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Book Review: The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

Gallery/Saga Press

ISBN-13: 978-1982136451

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

 

The past year, for me, has been the year of menacing deer. After encountering the demonically controlled deer that trap unwitting victims in the Pennsylvania woods in Imaginary Friend and the unsettling antelope shapeshifters in The Antelope Wife,  the vengeful, shapeshifting elk out for blood shouldn’t have surprised me.  Stephen Graham Jones has given us his version of  I Know What You Did Last Summer, taking place on reservation land.

Ten years earlier, four stupid kids stampeded a herd of elk meant to be left in peace, and shot as many as they could. One of them was a pregnant mother. Unable to take advantage of the meat of all the elk they had killed, they left their slaughter behind. After the incident, the park ranger banned them from hunting. It’s a horrifying scene to read, and anger-inducing, but who, and how long, pays for sins like these? Is forgiveness even possible?

Two of the boys from that night escape the reservation and are gone for years, but the first evidently doesn’t go far enough– chased by some white guys looking to pick a fight, he encounters an elk that escalates the situation and is brutally killed. The second, Lewis,  returns to the reservation with his wife for the funeral, only to have things escalate as he enters a hallucinatory, murderous state. The remaining two, Gabe and Cassidy, who have stayed on the reservation, decide to hold a sweat in memory of their friend, which turns out to be a poor decision for everyone involved. It is up to Gabe’s teenage daughter, Denorah, to outrun the Elk Head Woman and resolve things.

I had to read this strange, supernatural slasher tale more than once to understand what was going on, but it was totally worth it. The character development is well-done, the unsettling aspect of the supernatural getting more and more entangled into the destruction of these men and their families really sinks in, and the reservation setting and its conflicts felt very real. It is kind of reality-bending to see an animal that I think of as being generally peaceful out for violent revenge. Yet Graham Jones makes it all work. Highly recommended.

 

Contains: violence, gore, murder, body horror.

 

 

Book Review: The Bone Cutters by Renee S. DeCamillis

The Bone Cutters by Renee S. DeCamillis

Eraserhead Press, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1621052937

Available: Paperback

 

This has been a banner year for introducing stellar new horror writers to the world. Renee S. DeCamillis shows she is one of these with  her novella The Bone Cutters, one of the strangest, but coolest, entries of 2019. Fans of Gwendolyn Kiste or Cody Goodfellow will definitely want to seek this out.

The novella is a wonderful form for horror, giving the reader and author just enough time to grow into the story, fall for the characters, and then leave both with a scar on the soul. DeCamillis’ story touches on elements of the familiar, but makes it her own.

Dory, the main character, wakes up in a mental ward with no idea how she got there, but learns she has been “blue-papered”– committed without consent. In other hands than DeCamillis’, this could have turned out to be just another horror tale in a tired setting, but the story takes a hard left when Dory attends her first group meeting. The people in the group have strange scars signaling that they are  addicts of a new kind. These people are “dusters,” the titular “bone cutters”. who carve into their own– or others’ — bodies, to get high off the dust within. They dig and scrape until they procure enough of the material from the bones to give themselves  a high unknown to other addicts. Because Dory is a “freshie”– a newbie who hasn’t been dusted yet– she becomes their prime target. Dory has nobody to help her until she meets the enigmatic custodian, Tommy, whose past may tie into the patients from whom Dory is trying to escape.

To say more about the plot would give away too much. Just dive in and enjoy.

DeCamillis doesn’t mess around with frills here. Her writing is as razor sharp as the cutting tools the patients use. Not a word is wasted in this lean tale that grabs hold from the get go, and drags the reader through a surreal experience that evokes One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, if written by Clive Barker. The ending arrives way too fast, but it will leave readers jonesing for another hit of this new writer.

A recommended novella to be added to a fine 2019.

 

Reviewed by David Simms

 

Book Review: Rose by Rami Ungar

Rose by Rami Ungar

Castrum Press, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1912327430

Available: Paperback, Kindle Edition

 

Rose wakes alone from a deep sleep, disoriented, unable to remember most of the past two years, and, in a horrific discovery, discovers she is part plant. She is soon joined by Paris, who tells her he is her fiance, and saved her from a stalker who had fatally harmed her by taking her to his greenhouse and casting a Japanese spell on her that saved her life but appears to have gone somewhat awry. Since it’s winter, and freezing outside, as a plant she is trapped in his greenhouse and connecting apartment with no choice but to trust that he is telling her the truth, although observations of his behavior show that he can be disturbingly erratic and possessive.  Despite her memory loss, Rose’s character hasn’t changed, and she finds it difficult to believe that she would have willingly agreed to marry Paris. A search of his apartment one day when he is out leads to the discovery of a secret diary (in Dutch, a language Rose happens to know) as well as his Japanese spellbook. The diary details Paris’s relationship with Rose, but something about it doesn’t seem right. When Paris’ father breaks into the apartment and discovers Rose, he is shocked, because it has been in the news that Rose was kidnapped and her fiance was killed by a stranger who violently attacked them. The two of are caught and dragged away on a cross-country journey where neither of them knows what might happen next, except that it won’t be good.

Paris reveals that his actions toward the women who reject him and their lovers stem from a traumatic incident that occurred when his father sent him to a camp that promised to “make him into a man”.  He has learned to command spells from the Japanese spellbook that give him the ability to take what he wants, control other people, and torture and kill people, and intends to use these on Rose and his father.  However, a cruel, mischief-making Japanese demon controls the spellbook, and after enough mayhem ensues, gives Rose an opportunity to end Paris’ cruelty and madness and save herself… at a price.

The first half of this book is creepy because the reader is getting only Rose’s perspective, and with her trauma and amnesia she is not a reliable narrator. In addition, only the least observant of readers will miss the way Paris gaslights and terrorizes Rose, while at the same time expressing his adoration for her. The setup screams “abusive, violent scenario” and watching Rose come around to this understanding is kind of like watching a trainwreck in slow motion. There’s also some pretty strong and heavy-handed foreshadowing about societal expectations of boys and men and the unintended consequences of toxic masculinity and bullying, which Paris claims is the origin of his behavior.  The second part is where Ungar’s fantastical imagination of ways to torment people comes into its own (although I’m curious about his idea to use of acupuncture needles to cause pain, since they’re supposed to awaken self-healing and cause soreness at the most). He does not shy away from describing the impact of Paris’ spells and insanity. I don’t think I will ever get the vivid descriptions of tormented trees out of my head. One thing I found particularly disturbing was that Paris used a spell on the young teenage sisters of the women he tortured to make them fall in love with him, assist in torturing their siblings, and become his willing sexual slaves (this isn’t graphically depicted, but what you do see is bad enough).

Rose is supposed to be a tale of the supernatural, but with the exception of the protagonist, the supernatural aspect takes a backseat to the human antagonist and his agenda for almost all of the book. And for most of the book, the supernatural terrors are more of an enhancement of the methods and agenda of the villain, rather than the main force driving the story. The ending is pretty close to being a deus ex machina, and left me feeling unsatisfied. However, I did like the character of Rose and her resilience in spite of baffling and frightening circumstances, and I feel like the book successfully spotlighted the damage gaslighting and toxic masculinity can have on individuals trapped by circumstance and those they touch. Ungar successfully evinced feelings of dread in this reader, and while readers of extreme horror probably won’t be fazed, it was more than gruesome and stomach-turning enough for me.

It isn’t often that a novel with a sentient plant as narrator comes along, so Rose is worth checking out just to see what Ungar did with the concept. And although I found the ending somewhat unsatisfying, the journey there with Rose was worth taking.