Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud: FOUR STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES NOVELLAS, New York Times bestselling novelist delivers scares galore

Monday, October 11, 2021

FOUR STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES NOVELLAS, New York Times bestselling novelist delivers scares galore

NIGHT OF THE MANNEQUINS
STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES
Tor.Com Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$2.99 ebook editions, available now

WINNER OF THE 2020 SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD FOR BEST NOVELLA!
–and–
WINNER OF THE 2020 BRAM STOKER AWARD FOR SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN LONG FICTION!

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Stephen Graham Jones returns with Night of the Mannequins, a contemporary horror story where a teen prank goes very wrong and all hell breaks loose: is there a supernatural cause, a psychopath on the loose, or both?

My Review: Stephen Graham Jones channels his inner brat, not for the first time, and with his usual success. He even mentions in his Acknowledgments that a bestie of his complimented him on his teen-voice...in such a way that he couldn't quite tell if it was a compliment. Of course it was, those are the best kind.

You don't need a book report from me, read the publisher's synopsis. So while Sawyer is caught in the nightmare of this book's reality, the thing that I loved was how often Author Stephen made my mouth-corners lift and little strangled brays of grudging laughter come out of my throat. I could follow every step of this unfolding tragedy, and there were many because, comme d'habitude, Author Stephen uses this tale to write multiple stories with intersecting messages and lessons that you can totally ignore if you want.

Like the best horror/slasher/ZOMG reads, this book delivers Thoughts on America with its hijinks. I can't abide pointless murdery crap. This is NOT that.

Everything about this read was satisfying. I understand why Sawyer was so screwed up and so scared. I get the point of a smart kid being alienated by the creepy way his world works and how easy it is to find solutions in Fantasyland. After all, religious people do it all the time.

The ending is a kick in the balls, a cry of desperation, a moment of pure need unmet. How much better can a story get?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

MAPPING THE INTERIOR
STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES
Tor.com
$3.99 Kindle original, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Mapping the Interior is a horrifying, inward-looking novella from Stephen Graham Jones that Paul Tremblay calls "emotionally raw, disturbing, creepy, and brilliant."

Walking through his own house at night, a fifteen-year-old thinks he sees another person stepping through a doorway. Instead of the people who could be there, his mother or his brother, the figure reminds him of his long-gone father, who died mysteriously before his family left the reservation. When he follows it he discovers his house is bigger and deeper than he knew.

The house is the kind of wrong place where you can lose yourself and find things you'd rather not have. Over the course of a few nights, the boy tries to map out his house in an effort that puts his little brother in the worst danger, and puts him in the position to save them . . . at terrible cost.

My Review: Is this the real life? Or is it just fantasy? (Thank you, Queen, for the eternal ear-worm.) If this is just fantasy, be damned good and grateful you're not able to escape from reality.

To sleepwalk is to be inhabited, yes, but not by something else, so much. What you’re inhabited by, what’s kicking one foot in front of the other, it’s yourself. It doesn’t make sense, but I don’t think it’s under any real compulsion to, finally. If anything, being inhabited by yourself like that, what it tells you is that there’s a real you squirming down inside you, trying all through the day to pull up to the surface, look out. But it can only get that done when your defenses are down. When you’re sleeping.

A twelve year old isn't exactly a kid, isn't a teen yet, can't quite be anything because nothing...literally no thing...is stable, permanent, fully itself in his head. And we all know that Reality is just a shared fantasy. At least, all of us whose lives have changed because impossible, fantastic, unreal things have happened to us.

I figured that’s maybe what had happened to me the night before—my feet had been asleep but I’d walked on them anyway, into some other . . . not plane, I don’t think, but like a shade over, or deeper, or shallower, where I could see more than I could otherwise.
–and–
There was a line of glare in the dead television screen from the lamp and I watched it, blinking as little possible, because as soon as that line of light broke, that was going to mean something had passed between me and it. And, if it came from the right, that meant Dad was done with fixing Dino. And if it came from the left, that meant he was just getting started.

Make no mistake, this story will not leave you unchanged. It might, if you're a particular kind of person, leave you alone with memories you didn't much want to believe were still there. It could, for a different kind of person, be terrifying and strange to mentally see a dead person walking through a room.

Was that I was supposed to do, to save me and Mom? Leave Dino like an offering? Trade him for both of us? None of the cops on my shows would ever do that. Even for the worst criminal. Because of justice. Because of what’s right.
–and–
...he was looking across the room like an animal, right into my soul. His eyes shone, not with light but with a kind of wet darkness. The mouth too—no, the lips. And curling up from them was smoke.

You won't know which you are until you read these hundred-plus pages. Which you need to do.

Because—I had to say it, just to myself—because he’d been feeding on Dino, I was pretty sure. The wet lips. The empty eyes. Dino’s seizures had started before I’d seen Dad walking across the living room, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been making that trip for three or four weeks already, then, did it?

Still here? Go get this story! Scoot!

