Showing posts with label Stephen Graham Jones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stephen Graham Jones. Show all posts
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.
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.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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?*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:
“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.
“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.
Monday, August 30, 2021
MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW, latest gore-with-more from multi-award-winning horror dude Stephen Graham Jones
MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW
STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES
Saga Press
$26.99 hardcover, available now
Nominated for the BEST NOVEL AWARD—2021 SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARDS! Winner annunced on 29 October 2022.
A 2021 NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR!
WINNER OF THE 2022 LOCUS AWARD—BEST HORROR NOVEL! Watch the ceremony here.
Rating: 4.75* of five
The Publisher Says: In her quickly gentrifying rural lake town Jade sees recent events only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror films could have prepared her for in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones.
“Some girls just don’t know how to die…”
Shirley Jackson meets Friday the 13th in My Heart Is a Chainsaw, written by the author of The Only Good Indians Stephen Graham Jones, called “a literary master” by National Book Award-winner Tananarive Due and “one of our most talented living writers” by Tommy Orange.
Alma Katsu calls My Heart Is a Chainsaw “a homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre.” On the surface is a story of murder in small-town America. But beneath is its beating heart: a biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification, and a heartbreaking portrait of a broken young girl who uses horror movies to cope with the horror of her own life.
Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies…especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.
Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges…a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: There are all sorts of ways to read a Stephen Graham Jones book. Surfaces work...there's always a story hanging around, you won't be wandering lost in thickets of writing-armpit sweat-watered weeds...references work too, you can unpick your memories of the midnight movies or frightfrests your friends threw (or open IMDb if you're really young)...but I think the best way is to make it through as it's happening, to be there as Jade walks across the graduation stage or through walls or up into skies limited only by the basic laws of physics.
The reason I feel that last works best is that, by the time I'd reached the end of this read, and then read Author Stephen's Acknowledgments after the wrenching and impossibly sad final scene, I was so wrung out that I simply accepted that everything I'd just been through had been intended to do what it did to me. As I'm not one to write book reports (ask Mr. Singleton! never turned so much as one in during high school) I'm not going to try to do that at this late date. I referred to this book's immediate older sibling, The Only Good Indians, as "gore with more" and that's an assessment I stand by as applied to all of Author Stephen's books. Part of that "more" is the strangely hypnotic effect of the story arc receding from view...the interstitial "SLASHER 101" essays addressed to the One Good Teacher (of history, naturally) Mr. Holmes are well and truly weirding Your Faithful Reader out. When they switch addressees, it gets even weirder...but in the end, it's painfully intimate and deeply instructive to read them.
In common with all Author Stephen's books, you mere peon of a purchaser have no rights. You're not stupid, you've read some of his other work (at least The Only Good Indians!), you're aware that horror is in store. So surrender your volition. Then the entire experience of being in Jade Daniels's rage-filled head makes all the sense in the world. Because then you're not actually sure if ANY of this is happening in meatspace. Is this an adolescent with anger and abandonment issues responding to the end of what never was childhood? Is this a young woman processing the pain and rage of a life that was wished on her by weaker, worse people than she was? There's a sparkling moment of fizzing delight when Jade meets Letha, a beautiful rich kid whose father has a trophy wife and whose presence in the town of "Proofrock" (think a minute, and hard, for more than the surface snicker; that's all it takes to turn it into a shiver), when Jade anoints her "the Final Girl." That's both when the tale gets grounded in consensus reality and when its ascent into the dark and cold vault of Jade's own head is cemented.
I'm always a fan of gerunding done with panache...Author Stephen does it with panache. At one point, Jade Holden Caulfields across a lawn, and that's me dead cackling. I think there are few greater pleasures than easter-egging your readers' experience...hoping they'll get most of them. I think the fun of reading a book whose author has chosen a niche to write in, one with an astoundingly vast mythos/history/background to explore, is in part the recognition factor of word-play. Yes, it's about slasher-film homage, and no Holden Caulfield isn't slashed to death (though generations of English students have no doubt fantasized that Salinger met that fate after writing it), but he *is* the prototype of the Angsty Teen too smart for easy answers. With everything Jade's carrying around, she's not one whit less burdened than Holden and possibly by some similar troubles given that she's got A Thing growing up strong for Letha.
