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Review: The Angel of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham Jones

01 Friday Nov 2024

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫/5

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while (hello, all two of you), you know that I’ve been really enjoying Stephen Graham Jones for the last couple years, and in particular the books in his Indian Lake series. Though I was ravenously hungry for the conclusion to this trilogy, after its release in March I waited patiently for my turn to borrow the audiobook of The Angel of Indian Lake from my local library through the Libby app. It was worth the wait—though now that I’ve seen these characters through to the end, I’m a little sad that it’s over.

Summary:
Jade Daniels is getting by, somehow. With medication for her trauma and a new job as the history teacher at her old high school, she tries to put the past behind her. But it’s kind of hard when, once again, people around her start dying. As she fights for her own life and the lives of those she loves, she’ll have to marshal all her final-girl strength to lay to rest—once and for all—the evil fueling the carnage in Proofrock.

***

Fast-paced, thrilling and more violent than ever, The Angel of Indian Lake pulls no punches. The prologue does a great job setting the tone, and then we’re right back with Jade as she tries to hold it together in order to navigate this new bloodbath. Seeing her (and Letha as well) develop as a character throughout this series has been a real treat. I think she’s one of my favorite paper friends I’ve made on my reading journey over the past couple years. The desire to see how she’ll claw her way out of challenge after challenge makes this book an incredible page-turner

My only frustration here was the number of callbacks throughout the book. It was constantly referencing characters I’d completely forgotten about, and paired with the heart-poundingly fast pace of the plot, it was a little confusing to follow. I think that means I just need to re-read from the beginning, which I’m actually not mad about.

All in all, I thought The Angel of Indian Lake was a brilliant conclusion to the fun and bloody Indian Lake Trilogy—altogether a fully fitting tribute to the slasher genre.

If you’re intrigued by this review and curious about the rest of this series, check out my reviews of the first two books, My Heart is a Chainsaw and Don’t Fear the Reaper.

Review: Don’t Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones

11 Friday Oct 2024

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

I’d promised myself that I was going to take a bit of a horror break…but I couldn’t resist diving back into Stephen Graham Jones’s Indian Lake Trilogy. After a slow-burning but ultimately thrilling origin story in My Heart is a Chainsaw, Jade/Jennifer Daniels is back for a frigid, bloody time in Proofrock. This sequel takes place four years after the events of the first book. After reading it, I’m even more in love with this series than before.

Summary:
The Lake Witch Slayings have made Proofrock, ID a magnet for slasher fans. But Jennifer Daniels, newly released from prison and hoping to find her feet back in her hometown, has left all that behind her. The slasher films, the trivia, the meaning she tried to find in it all — she can see now that it was a defense mechanism holding her back. So when prolific serial murderer Dark Mill South escapes into the nearby wilderness during a blizzard, Jennifer tries to ignore the slasher parallels. Even when the bodies of local high schoolers start turning up, she knows she can only provide practical help as this new massacre plays out. But a Final Girl can only play dumb for so long. If she starts paying attention, Jade may finally see that Dark Mill South isn’t the only unhinged killer stalking the young people of Proofrock.

The structure of Don’t Fear the Reaper is quite different from that of its prequel. Where My Heart is a Chainsaw alternates between Jade’s third-person perspective and excerpts from her slasher-themed extra credit essays, Don’t Fear the Reaper bounces between a wide variety of viewpoints. While we get to hear from Jade again, we’re also treated to the perspectives of familiar characters like Letha and former-Sheriff Hardy as well as a medley of new victims, opportunists and predators all trying to make it to the end of the slaughter. All of this action is framed by the words of a new essayist, a student at Henderson High who’s obviously studied the Lake Witch Slayings extensively.

I had a great time trying to suss out the motivations of the different players in this plot. Naturally one can’t help but zero in on Dark Mill South as the sure threat — he’s introduced right away as a creative killer with a passion for his chosen sport (murder). But beyond him there’s a whole cast of questionable characters whose potential motives muddy the waters: the new history teacher harboring an unhealthy obsession with Lake Witch Slayings; the twins who seem to be at the center of these new killings; the mysterious new essayist who knows so much about not just the murders but also about Jade’s life; the resurrected spirit of Stacey Graves, the Lake Witch herself.

Now the audiobook version of this novel is a special treat. It features a full cast of voice actors, with each of the fourteen POV characters having a unique narrator. Headliners include Indigenous actress Isabella Star LaBlanc as Jade, and Evil Dead (2013) star Jane Levy as Letha. Every performance was high-quality, and they add so much to the tense pace that Jones establishes for this novel.