(But, no matter what, don't do this:

I’d never smoked—you need your lungs if you dance—but after that night, I kind of understood why Mom always had. It makes you feel like you have some control. You know it’s bad for you, but you’re doing it on purpose, too. You’re breathing that in of your own volition, because you want to.

When you don’t have control of anything else, when a car can just go cartwheeling off into the horizon, then to even have just a little bit of control, it can feel good. Especially if you hold that smoke in for a long time, only let it out bit by bit.)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

WAIT FOR NIGHT
STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES
Tor.com
Free! Zilch! No money!

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Wait for Night by Stephen Graham Jones is horror story about a day laborer hired to help clean up a flooded creek outside of Boulder, Colorado, who comes across what could be a very valuable find.

THIS IS A TOR.COM FREE-TO-READ FICTION ORIGINAL. FOLLOW THE LINK ABOVE TO READ IT.

My Review:

...I approached the root pan. It was taller than me by half. This tree had been standing for…a hundred years? At least. Meaning this skeleton was older than that by a little bit.

A dollar sign ka-chinged distantly in my head, and when I centered on it the slot machine of my hopes opened, clattering possibility down into my throat.

Greed is a bastard, isn't it. Blood-price to pay for being greedy changes with the era, but the fact is that you're going to pay when you try to make money off the dead.

Chessup, the latest of Author Stephen's inept, greedy fools, pays a heavier price than usual but gets something I think serious readers everywhere long for in return. All the books I could finally read...and Chessup'll watch TV and drink! Such a waste.

This round goes to Burned Dan. Maybe Julian will have to reckon with Chessup next one. As always, I got so much more from Author Stephen than he had to give. The man's generous like that.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ATTACK OF THE 50-FOOT INDIAN
STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES
Saga Press
99¢ Kindle only, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Sharp, searing, with a masterful use of language, Attack of the 50 Foot Indian is a brilliant satire of the portrayal of American Indians from breakout author Stephen Graham Jones.

A Tale of Two Moons.

Every government of every nation debates what to do when a fifty-foot tall man, dressed in a loincloth and dripping from the sea, appears off the Siberian coast. As the American people puzzle over how he came to be and what to do next, the news outlets start calling the titan “Two Moons,” social media abducts him into the memesphere, and the military, well, they have their own action-plan for dealing with threats to what they mistakenly consider their homeland.

With unapologetic honesty and wit, Stephen Graham Jones cuts to the bone of the stereotypes used for American Indians, showcasing his talent as a humorist and as one of our great American writers in this short story.

My Review: I loved it immoderately.

This was important because now his waist and pelvis and smooth upper thighs were heaving into view between the waves: he wasn’t wearing a thobe or board shorts or muslin pants or any kind of brightly colored wrap or grass skirt—he was in what looked to be a… a loincloth?

“So he is Indian,” a conn officer said, rocking with the submarine like he’d just inserted a quarter for this ride.

“Is that okay to say?” a petty officer listening in asked all around.
–and–
Spotters in helicopters were next, and had to work, but the social media outcry about the irony of using helicopters named “Apache” and “Lakota” and “Black Hawk” generated enough public outcry that these spotters were all reluctantly grounded.

*I* wouldn't make that PC joke, and I wouldn't recommend *you* make that other PC joke, but Author Jones? Go to it! I loved reading 'em, and I enjoyed that laugh more for the fact that the Blackfeet author felt he needed to make 'em. Yes, out of our mouths, my whites, they'd be horrible and offensive; out of his, satirical, biting, facetious possibly, but utterly and totally on-brand. Speaking of things white folks didn't ought to say:

“Not the White House, you idiots,” a former Texas Ranger, current congressman, said, slamming his fist down on a control board. “Can’t you see he’s going for the white women?”

And thereby hangs a visual that I won't spoiler for you despite being damn near bustin' to do so. Tears, my olds, tears of howled laughter streaming down my beard.

Included in your 99¢ purchase price is the utterly different in tone and style first chapter of The Only Good Indians, Author Jones's latest true-life horror novel. The chapter is scary enough to make me feel horripilation even thinking about it. Also included is the story of how this tale came to be, which does a whole lot to explain why it is the way it is. I don't think this guy can be, you know, average. I wonder what the cop thought....

Why be bored? Ninety-nine cents from now, you could be chuckle-stuffed and deeply gruntled. The layers of this half-hour of lunacy would delight the most geological sociologist of a killjoy reader. Texts by and about Native Americans aren't exactly rare these days, but texts that celebrate and satirize and scorn the tropes and people they limn are, and therefore are to be sought out and treasured.

...the story was that {the 50-footer} was going to force his great fingers down into the base of a certain holy mountain, grab on hard, and flip the whole thing over, releasing all the salmon or all the buffalo or all the maize and squash and beans, and it would wash across America from sea to shining sea, re-Indianing it up once and for all, the way it always should have been.

Seek no further, here it is.