Number 85 - The Only Good Indians - Stephen Graham Jones

 

I'd heard a lot of good things about this book, but with a TBR pile the size of mine, it's taken a while to get around to it.  My October horror reads month is the perfect excuse.

I'm so glad that I did.  This is the best horror reads month I've done in years.  Not a dud so far, in fact, they seem to be improving.

I can honestly say I have never read anything quite like this.  Except in the broadest terms of a revenge from beyond the grave narrative, this is genuinely like nothing else I've read

The story follows a group of four Native American friends who went hunting together and shot a lot of elk.  Ten years after a particularly successful but disturbing hunt, they find themselves being hunted themselves.

The writing is outstanding.  I have seen a couple of Amazon reviews that say they don't like the way it's written, but those people just don't know good writing when they see it.  

There are four main sections to this book and they are all slightly different in the writing style although the present tense narrative remains throughout.  It's almost a portmanteau novel with very closely linked stories.

The prologue sets us up nicely and then we get a section titled The House that Ran Red. This follows one of the hunters (Lewis) in a very close third person narrative and we soon start to think that he is going rapidly insane... the reveal of what is actually happening is one of the most satisfying scares I've seen in a book for a long long time.  

The third section contains the best use I've ever seen of a second person narrative, dropping us the readers into the character of the spirit/demon/creature stalking the human characters.  It reads normally for the most part, "he does this/that/whatever", but when the creature does something or is seen, it switches to second person - "He sees you across the yard" etc. We feel as though we are the ones hunting these characters, the guilty and innocent alike. This gave that section the most impact for me.

Then we have the closing segment.  I had no idea how Jones could bring this to a satisfying close given what had happened in the previous section but he managed it in absolute spades.  

This is a genuinely emotional and disturbing book.  I have already ordered his previous novel - My Heart is a Chainsaw (which is already a winner just on the strength of that title) and his books have moved into the buy as soon as they come out category.

I can understand why some people are maybe put off by the writing.  It's highly stylised and (especially in the House That Ran Red) there is a lot left to the reader to piece together so it's not the easiest read.  But if you're willing to put in the small effort needed to adapt to the prose, this is one of the best horror novels of recent years.  It's certainly the most original, in terms of style, plot and execution.

Go out and buy it.