Adolescent sexuality is always fraught. Parents play their roles in shaping it, either with rule or without them, with clamp=downs or without supervision, there's no right way to ride this roller-coaster. But the issue facing Jade isn't made any easier by her absolute conviction that Letha is The Final Girl, that staple of the slasher film, therefore of necessity being lustrous and almost superhuman in her glorious Otherness. That's how she's supposed to be, right? Jade "doesn't make the rules...just happens to know them all." Her unique and defining obsession with slashers is gong to pay dividends, right? Because she's preparing the Final Girl for her role, unlike most...she won't be surprised by the tragedies.
I think I speak for all readers when I say that the way this blows up can only be described as FUCKING EPIC.
And from that point on, the cigarette boat is away and the pace does not let up.
There are the obligatory twists and turns, the reveals that aren't *quite* reveals, and the accustomed ways that Author Stephen's practiced to get your kishkes kicking and your shvitzer sprinkling. You can't fault the man on delivering the suspenseful goods! If you're in the market for a low-gore delivery of suspense, however, look elsewhere. The way this works is for your expectations to be manipulated so I won't be discussing particulars. Suffice to say I was taken in. More than once. And I'm a pretty well-broken-in reader....
Still, there's no point it wondering why no good deed goes unpunished or how exactly it is that one's expected to walk away from what can not help but feel like a set up straight from a film. The pain and the passionate pull of it will reach some screeching crescendo, won't it, just give it a little more time and it has to!
Nonsense, says the Great God Author.
By the time we've reached the moment when there is no more to give, when the entire story's gone to the most extreme place that it can go...there is something more in the tank for a send-off, and there's no way that you'll believe your eyes when you get there.
Some things just can't be put right. And others can't be left wrong. The issue is...who decides.
Monday, November 2, 2020
AFTER THE PEOPLE LIGHTS HAVE GONE OFF, collection of horror shorts
STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES
Open Road Media (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now
Rating: 4.5* of five
The Publisher Says: This collection of fifteen stories taps into the horrors and fears of the supernatural as well as the everyday. Included are two original stories, several rarities and out of print narratives, as well as a few "best of the year" inclusions. Stephen Graham Jones is a master storyteller. What does happen after the people lights have gone off? Crack the spine and find out.
With an introduction by Joe R. Lansdale.
I RECIEVED THIS BOOK FOR REVIEW FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.
My Review: Sixteen novels, over two hundred stories, and a career of scaring the wits out of the susceptible-to-horror...all of these metrics modified by "and counting," as Author Stephen is not even fifty yet. There is a certain kind of story one expects from this hand, a deeply unsettling look at what it means to be Other and Othered in a world seemingly owned by the lowest, the least worthy. More often than not, white men. More often than not, they're using or abusing or oppressing an Indian (the word the author chooses most often, I suspect quite calculatedly) man and/or his family.
Well, that's not realistic at all, is it.
But what you will get here, you who venture into Author Stephen's mind palaces-cum-stories, is a very thorough grounding in the liminal spaces where consensus reality (eg, the built reality of a rest stop, the hallway of a 3-2 tract house) meets the Otherlands. The spaces between the two are always rife with, ripe and round and fertile with, the kind of stories that begin one way and subvert that in the end. Endings are, to this artist, the culmination and completion of an arc. Underpinning Author Stephen's arabesques of not-always-white reality-cum-fantastically hyperreal action are carefully drawn geometries of story, carefully obscured by inevitable-seeming developments. Story logic is a strong skill of Author Stephen's, I haven't read one piece of his work that isn't absolutely, from giddy-up to whoa, internally cohesive.
