Audio ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review



First of all, the audio. It was a decent enough production and the narrator was competent and easy to listen to, even if he didn't capture me with his performance. Part of the issue was that I just didn't get on with the style and it felt as if the narrator also struggled with it, which compounded things. But it's a perfectly adequate audio version.



This is a mixture of folkhorror, Native American myth and sharp social commentary. Four friends go hunting as youngsters and the traumatic events of that outing haunt them. Literally. Normally I love folkhorror and I've never seen a Native American slant to it in a book, so I was very excited. The story and concept are good - a sort of I know what you did Last Summer scenario but with a strong supernatural/ mythological bent. There's a deep meditation on connections here; connections between people - friends, lovers, family; the connection between people and land, nature, our place in the world; the connection between deeds and consequences, responsibility and cowardice; and most predominantly, the connection between person and heritage. One way or another all four MCs have become disconnected with their race, culture and heritage. In some instances it's down to them trying to outright escape it. In others, the clichés and stereotypes imposed by casual racism are stripping them of their identities. It's a powerful examination and the book never lectures, leaving you as all best books do, to draw your own conclusions from the facts presented. At times this is weird and whimsical with it's horror. If you've read much Native American or even Celtic myth, it will remind you of that. So there's a lot of good stuff here. All the ingredients in fact for a book I should love. And I just...didn't.



Honestly, I think it was a style issue. It got in the way of me really connecting with the characters. Present tense can be a hard sell for me but if it's done right - or right for me at least - it quickly becomes invisible. I found that the present tense never became invisible here. I wasn't constantly jerked out of the story stumbling over how things were phrased. Which was exacerbated by the fact that things were phrased very oddly at times.



I wanted to find this creepy and I didn't. It's not easy to freak me out tbh so a mild sense of unease was all I was expecting. It didn't happen for me, probably once again because of the style but also because the tension was stretched out so long it lost its elasticity and just went limp. Or it did for me.



In conclusion, I love the concept and there's a lot of intelligent discussion going on here. The way those things were tackled didn't work for me. I imagine other horror aficionados will love it - possibly even for the reasons it didn't click for me.

I've never read anything by Stephen Graham Jones but have pretty much heard nothing but good things. Hearing nothing but good things is also true of 'The Only Good Indians'.

Whilst I enjoyed it, I didn't think it was amazing. The story itself was a pretty unique twist on the revenge trope. Ordinarily revenge stories bore me, but this one sounded unique enough to stand out from the crowd, something it certainly achieved.

The story itself, once it got going, was a pretty interesting and compelling read/listen. My main issue was that not only did it take a while to get going (it's literary fiction, so I expected that), but due to the format it felt a bit stop-start.

By 'due to the format' I mean the fact that we are given the story in sections (each of the hunters in question get their own bit) and it features different time jumps, which, along with the slow pace, just gave it a bit of a crawling kind of pace rather than a free-flowing one.

But, as with all good stories, everything you feel is dragging, comes together nicely further along the way and, by the time the final page has been turned it felt well worth it.

My main issue with this is that despite the character work being good, it wasn't phenomenal. That may sound harsh, but the characters would be acting in a certain way (their normal way) and strange occurrences would make them go from normal to outlandish in how they deal with perceived problems. And it's not like these drastic changes of character happen over time. It's literally the flick of the switch. So much so that I had to go back to a part I'd just got through to make sure I'd picked it up correctly. Just felt a bit jarring.

That jarring negative aside, there was some wonderful character-driven moments (as you'd expect from literary fiction) and a lot of enjoyable native american details to devour.

This novel certainly ranks up there as far as having strange antagonists goes, and it had a weird bizarreness to it that was a welcome change to the norm.

The narration was a bit hit and miss for me. The voice suited the story quite well but I felt that, at times, he would treat a comma like a full stop. It made it sound like a sentence was over only for it to be carried on a second or two later. I will say, however, that I found the Netgalley Shelf App (that Netgalley forces you to use for their audio titles) to be the most unenjoyable listening experience I've ever had. It was buggy and the playback was harmed because of this. So it could have been the app causing the audio to stop or it could have been the narrator taking an abnormally long pause in places. I would bet money on the app being at fault, but I can't say for certain.

