Jesus Christ this book is badly written.

I was intrigued initially by the concept of a slaughtered elk seeking revenge - I am a vegetarian after all - but nothing about this turned out well.

My main issue with The Only Good Indians was the choppy writing style. It might have worked in first person or in a diary format, but in this context it just came across as unedited.

The pacing was so off, too. It was incredibly unbalanced, with the first chapter acting as an intriguing prologue, the following chapters building up to something, and then dropping back down to a slower pace than last time.

Historically, I don't enjoy reading about sport in books. I hated it even more in this one given the context. What was with that basketball match? Was there some symbolism I was missing?!

Honestly, I don't think weird horror is for me. I am definitely the most picky about this fenre. Nothing about this book worked, from the revenge story to the sloppily written female characters. The female elk wasn't even written well.

I would give this one a miss, although it does work for some people so perhaps read some other more positive reviews before you decide.

I've been intrigued by Stephen Graham Jones's other books but if they're all written like this I don't think I will bother.

I really enjoyed Stephen Graham Jones writing style and the first half of this book had me completely hooked. I loved the cultural themes and the native folklore woven through this often gory horror story. I was very quickly engaged with Lewis and Peta as character's and I was transfixed by this unusual story unfolding. However something happened at the half way point that sucked some of the imagination out of it. And although I was still fully invested in what would happen to the remaining characters the plot had lost steam. I didn't enjoy all the basketball references, it seemed too late in the book to shoehorn those in and if they had been part of it from the beginning it may have faired better. So, in the end definitely a book of two halves. I'm certainly intrigued to read more of Stephen Graham Jones' books in the future.

There is a lot of impressive writing here. Stephen Graham Jones's grasp of horror is exceptional, from haunting uncertainty to horrifying violence. It's a pitch dark plot as a group of American Indian men being stalked by an unknown and bloodthirsty foe. Definitely proceed with caution are there are graphic scenes of violence against humans and animals, all essential to the story but very difficult to read, nevertheless. The way the author uses horror mixed with folklore to explore the nature of the Urban Indian and the clash of the modern world and assimilation with reservation life is delicately and cleverly done and the relentless pursuit over a past crime is genuinely chilling. But it's the pacing that lets it down for me. There are some scenes told in such excruciating detail that the tension and all the accumulated horror dissipated into boredom when faced with pages of blow-by-blow basketball plays. It was such a shame and obviously partly personal as I'm not interested in sport but it made the end fall completely flat and was not the only time that I wondered whether certain scenes were better suited to film or TV. Still a remarkable achievement and even though horror is not my genre, I will come back to Stephen Graham Jones.

I listned to this on Audio so I dont know of the Audio and the narration came across as scary and horror like. I may reread this book later in the year either on ebook or pick up a physical copy.
I thought this book was very intresting plot wise and complex I really enjoyed the Native Americian aspect to this book and it was very intresting to listen to.
I did get emotional towards the end as I looked most of the chractures there was good suspense and I freaked out when the narrator mentions Elk Heads etc description of things was very gruesome and eery in parts.
Sometimes I had to relisten to parts as I got confused in some places.
Very well written and narrated
4.5 stars from me
Very diffrent take to Horror from a unique perspective. Love the cover very haunting
I loved the narrator for the audio book
Thank you to the publisher netgalley and the author for a review copy of this book

What a magnificent read! Well done, SGJ.

Unfortunately(?), I decided to enjoy this one without taking any notes for my review. That's the excuse I keep telling myself for not coming up with a fancy review. The truth is that I'm not in the right headspace at the moment to write a regular review.

I knocked one star off because... sports. It bores me to death to read about sports (looking at you, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon).

If you've been considering reading The Only Good Indians, definitely take it for a spin.

Huge thanks to the lovely people over at Titan Books and NetGalley for the copy.

I'm afraid I found this rather messy and difficult to get into - not for me but I have heard lots of buzz about it and am sure it will find its audience.

“When the world hurts, you bite it, don’t you?”

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones is the incredible horror story about a group from the Blackfeet reservation. Ten years ago, four young men shot some elk then went on with their lives. It happens every year; it’s been happening forever; it’s the way it’s always been. But this time it’s different. Ten years after that fateful hunt, these men are being stalked themselves.