This absolutely gorgeous book deserves its very own post. I received and gave it a quick review in 2015; but that was before I was consistently using the Bryce Method of going story-by-story and before I was calling so heavily on the authors' own words to make my points about the entire collection. So now I'm dusting off my handsomely designed and beautifully illustrated paperback copy to deliver myself of these ideas and opinions.
Thirteen shows Author Stephen's deep and abiding fascination with the under-appreciated horror possibilities of small-town multiplex movie theaters. An underused venue, in my opinion, except for him; but the territory here is used to creep me out to the point that I'm actually *glad* that I can't go to movies because I'd need my Young Gentleman Caller to take me to the bathroom and wait for me. 4 stars
Brushdogs is a father's story, any dad out there knows this cold-sweat no-stomach hollow-head panic.
That had been his secret Indian Trick to hunting, back then: to not hunt. The same way you never find your wallet when you're actually looking for it.
Just keep a rifle with you.
Junior? Denny needs you! 3.5 palm-sweaty stars
Welcome to the Reptile House is *seriously* fucked up. A terrifying, violent undead being with its hand cupping the balls of a tattoo artist to compel his care and attention? And those tattoo needles? What a great idea for using them! Sure, why not. I don't need sleep. 3.5 stars
This is Love takes Jonathan and Lucas, a loving couple, where absolutely no one ever *wants* to go. Their damned dumb drama gets blown like smog out over all the strangers at the rest stop. Maybe...maybe it's just the drama-smog...please let it be the drama-smog...
Thinking the bad instead of the good, defaulting to disaster instead of joy, letting the world infect you. And you know better. That's no way to live.
It isn't the drama-smog. 4 stars The Spindly Man is an hommage à Stephen King.
"We were just talking about how if you admit devils," Drake said, "then that means the door must be open for angels as well."
"Or more demons," the spindly man said, sitting back in his chair. "Inside every angel, there's a demon waiting to claw out, right?"
That intonation (read it aloud, you'll see what I mean) and that supernatural-meets-Wednesday feeling perfectly evoke the numinous borderlands that Author Stephen seems to live in and the rest of us are just too scared to. 4 stars
The Black Sleeve of Destiny does for thrift stores what Halloween did for Wusthof sales. Who in their right mind ever gave a second's thought to a Goodwill hoodie with mismatched arms? There's just nothing scary about that image.
...you poor little fool...dark down under there, isn't it. 4 stars
The Spider Box made my head hurt. All things geometry adjacent do, like this damn freaky box with no lid. But this time I was so worried about spiders coming out of my cereal box, or emptying like a spill of oil...well, it doesn't much matter where they go or what they do after that, does it? I'll be in the basement behind the boiler with the gun. Don't come looking for me. 4 stars
Snow Monsters is a weird take on why wishes are incredibly dangerous. I was skeeved from the beginning. 3 stars
Doc's Story just does not come from a normal guy's imagination. Werewolf story only totally inverted. I will say this: I got rid of my ball-peen hammer. Can't abide to think of the thing's shape anymore. 4.5 stars
The Dead Are Not does nothing to make me think the universe is one inch smaller than terrifyingly huge.
He hadn't really followed anybody, he told himself.
It was wishful thinking. He had needed the universe to be large enough to accommodate the remote possibility of Marissa surviving, and so had invented alien tourists who knew, and could divulge, the secrets of the universe.
It was wishful thinking.
So he keeps saying. I'm not that sure. 3.5 stars
Xebico didn't draw me in, somehow. I couldn't find the point where I would be able to enter the story's universe, none of the ambiguities were opening at my knock. Not a bad experience, not a good one either. 3 stars
Second Chances finds horror in the astringent, sanitary world of the lab. Maddy really, really needs to be made to take a vacation for an extended time. I found this more eerie than unsettling, but was all the way in from beginning to de-cocooning. 4 stars
After the People Lights Have Gone Off is a ghost-tale novella of deep and abiding scariness. I will not tell you one thing about it because it is a glittering, sharp-faceted gem from an ancient and malign deity's statue-eye. I will not rish my immortal soul just to convince you to read it. But I will tell you it gets 5 stars and my unprecedented urging for you to get the audiobook...this story should be read aloud.