I struggled a little with this audiobook. Although the story was very descriptive and detailed I found myself lost a lot of the time. The theme of the book was not quite the horror I was expecting from the description but the plot was interesting.
The narration of this book however was great and the narrator really gave a representation of the feel of the book

I have heard mixed reviews on this book and after reading it for myself, I can definitely see why. The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones is described as a gothic horror that is a slasher that is done so in such a unique and different way. I didn’t really feel the horror aspect of this book, but I think that was because I couldn’t really get into this story. For me, the whole experience of this book was ruined for me from the very beginning, because I didn’t like the narration that went along with this book. The narrator sounded dry and his performance was so lacklustre and because of this, I wasn’t sucked into the story enough to really care enough as I would have liked to have been, or would have needed to be for the horror to hit me.

The writing however, is extremely vivid! There is no way that I was not imagining what was being said, as the amount of brutality and gore that was happening within this book, the way it was written ensured that it was pictured so clearly within my mind, a little too clear maybe. It was in these moments that sucked me into the story and into the characters lives and into their paranoia, their suspense and the creepiness surrounding them. However, it was only these dramatic moments within the books that kept me invested, as in between the passages, I honestly found the rest quite boring and hard to keep myself invested in and hard not to skip a little.

Some of the scenes you could see were intended to be scary and creepy, did not turn out to that affect, instead just coming off making the characters look like they have extreme paranoia. Whether that paranoia is justified, you’ll have to read and find out! There are scenes that are 100% going to stick with me and give me nightmares, so props to the writing. However, for the story itself, I wouldn’t know how to describe it to someone else and even though it still has me wondering and thinking about it, I don’t think it’s one that is going to be one that is going to stay with me, which is disappointing.

This book tells the story of four young Blackfeet men who are facing supernatural happenings as repercussion from a elk hunting incident ten years ago. They killed surplus animals and on restricted ground. As they go on with their lives they are unaware revenge will be sought.
One by one the author introduces each of the characters and we get to see their life events and the grisly impact of that day.
The story is well crafted, creepy, gruesome and atmospheric with a quite a shock factor.
We learn the American native folklore, social issues and this is all balanced with a nice dose of humour.
I thought the narrator did a good job and I found his voice easy to listen to which kept my interest throughout.
Quite a unique book I would recommend.
My thanks go to the publisher, author and Netgalley in providing this arc in return for a honest review.

I had heard only good things about this one, and was delighted when I was approved for the audiobook and I wasn't disappointed. I usually find horror can be a tricky genre for me to get into, but this book played it to perfection, from the set up to the moment everything went off the rails and beyond.
This is not a fast-paced book, especially in the set-up but that works to its advantages, as combined with fantastic prose it draws you into the story and lulls you into a sense of security, that only heightens the horror aspect. It's also the kind of writing that doesn't let you go, and I found that I would tell myself I would listen to just a chapter, and then find myself still there three chapters later.
Honestly, it is hard to do justice to this fantastic book - and the narrator who really brought it to life - but one of the best horrors I have read in a long time, it was disturbing and horrifying in the best way and so beautifully written, and I would highly recommend.

Full review available on my blog on August 12th.

Trigger Warnings: a LOT of graphic animal violence, graphic violence, alcohol abuse, hunting, murder, stalking (supernatural).

I listened to the audiobook version of The Only Good Indians, and I absolutely recommend this book as an audio experience. Shaun Taylor-Corbett does an excellent job narrating, and really brings all of the characters to life. I liked that he did a great job of making all the characters sound distinct enough that I didn’t need dialogue tags to be able to tell who was speaking, even in the high-tension moments. Throughout the entire audiobook I stayed engaged and I didn’t get too lost at any point, even with the perspective shifts. I did get confused during the basketball sections, but that’s more my complete lack of basketball knowledge than the book itself!

The atmosphere in The Only Good Indians is unbelievably good. It’s built up slowly and steadily, creating an eerie world where, for a good portion of the book, I just wasn’t sure whether there was something supernatural afoot or whether I was being drawn into the main characters’ paranoia. And when it does ramp up? This book goes hard. There was a point where I audibly ‘oof’d at a piece of vivid and horrible description. It is explained why the events of the book are taking place, ten years after Lewis, Gabe, Cass and Ricky illegally hunted in the territory reserved for the Elders of the Reservation. The way that the story unfolds; the past being revealed and then each of the men being hunted one by one; was incredibly well-done and I spent most of the book waiting and worrying about the consequences of their actions. And the way that they were haunted, the revenge that the entity chose to take, was absolutely brutal and made for a very slasher-esque horror, without any of the trope-iness I usually worry about with slashers.