This novel has been receiving a lot of praise and rightly so. I was unable to put this novel down. Not only is this story haunting, it encapsulates the elements that make a chilling horror story. Whilst reading I had to put the book down to process what was happening and the sheer power the words themselves had in describing these horrors.

The story digs deep into the indigenous culture and it amplifies the issues faced over many years. The main characters are a group of young men and the story paces through the impact that the first hunt had on the rest of their lives.

The foreboding dread was met with a punch to the gut when the reality of why the events were happening was revealed. I felt anxious on so many occasions, the turmoil and despair had me gripped and like a horror movie on the screen, I just couldn’t look away and wanted more.

I highly recommend everyone give The Only Good Indians a read. It has become one of my memorable reads of this year.

Even though I knew that I was in for a wild ride, I still wasn't fully prepared for how brutal this book was actually going to be.

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.

Now, I am still relatively new to horror, but I personally thought that this was a super creepy read. Animal horror, violence, and gore are topics that I usually really struggle with in books, and this was no exception. Some scenes were horrific and honestly really freaked me out like mad, but I (somehow) still enjoyed the creepiness. I must admit that I much preferred the structure and pacing of the first half of the book in comparison to the second. The first half felt like it had a bit more of a build-up, whilst the second half was much more rushed. Some big topics were brought up in such a subtle yet powerful manner. I was taken back by some of the messages portrayed as I wasn't expecting it from a horror novel. However, I just want to highlight that I am not an own-voices reviewer, so I'm sure there are themes and discussions that I may have missed.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I loved the story and it was great to read out of my comfort zone!

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

I struggled with this one at the beginning but once i'd gotten in to it I found myself absolutely devouring it. A beautifully written unique and haunting horror novel that explores identity, trauma and the cycle of violence.

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher Titan Books in exchange for an honest review.

I've not had the best experience with this author's books in the past but I was very intrigued by the premise of this book. The Only Good Indians is a powerful tale of Native American culture and the inevitability of nature, featuring some truly great horror moments. Four young Native Americans break into an area where they're not meant to hunt and end up killing a very young female elk. Years later, things begin to happen to them one by one as they start believing they see a monster.

The strengths of this book really come from the moments of horror. I was surprised at several points and really excited by the directions the plot took at times. Unfortunately this was also a bit of a flaw. The book chooses to focus on each man one at a time (for the most part) which means I would get very into a storyline only for it to end abruptly and for the book to change. I was definitely most into Luke's plot and I very much wish that had been the focus of the whole book.

On a less personal preference note, I do struggle with this author's writing. I have only tried to read one other book by him and I didn't get very far because I found it very incoherent and difficult to follow. The Only Good Indians sadly also has this problem, though thankfully to a much lesser extent. Most of this book's plot is coherent but there were large chunks were I just couldn't work out what was going on, and not in a good way. The style is very reminiscent of magical realism in that sense so it might be a genre blend that just isn't to my taste.

Having said that though, I did very much enjoy the majority of this book. It has such a unique plot and one that is executed really well for the most part. It's been a while since a horror book has literally made my mouth drop open in shock and those moments will stick with me for a long time. I definitely recommend this to any fans of horror and this has prompted me to give this author another try for sure.

Overall Rating: 4/5 stars

If this were a 1970s horror B movie, it would be called “Revenge of the Elk Head Woman”, which more or less sums up its central narrative idea. Just before Thanksgiving, four friends – Ricky, Lewis, Cassidy and Gabe – all members of the Blackfeet Nation, take part in an elk hunt, which leads them out-of-bounds to an elders-only area of the reservation. On that fated day they do not just break the law. They go against a more ancient, natural code. In the heat of the kill, Lewis shoots a young, pregnant elk cow. Her death is slow and painful. Lewis, immediately feeling guilty, promises the dying animal that nothing was going to spoil…no part of her could go to waste. He tries hard to keep his word – ten years later, despite having settled down with a white wife away from the reservation, he still holds on to the cow’s fur. Evidently, this does nothing to appease the soul of the elk, or whatever spirit animates these creatures.

