I would like to thank Titan for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Titan

Published – Out Now

Price - £8.99 paperback £6.99 Kindle eBook

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 which wears the faces of the ones they love, tearing a path into their homes, their families and their most sacred moments of faith.

The Only Good Indians, charts Nature's revenge on a lost generation that maybe never had a chance. Cleaved to their heritage, these parents, husbands, sons and Indians, these men must fight their demons on the fringes of a society that has no place for them.

Horror is often about transgressions. The normal world gets disturbed by someone or something truly abnormal. You break the rules of society/folklore then you have to face the repercussions coming your way. Morality doesn’t come into play often sometimes bad things happen to decent people by accident. Life is cruel, the world is not on your side and it can often be deadly and uncaring. Sometimes we know you don’t even have to cross the paths of an elemental spirit for these things to happen. In Stephen Graham Jones’s darkly brilliant The Only Good Indians four young men make a simple mistake that will have devastating consequences not just for themselves but all they hold dear.

The story plunges us in the deep end with a very bad night starting for Ricky a native American mine driller. He ran from his reservation after his little brother overdosed on someone’s sofa and he’s not looked back since. But after leaving a bar he is suddenly spooked by a giant strange elk in the street which sets in motion a truly horrible night. Unfortunate but not uncommon he’s becomes just a standard small new story say on page 12; sadly, for many Native Americans it is not a story they haven’t seen before. Then we move onto Lewis another young man who left; fell in love and found a place to settle into a new life. While doing some DIY a giant elk briefly appears in the living room and he nearly has a fatal accident at the shock of seeing something so bizarre for a single second. Lewis becomes aware that a strange hunting trip that he and his friends made on the last desperate day of the season where they trespassed onto the land of the elders has marked them in some way for revenge. They are now being stalked by something that doesn’t care if they’ve turned a new leaf, sought forgiveness or found a new happiness it wants them dead.

I found this a fascinating and haunting read. In some ways it plays as four connected stories played in sequence. Ricky’s short night of terror sets the scene and is both strange and cruel. You don’t expect an elk to be so creepy but place them in an urban environment and when you realise how this force is playing with Ricky to engineer his doom you realise this enemy is not stupid and actually quite malevolent. In Lewis’ tale we have a fantasy fan who wanted a new life and found one with his wife and dog – his story is key as this is where we find out what actually happened ten years ago – perhaps those close to him are not quiet what they seem.

As the story progresses, we look at the lives of the remaining friends that Lewis and Ricky left behind and their offspring. Graham Jones is a great storyteller and each story has its own rhythm and style that complements the other parts of the novel. One is a frenetic night time chase; another a deeply disturbing trip into someone going mad where the reader gets carried along as that tale reaches its tragic endings and then we have a tale of a night of many bad things happening followed by a haunting race for survival where an amateur basketball game slowly turns into a modern myth of human versus monster. Each on their own is thrilling but the combined effect is that by the end the story really makes you fear for the remaining survivors as we understand now just how relentless this force is. Be warned that for many characters there will not be a happy ending and deaths for humans animals and pets can be cruel and bloody – this is not done salaciously but some readers may feel uncomfortable with the levels of violence and gore in this story.

What really impressed me is way that these stories also helped me understand a little of Native American culture in the twenty first century which isn’t well known in the UK. We get an insight into how modern reservations operate; how families are trying to preserve the traditions; how ancient tribal feuds are still remarked upon (often jokingly) and the casual racism of Americans that still operates today even in schools and sports – it is not a happy story. We realise that particularly for the young men of the next generation they are now almost cursed by a potential expected future of going of the rails and ending up a salutary warning to others – alcoholism, violence and early deaths aren’t viewed as unusual so while what stalks the men is vicious what it is engineering is just going to be the kind of news story many will see briefly on the news shrug at and move on without getting suspicious. The casual way America has engineered these reservations that offer little hope or opportunity to a people who are very aware of the wider culture and land that they are losing is a key point of the book.

Graham Jones makes us see the cast not as villains or careless thugs but four young men trying to work out how to live a decent life – they’re the kind of guys we are used to seeing growing up a little over confident as teenagers, clumsy, loud, cocky but not necessarily bad. In fact, the men we see them become ten years later are more often a tad charming and have or in the process of getting their heads in the right spaces. This makes what happens next all the more tragic. The idea that the world really isn’t going to let people try to escape a bad fate is utterly horrible and for me its why the final story really works because then this one tale focused on a particularly dynamic character who represents the future of the generation really puts everything on the line.

The Only Good Indians is not a comforting read but it is an eye-opening one and at times often disturbing and tragic. Its excellently delivered horror that gets under the skin and holds a light at a society many of us are probably unaware of. The familiar will become eerie and you will be unsettled but you will also become a little more aware of a culture and people that the world has been quietly overlooking for far too long which has created consequences for many generations and will continue to do so although hope is still in the next generation. This is a tale that will haunt you long after you finished it.