I love the way the book tackles guilt and remorse, as well as a twisted and violent sense of revenge, but my favourite aspect was definitely the way that The Only Good Indians looked at the way the men were driven to madness by their fear, and how that could cause them to lash out. The main characters aren’t actually bad people. They’re good people who did one bad thing that they haven’t been able to shake, and that’s infinitely more compelling to me than just ‘bad people getting punished’.

The Only Good Indians is packed full of cultural references, some that I recognised but a fair amount that I, as a white reader, had to stop and educate myself about. I haven’t read much, if any, Indigenous horror before, but this was accessible enough to have me understand the folklore and superstitions that underpinned its plot, without feeling like it was pandering to readers who weren’t familiar with them. I really liked the way it tackled the way that cultural perceptions of Native American communities have been weaponised against their members, and how they’ve become embedded in the communities themselves. However, I am a white reader/reviewer, so be sure to take a look at ownvoices reviewers for any commentary on the rep.

My thanks to W.F. Howes/Whole Story Quest for an audiobook edition via NetGalley of ‘The Only Good Indians’ by Stephen Graham Jones in exchange for an honest review. It was narrated by Shaun Taylor-Corbett and has a running time of 8 hours, 37 minutes at 1x.

I previously had read and reviewed the eARC via NetGalley of ‘The Only Good Indians’ and it was a 5 star read for me.

It was quite interesting to revisit the story so quickly via this different medium. I found Taylor-Corbett, who is an actor and singer, an excellent narrator who brought the story to life. Like the author, Stephen Graham Jones, Taylor-Corbett is a Blackfeet. It was clear that he had great respect for the source material.

While this novel is a work of folk horror with the revenge theme coming from nature, there are also threads of dark humour running throughout and I felt that Taylor-Corbett balanced these elements well.

With this being a finished work I also appreciated the inclusion of the author’s acknowledgements that really rounded out the novel for me; especially as he included the titles of stories that had inspired him to write this novel. I plan to look these up as I am fascinated with folklore linked to animals.

The audiobook also rates 5-stars.

An interesting story that is part folk horror and part cutting social commentary on the fate of young Native Americans living on or off a reservation, the latter particularly interesting for a UK reader like me. The two stands are intricately wound so that the past transgression that kick-starts the events, is itself culturally freighted.

That said, audio wasn't an ideal format for my engagement with this book. Events are confusing as it's not always clear where and when the time-shifts occur or where we are: the audio chapter headings didn't always clarify this. Also the narrator has a soothing voice that in one sense is highly relateable but I found that he isn't always as clear as he could be in enunciating his words, especially when he speeds up at pacy moments. Shifts in characters could have been more clearly marked, as well. I love audio-books but I think I'd have preferred to read this particular story.

So 4-stars for the text, 2-stars for the audio-book..

I absolutely loved the story of this book, it was genuinely like keep you up at night creepy and I haven’t read a true horror for a while so that was refreshing!!

The characters were well fleshed out and interesting, I found myself pretty invested in them and what was going on with them.

I stayed intrigued throughout the entire book and I absolutely flew through it but I wasn’t completely jelling with the audiobook narrator and the audiobook in general which is why this is a 3.5 rather than a 4.

Thank you to NetGalley for letting me have this audiobook. This was a thoroughly enjoyable surreal story. I liked the narrator but because this was an audiobook it was easy to get confused between which character was the voice of the chapter.

This is my first audiobook through Netgalley and I have no complaints. The app worked well and I really enjoyed the narration. The narrator fit the book really well. However the book wasn’t really for me, I didn’t feel invested in the book and there were time’s when I was a little confused about what was happening.
I find that it’s hard for me to review audiobooks fully. I liked the idea behind the plot and I enjoyed seeing Native American culture. I enjoyed the elements with the elk. The pacing felt really slow and I maybe zoned out a time or two while listening as nothing seemed to be happening. I didn’t really like or connect to the characters and I don’t think I’d recommend this book to my friends.
Overall it was an okay book that I sort of liked while also feeling a little bored while reading.

This is at its core a horror story, there are many components of this tale that are horrific but they come from the surreal and creative imagination of the author but the biggest horror is the fact that the native Americans have been suppressed and their culture bastardised, this is not a pleasant tale and nor should it be so but it is a bloody (in all senses of the word) good story well worth listening to, i had not heard this narrator before and I have no complaints about his telling of the story