The four friends are marked by this deed which, tragically, is less heinous than plain unfortunate. The novel starts with Ricky’s death at the hands of a group of drunk, white roughnecks, hardly a supernatural event. Yet, in his last moments what Ricky glimpses is the unexpected image of a great herd of elk, waiting. It is a warning of things to come. A decade after that memorable hunt, the elk cow returns as half-human, half animal monster, to seek out the three survivors and mete out her revenge.

All supernatural tales expect us to suspend our disbelief, but they still tend to follow an internal logic, one that is easy to fathom in the context of the story. The shapeshifting entity created by Jones, however, is hard to pin down; the mechanics of its manifestations difficult to explain. Is the Elk Head Woman an anthropomorphic, physical entity? Is it a human reincarnation of the killed elk? Is it some sort of collective representation of “elkhood”, engaged in a cosmic battle between Man and Elk, hunters and hunted? Or could it be a projection of guilty consciences? Are its powers merely physical? Can it mess with its victims’ minds and with Fate itself as is suggested by some of the narrative twists? The Elk Head Woman is all this and more. It is significant, in fact, that when the characters in the novel come across this monster, their first reaction is rarely fear – and is more commonly surprise and confusion. Jones here takes a risk which pays off. The elusive nature of the Elk Head Woman could have made it seem less immediate, less threatening. But it doesn’t – if anything, it adds to its/her creepiness.

My reference to B Movies isn’t coincidental. There are some stomach-churning scenes which are clearly influenced by splatter movies and which, to be honest, are not generally my line of horror. But I still found the novel gripping, especially its concluding chapters and the final, nerve-racking showdown between the Elk Head Woman and Gabe’s teenage daughter Denorah.

What makes this novel special is its use of the indigenous context and its insightful social commentary about the challenges to Indian identity. Its characters grapple with what it means to be Indian in a contemporary society. They bear the weight of injustices suffered over the centuries and the white prejudice they still face. They feel bound to honour their tradition while struggling to understand how to do so in the here and now. When Gabe and Cass decide to hold a traditional sweat, or purification ceremony, Gabe asks whether it may be held at night. To which Cass replies, “Let me check the big Indian rule book…” This exchange is typical of the dark wit which flashes (alongside the violence) throughout the novel. But it also highlights a central theme of this book – what is it that makes “a Good Indian”?

Significantly, Stephen Graham Jones is himself Blackfeet and has first-hand knowledge of the world he portrays and the challenges facing young Native Americans. In this novel, the Indian context is not just opportunistic cultural appropriation or an exotic backdrop to a horror yarn, but is skilfully woven into the fabric of the narrative and animates its social concerns.

Four native American men stumble across a cluster of elk whilst hunting, what happens next angers something primal yet powerful. Ten years pass and a supernatural entity wants vengeance for their transgression and decides to turn the tables on these men.
The writing in The Only Good Indians is stunning, we're provided a view of into the lives of modern Native Americans and their struggles with cultural identity. This is a great book, although the pacing was a bit slow at times it was still engrossing, heartfelt and unforgettable.

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.

Thank you, Netgalley and Gallery/Saga Press for providing me with an ARC of this book. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

The book follows a couple of characters and we get to learn their stories as we move forward. The story is about a supernatural entity that hunts 4 Indian men for something that they did in their past. The story combines speculative fiction, horror, and social commentary wonderfully. Lewis an Indian man who left the reservation at a young age moved to the city working as a postal worker. He and his wife were leading their life happily when some hallucinations and certain supernatural events take place that leaves him unsettled. With him dealing with the guilt of what happened ten years ago and struggling to understand the forces that are at play in his life it was easy for the entity to draw him out. He loses his sanity slowly and gradually leaving behind a man who is unstable to the point where reality is blurred. The book was interesting and I did like how it concluded as well. I had issues with the writing and at times found difficulty in keeping track of things without losing the momentum. The writing was difficult to follow with the flow of the story being erratic made it a challenging read for me. This is not just a straight-up horror, but rather elements of horror being woven into literary fiction. I have no idea how to say anything about this book without spoiling it. The story is going to give you the creepy, horror vibes with a lot of things to think about as well. The message of everything coming full circle and that epic climax all lead to a bone-chilling read filled with a pure vengeance from the unlikeliest entity possible. I enjoyed the story and gave a 3.5 stars rating for this book. The rating is low because of the writing and my experience with it. I still think it's a great read for people who loves horror and books that blend social commentary along with horror. I recommend checking it out. It's unlike anything I have ever read before.