The Jade in Don’t Fear the Reaper is more mature and self-aware. It’s clear that she’s experienced a lot of growth since the events of the first book, but still has plenty of demons to work out. But if the heart and cunning it takes to make it to the end of a slasher cycle could be characterized as a superpower, then Jade Daniels only gets more powerful in this second volume. I love her stubbornness and her…not fearlessness, but more like her determination to follow through in spite of fear.

I also want to call out one of my favorite scenes, the one where Jade and Letha are having a sort of bonding moment in the Terra Nova house. I love their friendship, and really look forward to whatever kind of -ship it might evolve into in the future.

I still don’t totally understand how everything shook out. There were so many motives, moving parts and cinematic moments. I’ll have to do a thorough reread in order to make sense of all the chaos and carnage. But this book is thrilling and jaw-dropping enough that I’m looking forward to going through it again — and maybe even brushing up on some classic slasher films while I’m at it.

This was a great continuation of Jade’s story, and I loved seeing her character adapt and grow over the events of this second installment. I’ve already read the third book, Angel of Indian Lake, which was released in March of this year. Keep out an eye for my review of that, which should be posted soon!

Review: My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

15 Friday Dec 2023

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

Since making the decision to ramp up my book reviewing earlier this year, I have had one goal in the back of my mind: Read more Stephen Graham Jones. I got a hold of his novel The Only Good Indians over Covid lockdown, and it was some of the best horror I’d read in years. I enthusiastically rated it 5 stars on Goodreads.

So I was incredibly excited to get an ebook copy of his 2021 novel My Heart is a Chainsaw on loan from the Libby app. While it’s certainly not the most polished novel, it does manage to be a bloody, fun and triumphant interpretation of the slasher genre with a main character that I’m ready to follow to hell and back.

A slasher is coming to terrorize the small lakeside town of Proofrock, Idaho. Jade knows it. She’s and expert on slasher films, and she’s familiar with all the signs. The mysterious tourist deaths at Indian Lake are the blood sacrifice that will kick off the cycle. And more bodies will start piling up as the main event nears: the town’s annual 4th of July celebration on the lake. Jade has even met the Final Girl. Letha, the new student at her school, is so beautiful and pure that it’s clear she’s destined to survive the coming massacre. Will she be ready? As Jade uses all her hard-won slasher expertise to try to prepare Letha to ride out the slaughter, she tries not to be disappointed that she’ll only be watching from the sidelines. Sure, Jade’s the one who’s been dreaming of this kind of scenario for years. But she’s just not Final Girl material.

I’m not sure if it’s better to know nothing or everything about slasher films before going to this book, but one thing is for sure: My Heart is a Chainsaw will school you on the genre. References to slasher films are embedded all throughout the plot and in Jade’s dialogue. Between the chapters, snippets of Jade’s own writing show her explaining the elements and nuances of slasher films to her favorite teacher, Mr. Holmes. This gives the reader an idea of just how obsessed Jade is with this sub-genre, and sows a bit of doubt in the reader: is Jade right about what’s happening in Proofrock, or is she just a traumatized kid using movie violence to cope with her lot in life?

However, the story did drag a little bit toward the middle. I found myself skimming through some bits—particularly Jade’s extra credit slasher essays. They weren’t bad, and they gave good insight into the character, but I felt at times like they were something I had to slog through to get to the good, meaty plot parts. Until about 2/3 of the way through the book, it feels like you’re just waiting for the good stuff to start happening. And though the climactic scenes of the book are action-packed, with a resolution that’s technically satisfying, I was a little confused about what was going on. I’m still not entirely sure I understand the who and why of the slasher themselves.

Normally I would give a lower rating to a slow-burn novel with a muddy conclusion, but there’s something about My Heart is a Chainsaw that makes me want to forgive its shortcomings and love it anyway. Like its main character, this book is rough around the edges, but at the same time so unapologetically itself that I can’t help rooting for it. Jade is a survivor, not just of the slasher cycle, but also of the fate that befalls a disproportionate number of mixed-race indigenous kids who fall through the cracks (in the acknowledgments, Jones notes that he was inspired to create Jade after reading of a Native American teenage girl who took her own life after being sexually assaulted). Jade is a messy, weird, stubborn person, and I’m so happy I got to spend a few hundred pages with her.

This is the first book in Jones’s Indian Lake Trilogy, and since I absolutely must know what happens to Jade next, I will be picking up the sequel, Don’t Fear the Reaper, very soon.

Are you a Stephen Graham Jones fan? What’s your favorite SGJ novel? Let’s chat about it, hit me up in the comments or on Instagram.