Uncle goes into the half-mad, half-gleeful widowerhood of a man you suspect was never quite all there:
Later, I settled my red pointer on the late-show host's cheek. It made me feel like a sniper.
And then I checked the living room out.
The walls were warmer behind the set, cooler by the door. The lamp that I'd had on while eating was still comparatively hot. The late show host was on fire. The window was the Arctic, the ceiling indifferent, the carpet the same.
Then the audience on television exploded with laughter.
I nodded in acknowledgement, sighted along the top of the gun down the hall, to my bedroom, but stopped at Theresa's instead.
Everywhere else in the darkness, the temperature was hovering around seventy.
There was a spot right in her doorway, though.
It registered as body heat.
Does that make your vellus hairs go into the full upright and locked position? If not, I bet you don't care about sticking your feet out from under the covers at 2 a.m. Weirdo. 4 stars
Solve for X doesn't fit. Yes, it's dark; yes, it's horror; but it's the first time I've read one of Author Stephen's stories and thought, "duuude". This is more horrible than horror. Not for me, not at all (and not only because of the equations) (though they don't help). 2.5 slightly barfed-on stars
Wednesday, October 28, 2020
THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS, Stephen Graham Jones's exploration of madness among Rez refugees
THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS
STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES
Saga Press
$16.99 trade paper, $9.99 ebook editions, available now
WINNER OF THE 2020 SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL!
WINNER OF THE 2020 THIS IS HORROR AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL!
FINALIST, WORLD FANTASY AWARD: BEST NOVEL, 2021! Winners to be announced 7 November 2021.
Rating: 5* of five
WINNER OF THE 2020 BRAM STOKER AWARD FOR SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN A NOVEL!
The Publisher Says: A tale of revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, Stephen Graham Jones.
Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.
I RECEIVED A DRC OF THIS NOVEL FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: The alert readers of this blog will have noticed that I've been on a Stephen Graham Jones kick here lately. Actually, what y'all don't know is that this is only the tip of the iceberg. I've been *reading* Author Stephen's work for a long time, and haven't reviewed them here because I've bought them for myself. How can I reasonably ask publishers for free reviewers' copies if I'm just gonna go buy 'em and review 'em anyway? What sane businessperson would sign up for that deal?
So my silence is broken by this DRC approval, and I've grandfathered in all the earlier and later stuff because Y'ALL. AIN'T. FOUND. HIM. YET. I mean, in your millions who buy Clive Barker and Stephen King. That's the audience that Stephen Graham Jones merits. Major film franchises. TV development deals. The whole shootin' match.
Because this is top-quality writing, using the bones of the genre fleshed out in new and interesting ways. Psychological splatterpunk. Rez Noir. Gore with more.
And now the literary crowd is making "get-up-and-leave" noises. No, no! Sit down. This book isn't another exploitation of "Noble Savages Get Revenge Via Folklore" (seriously, go to Goodreads and search "the wendigo" to see what I mean about exploitation...monsterporn galore and white people writing from their deep personal knowledge of Native American life as far back as 1910). It is #OwnVoices do horror. The point of #OwnVoices is moot if it is construed by the very white people who celebrate it so vocally if it can't be applied to *sniff* mere genre fiction. (And for the record I'm all down with white people reading more Otherwork. I just find the labeling a bit depressing and not a little bit condescending. Do y'all really need roadmaps to find an interest in people who are-but-aren't like you?)