This is the kind of bone-shaking, gut-wrenching horror book that stays with you long after you’re done. It is dark and devastating, but also full of humour, warmth and heart. The writing is masterful and layered. The characters are faced with supernatural consequences for what they have done, and it is both terrifying and heartbreaking. Some of the visceral images in this book are seared into my mind.

The book explores the way identity is intertwined with traditions, and how it feels to lose that connection. It shows how racism, both casual and intentional, adds to the horror in their lives. The author portrays the cultural nuances of Native American traditions – particularly of the Blackfeet Tribe – without simplifying them for the reading masses. It makes the story feel deeply personal and authentic in a way not often seen in the horror genre.

An overarching theme in the book deals with intergenerational trauma, and violence against land and living creatures. The ending is surprisingly hopeful. It speaks as to why the violent cycle must end, and why the healing must begin. Overall, The Only Good Indians is an unflinching, haunting story of loss, regret, and redemption, highly recommended!

Dark, gripping, full of mysteries, and relentless in its pursuit to keep the reader at bay from the truth!

Whilst residing firmly inside the horror genre The Only Good Indians is also a great provider of Native American representation and information, which made me fully aware how few such voices I have upon my shelves!

Stephen Graham Jones is a Blackfeet Native American author and I am looking forward to discovering more of his own voices work. He fortunately has a great back catalogue for me to do so with!

I'm really sad to say that this one just wasn't for me! Due to the more literary writing style, I had a tough time getting into this book, and some of the choices the author made, especially after the halfway point in the book, didn't click with me. Just as I was starting to get really invested in the story, everything changed and I was pulled right out of it.

I think a lot of readers will get value from the Native American representation -- which was incredibly well done-- and should absolutely give this one a try if they're looking specifically for that kind of OwnVoices rep. I really enjoyed the descriptions of these characters and their lives, however it wasn't quite enough to overcome the difficulties with the writing itself.

It's such a shame because I think this book will be a very marmite read for people -- I think they'll either love it or it really wont work for them. If you're looking for a full-on horror tale, this might not be the book for you. However if you're after Native American rep, you should give this a try.

CW for gore, murder, suicide, and mutilation. MAJOR warning for animal harm -- there is hunting in the book, which works great within the context of the story and the cultural representation, however there are some seriously graphic killings of dogs that were incredibly difficult to read and didn't feel like they added much to the story.

This was a really surreal and creepy book that absolutely pulled no punches. Following an Elk hunt that ended badly, 4 childhood friends find themselves and their families in danger from a spectre bent on revenge. Firstly, I loved the way this book was structured. We follow the individual story of each of the four men, which leads to a series of bloody crescendos, ramping up the tension and suspense before bringing things back down again. I thought that Stephen Graham Jones did a fabulous job with the atmosphere throughout the narrative, ensuring a sense of pervading dread that never dissipates. From the outset, the reader is thrown into a world that is bloody and brutal with a surrealist tone that I really enjoyed. I also thought that the author tackled some really difficult topics, such as systemic racism and poor provision of healthcare for Native Americans with depth and nuance, all while maintaining a breakneck speed. My only criticism is that I would have enjoyed a little bit more ambiguity rather than the definitive answer we have for the action, but overall, I found this to be a really compelling narrative that kept my interest throughout.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I’m having a hard time writing this review of Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians. Sometimes you have to step away from the novel a little bit to let your thoughts simmer. I had to do that big time for this story.

In its essence I think the story is incredibly strong. It’s about four Indigenous Americans in their 20s who go hunting a forbidden part of the reservation that is only reserved for the elders. They find a pack of elk there, and mayhem ensues.

They think they get away with it, but when they’re in their 30s they come face-to-face with an entity bent on revenge.

It’s a horror story as old as time, but it works. I will never look at an elk as a harmless animal again, that’s for sure. The effect it has on the four men is all different and that’s where the great storytelling comes in. The book is propelled forward by gruesome horror scenes. I also enjoyed the fact that this is an #ownvoices story, which gives the reader a good insight into the Native American culture.

However, it’s also stopped by lengthy passages about the characters’ thought process and nothing in particular, really. It’s like riding a rollercoaster where sometimes the build up takes a bit too long.

