritage, bound by society, and trapped in the endless expanses of the landscape. Now, ten years after a fateful elk hunt, which remains a closely guarded secret between them, these men - and their children - must face a ferocious spirit that is coming for them, one at a time. A spirit…
The last line in this novel will tear your heart out,
if you can make it past the grim descriptions of legal human-livestock trade
when cannibalism is the only source of meat in this dystopian tale.
The prose is cold and concise, just like the reality
it depicts. Our main character, a human-livestock dealer, takes us through this
new gritty landscape of people raised for breeding and for consumption after a
virus renders all animals toxic to humans. Everything has changed, from not
being able to own pets to how we deal with the death of a loved one.
It’s scarily easy
to imagine this actually happening, which is why this story resonated with me
long after putting it down.
It all happened so quickly. First, animals became infected with the virus and their meat became poisonous. Then governments initiated the Transition. Now, 'special meat' - human meat - is legal.
Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans - only no one calls them that. He works with numbers, consignments, processing. One day, he's given a gift to seal a deal: a specimen of the finest quality. He leaves her in his barn, tied up, a problem to be disposed of later.
But she haunts Marcos. Her trembling body, and watchful gaze, seem to understand. And soon, he becomes…
This is not your average haunted house story––not by a
long shot.
This abandoned house is alive and salivates, built with wood,
bricks, hatred, and soaked in murder throughout the ages. Three women went in,
but only two returned, both remembering a completely different set of details
of victimization by the other. Three years later, the house calls them back to
finish what it started.
Rumfitt’s writing style at times reads like a fever
dream, she even describes one event simultaneously from two different
perceptions. Its subject matter is not for everyone; it highlights the darkest
parts of fascist-born damage, PTSD, self-harm, and internalized shame. It’s
dirty, it’s gory, and it’s fantastic.
Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends Ila and Hannah. Since then, things have not been going well. Alice is living a haunted existence, selling videos of herself cleaning for money, drinking herself to sleep. She hasn't spoken to Ila since they went into the House. She hasn't seen Hannah either. Memories of that night torment her mind and her flesh, but when Ila asks her to return to the House, past the KEEP OUT sign, over the sick earth where teenagers dare each other to venture, she knows she must go. Together…
Some said that the killer couldn't be a local. Others claimed that he was the wealthy son of a prominent Morgantown family. Whispers spread that Mared and Karen were sacrificed by a satanic cult or had been victims of a madman. Then the handwritten letters began to arrive: "You will locate the bodies of the girls covered over with brush—look carefully. The animals are now on the move."
Investigators didn't find too few suspects—they had far too many. There was the campus janitor with a fur fetish, the "harmless" deliveryman who beat a woman nearly to death, the nursing home orderly with the bloody broomstick, and the bouncer with the "girlish" laugh who threatened to cut off people's heads. Local authors tell the complete story for the first time.