You are defined by the worst thing you've ever done. We all are. But what if the worst thing you've ever done offended not only the social norms and personal dignity of the community you live in, but the very powers of the Universe your community resides among? (There are different powers in every community...?) What the hell is wrong with you, first...you can't not know what you're doing is offensive when you are sneaking around...and second, when you're going against the Universal powers that little sick feeling in your gut should tell you to break the hell off, abort, and go back to where you were before. I speak from experience. As does our point-of-view character, Lewis. One of four buddies who need to get their freezers full before winter hunger attackes their families, these goofuses trespass on the Elders's land to bag an elk. They do that, alright, so strike one. It's a female, strike two. She's pregnant, strike three. The game police, the tribal councils, AND the Universal powers are all lined up to take turns beating up these criminals.
Yes, criminals. They violated laws and customs galore. But the law and the tribe are, in the end, the least of their worries. One of the lads is killed outside a bar, and that fact barely registers. It's a year or so after the perps committed their crime, but it doesn't feel like it's Retribution. It's sadly common for an Indian man to die violently outside a bar. So no alarm bells go off. Fast forward a decade or so, and Lewis begins to tell us of his slow realizations that Something Is Hinky in his life. His white wife (the epithet "Custer haired" is used and, sad old sexist that I am, that made me laugh out loud) starts to worry about his sanity...Lewis is pretty sure he doesn't have any for her to worry about...and slowly comes to think the crack-up she's experiencing vicariously is more than just the sudden onset of midlife dumbfuckery that almost all men go through.
The actions Lewis performs, and I use the term advisedly, all are geared to show his unseeable enemy that he sees her, he knows the pregnant she-elk and her calf are behind the escalating weirdness of his life even if his wife isn't figuring it out. His entrapment of a possessed workmate, and his subsequent means of dealing with her, is extremely and amazingly revolting, and exactly right: Can a sane man, which we've been building up to wondering if Lewis still is, do that?! And that's the point where a hack writer would just go on and show you his cards. Not so Author Stephen. Your suspense is not lifted. In fact, your suspense is not lifted any time soon.
Then along comes THE SHIFT. Suddenly we're in the elk-spirit's point of view. At first this disgruntled me. I wanted to know Lewis's fate! But in short order, events occurred that caused my attitude to switch back to trusting the author's structural capabilities. While the effect is jarring at first, I suspect that's actually the reason he does it. "Get out of that familiar, comfortable groove, Lazypager, and THINK about this story I am telling you!" When that shift, from passive experiencer to active reader, is accomplished, the story's outliers (Lewis's fellow perps) are served their just deserts in a way that merely toddling along behind Lewis would never have been able to accomplish. Now, there *is* a structural issue I have with the book, the long delay in the elk-spirit's getting revenge after her initial rage; and yes, Author Stephen does indeed provide a reason for it in the text but I find it a bit like a mea-exculpa instead of a reason. From my own point of view, it came across like an "oh SHIT I forgot about that!" add-on. It is a small thing, but pobody's nerfect and I have been yodeling my fool lungs out to convince y'all to get this book and do it NOW, so it's only fair to say it's not the beau ideal after all.
I'll warn you sensitive fleurs that the initial scenes of violence are not isolated events. I'm not going to go into their particulars. I will say this, passionate animal lovers should not even *think* about buying this book. The gore is not, however, ladled on the plate with the abandon of the cafeteria lady gravying your biscuits. It is where it is for solid structural and storytelling reasons. And, believe it or not, this genre trope...the threats to/from animals...is evergreen for a reason: we invest a lot of love in our companion animals, and we work off considerable rage at Life pursuing game animals. These are the two sides of the coin Author Stephen spends. Each, in its proper place inside this narrative, expands the reader's understanding of the true horror of this story. I could pepper this review with quotes from Author Stephen's wry, self-deprecating humor-laden writing, and it's a struggle for me not to, but there is one and only one quote I want you to take away from this inducement to buy and read this book for Halloween:
Death is too easy. Better to make every moment of the rest of a person’s life agony.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
MONGRELS: A Novel by Stephen Graham Jones...one helluva fine YA tale
MONGRELS: A Novel
STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES
William Morrow (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$13.49 Kindle edition, available now
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: A spellbinding and darkly humorous coming-of-age story about an unusual boy, whose family lives on the fringe of society and struggles to survive in a hostile world that shuns and fears them.