The reason I had to take some distance from the novel, is because I didn’t grasp the full concept. I couldn’t really keep up with the author’s thought process. I have this feeling it’s me and not the book though.

This together with the slower parts of the rollercoaster made my reading experience a bit less pleasant than it could have been. I’m giving this book 3.5 stars and I’m rounding it up to 4, because it’s a solid read nevertheless. At the end of the day, all I will remember is the interesting revenge story and the horrible scenes that are written so incredibly descriptively I will not forget them very easily.

Stephen Graham Jones combines psychological, supernatural and body horror with an immersive and literary examination of Native experience and beliefs.

The Only Good Indians deals – with a dream-like sense of inevitability – with the fall-out from a hunting trip gone wrong. Ricky, Lewis, Cass and Gabe are four very different Blackfeet men, born and raised on the reservation, taking their last opportunity to hunt together that season. But the elk are all in the section of forest reserved for the elders, and they transgress – crossing the boundary and shooting wild-eyed with “buck fever” at an enormous herd. In the frenzy, Lewis kills a yellow-eyed and pregnant female elk who seems to refuse to die; he forms a connection to her. The trip costs them dearly – losing their rights to hunt on reservation land – and, ten years on, Lewis struggles with a profound sense of guilt.

The novel doesn’t open on that story, however, in a neat bit of background mystery that had me turning pages wanting to get to the bottom of “what happened with the elk”. Instead, it starts with Ricky, who’s left the reservation to find work after his little brother took an overdose, “the television tuned to that camera that just looks down on the IGA parking lot all the time… it was just a running reminder how shit the reservation was, how boring, how nothing”. The immersion into Ricky’s point of view and the pervasive disadvantage and racism experienced by all four characters is immediate, and we stay with Ricky just long enough for an elk to get him into a fight which ends with him beaten to death by truckers, “Indian Man Killed in Dispute Outside Bar”.
The reader is sucked into the world of the novel. Jones is Blackfeet Native American himself, and his portrayal is meticulously detailed, from the blend of traditional and modern in Gabe and Cass’s sweat-lodge (built from tent frames and covered with layers of sleeping bags) to the way each character’s experiences are mediated not only through their cultural heritage but their own unique relationship with that heritage. He tackles perception and stereotype head-on, making clear that there’s no one way to be a “good Indian”; an often moving reverence for traditional culture is cut through with recognition of the nuance which portrayals of modern Native American life sometimes lack.

Lewis, our narrator for the first half of the novel, has left the reservation and married a white woman, and is full of wry asides about the stereotypes: “he deserves some big Indian award for having made it to thirty-six without… diabetes and high blood pressure and leukemia… for having avoided all the car crashes and jail time and alcoholism on his cultural dance card.” There’s not a lot of hand-holding when it comes to traditional Blackfeet culture or life on the reservation – Jones rarely explains what his characters take for granted – and the novel is stronger and more inviting for it. I found this aspect really came into its own when the narrative took us back to the reservation and into the head of Denorah, Gabe’s teenage daughter. In a very deft sequence, we hear her views on how “[Indians are] old time plow horses, all just waking straight down their own row, trying not to see what’s going on right next to them” then see a scene of near-devastation: men missing, the sweat-lodge on fire, chairs smashed up, horses and dogs gone. Denorah’s acceptance of that scene as unworthy of suspicion is absolutely spine-chilling, as she makes small talk and shoots basketball with a strange woman while the reader positively bathes in rising dread; Denorah is the “old time plow horse” she dismisses, and in life-threatening danger as a result.

Jones has a real gift for taking the reader into the heart of a character: Ricky, for example “knew that, had he been around back in the days of raiding and running down buffalo, he’d have been a grunt then as well. Whatever the bow and arrow version of a chain monkey was, that’d be Ricky Boss Ribs’s station”. Denorah, who’s smart and single-minded and ambitious, doodles her own grades in a spiral notebook “with the lightest pencil. It’s her way of reminding herself that they’re not stable, that they can change in an instant.” This deft touch is applied to secondary characters as well, and there’s a particularly stomach-turning encounter between Lewis and the police which drips with understated menace, “that thing rising in [the officer’s] voice that isn’t so much saying this call can go bad, but that he’s kind of hoping it will.”

This horror, firmly grounded in the challenges of being “other-ed” by modern white American culture, occupies the first third of the novel. I found it a relatively slow start, drawing extensively on Lewis’s own rising sense of guilt and paranoia about the elk, and its success largely depended on the reader’s investment in that character. For my part, although Lewis was strongly drawn, I often struggled to understand his decision-making and preoccupations – which may, after all, be the point. He’s receiving a series of visions and portents that tell him he’s being haunted – or hunted – by an Elk Head Woman, an entity connected to the elk he killed ten years ago, and in his rising panic he makes pretty big (and ultimately tragic) leaps of connection, for example thinking his wife Peta is the elk because she’s a vegetarian. However, this became a fertile source of horror once it was clear that Lewis would stop at nothing to remove the perceived threat of the Elk Head Woman – and the ante was neatly upped when Lewis’s fears were shown to be real and justified.

The vengeful supernatural creeps into the novel slowly. We see an ominous herd of elk standing silently to trap Ricky with the truckers at the beginning of the novel – and Gabe says jokingly on the phone to Lewis: “it’s haunted, man, don’t you know?” When Jones introduces the apparition of the Elk Head Woman, she’s sparingly drawn (“a tall top-heavy form”, reminiscent in its lightness of touch of Michelle Paver’s Dark Matter, and the “wet round head” of her revenant trapper). Matters escalate, and in a beautiful reverie-like sequence the entity is “birthed” out of Peta’s corpse to become corporeal and return to the reservation for vengeance. She walks – she doesn’t run – and the novel is full of sideways sightings of that entity closing in on the characters, like It Follows, taking us to a horrifically tense sequence in which Gabe and Cass are in the delirious claustrophobic heat of the sweat-lodge, unaware of the entity waiting outside to pick them off one by one.

For me, one of the most successful aspects of the novel was the way horror intrudes unexpectedly – and graphically – onto the page. Jones doesn’t show his hand early on (except in the portrayals of animal death and mutilation – dog lovers beware), leading the reader into a dreamlike world of glimpsed entities and portents, before presenting sudden and unsparing portrayals of physical violence and body horror. Lewis is convinced the Elk Head Woman will reveal herself by her “ivory”, so cracks open the jaws of his victims and prises out their teeth looking for it, turning himself into the monster that (with his heartfelt promises to the dying elk) we know he isn’t. Peta dies an abrupt and horrible death; other women connected to the four protagonists are summarily dispatched – or are they? – by the Elk Head Woman – and in a truly arresting sequence, Cass colludes in his own death-by-beating, “the muscles closest to [his] shin bone… the last to die”. While I found some of the reactions and leaps of logic made by the characters to be occasionally implausible (it seems it only takes a jacket and long dark hair to fool these guys), the cumulative effect is an assault on the senses. Denorah gets her own extended sequence facing down the Elk Head Woman from the basketball court to the snow-covered woods, via the smouldering pit of bodies the sweat-lodge has become, and is a Final Girl (even called “Finals Girl” by her father, presumably in a tongue-in-cheek nod to this trope) to be reckoned with. She survives because – as her coach has often told her on the basketball court – she wants it the most. Unlike the four men at the novel’s core, she doesn’t accept the inevitability of the elk’s vengeance.

The Only Good Indians takes its time in revealing the supernatural at its core, giving the reader a lot to enjoy while that mystery unfolds, particularly the perfectly detailed portraits of its characters, their thoughts and beliefs, and what being a “good Indian” means to them. Once the gun is fired, however, the book goes off – with violence and vengeful entities bursting in from every angle, culminating in a last quarter of peculiarly nightmarish horror. Although Jones sets the story as sparked by the four protagonists’ breach of cultural taboo, readers may be left with a sense they (and those around them) didn’t quite “earn” such gleefully blood-soaked retribution – or was it that their frenzied killing that day recalled some lingering bad psychic energy from “a century ago, when soldiers gathered up in the ridges above Blackfeet encampments to turn the cranks on their big guns, terraform this new land for their occupation. Fertilize it with blood”? The novel builds up to a big, bold ending, and doesn’t attempt to over-explain – nor, in my view, did it need to.