He was born an outsider, like the rest of his family. Poor yet resilient, he lives in the shadows with his aunt Libby and uncle Darren, folk who stubbornly make their way in a society that does not understand or want them. They are mongrels, mixed blood, neither this nor that. The boy at the center of Mongrels must decide if he belongs on the road with his aunt and uncle, or if he fits with the people on the other side of the tracks.
For ten years, he and his family have lived a life of late-night exits and narrow escapes—always on the move across the South to stay one step ahead of the law. But the time is drawing near when Darren and Libby will finally know if their nephew is like them or not. And the close calls they've been running from for so long are catching up fast now. Everything is about to change.
A compelling and fascinating journey, Mongrels alternates between past and present to create an unforgettable portrait of a boy trying to understand his family and his place in a complex and unforgiving world. A smart and innovative story—funny, bloody, raw, and real—told in a rhythmic voice full of heart, Mongrels is a deeply moving, sometimes grisly, novel that illuminates the challenges and tender joys of a life beyond the ordinary in a bold and imaginative new way.
I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.
My Review: This novel was born from a short story that Author Stephen collected in After the People Lights Have Gone Off (q.v.). It is a take on the werewolf legend that is, not to beat around the bush, completely and utterly his own and therefore exciting, involving, and deeply relatable. Like his fiction is in general.
What makes this so deeply and deliciously devourable is the way it takes us into the misery of being Othered in our modern Murruhkuh. There's the level of supernatural Otherness, of course; but as a result of this inborn, intrinsic Othering, the people who have it in them are forced to the lowest and least desirable options for survival: Migrant workers are the base of the modern food chain and are treated accordingly. That is, as the slaves they are in all but name. And, if our country doesn't pull its head out of its collective ass, things are about to get a whole lot worse for the Othered.
Different post...sorry. The blizzard coming has me edgy.
What Mongrels does that other werewolf fiction does not do is to make the quotidian decisions of life, of adolescence in particular...what it takes to have a significant other, for example:
Just when I thought I’d figured out what made a girlfriend happy, what would make one stay, I would do something wrong again and that would be that.
“Something wrong, like, I don’t know, like eating their pet goat?” Libby said, without looking over from the game show glowing all our faces light blue.
into the fictional universe's center. That will indeed make a lass's heart colder and her mouth set harder towards one, indeed...and while I'm here, let me note that Author Stephen's choice to use our PoV character without a name (or without one we know) but a shifting series of labels, eg "the reporter", makes his adolescence all the more touchingly obvious and honest. He's himself, he doesn't need a name inside his head; but he's trying on new identites, seeing which ones might fit. Yet everyone else has names, just like our own internal monologues give them. It's another technique to give the adolescent within the reader a strong and lasting handhold into the shifting (!) and unstable reality of not belonging. Of Being Other, being Othered, and knowing in your very deepest parts that you are, in fact, Other.
Not allowing others' Othering of you to take, to resist it internally, to make your Other from a label into an Identity, is one of the central struggles of adolescence. I know because I was Othered by gayness. I know because I watched my entire peer group choose up sides in the culture wars of the 1970s and 1980s, and I was never in the majority. And thus it is that, at *ahem*ty-plus years of age, that I can find myself in this story of a werewolf whose membership in even his birth community is not assured...he hasn't fully made it. He is just...hangin' there.
If blood and gore are hard-pass material for you, by no means should you try this read...or any other Stephen Graham Jones read. If you're thinking this story will scare you and keep you awake, I don't think you need to worry. The atmosphere of dread is situational. It's a spice used to make this a rare and precious dish not another Wednesday-night stew. I think the most important question to ask yourself before picking it up is, "how much longer do I want to ignore how many wonderful stories there are that I think I won't care about?" Break your cycle here. Learn about the reality of Othering and its huge personal and societal costs without being smacked around by Facts. Let the Truth work her mystical wiles on you instead.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)