The Only Good Indians - Stephen Graham Jones

About the Book

From New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones comes a novel that is equal parts psychological horror and cutting social commentary on identity politics and the American Indian experience. Fans of Sylvia Moreno Garcia and Tommy Orange will love this story as it follows the lives of four American Indian men and their families, all haunted by a disturbing, deadly event that took place in their youth. Years later, they find themselves tracked by an entity bent on revenge, totally helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.

319 pages
Published July 14, 2020

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The librarian warned me, when I borrowed this book, that it got dark. Dark and disturbing. She wasn't wrong. There was a lot about The Only Good Indians that evoked a visceral reaction, disgust and fear and that lingering feeling of dread when you don't know what the next twist will be, but you know it won't be anything good.

Generational trauma never is. And that's largely what The Only Good Indians is about, or at least that's the impression I got. The past catching up to people, not being able to escape the consequences of prior actions, and always waiting for people to see the worst of you, striving to overcome the ripples of something that maybe you did, or maybe you're just connected to someone who did, but those ripples hit you no matter what.

It began when a group of young men decided to hunt at a time and place they shouldn't, breaking taboos and hoping to make the best of it. But that hunt, those actions, awaken something that vows revenge for wrongs done, and then it stalks, biding its time, waiting to take away everything from the men who took things away from it to begin with. That's why I mentioned getting caught up in ripples. It's not just the men who did the deed who get punished, but those around them. How better to make someone suffer than by taking away the ones they love? To make them doubt their sanity and hurt others? How do you fight back against something like that? How do you begin to make amends; is that even possible?

I can't speak to the Indigenous spirituality shown on The Only Good Indians; that's not my area of expertise, and I know too little to claim otherwise. But I know enough of people to say with certainty that The Only Good Indians is, despite strong supernatural elements, a profound and evocative human story. It's about people trying not necessarily to escape the past, because the past shapes who we are now, but about trying to move on with their lives and make the best of things, to become better people than they were when they did something horrible. It's weirdly inspiring, if you overlook the way the past absolutely catches up with them. It's people just trying to be people, as best they can, all while a darkness chases them down.

The Only Good Indians gets gory sometimes, and distressing if you're sensitive to animal violence, but it doesn't glorify the gore, doesn't go over the top with it. What's there is disturbing enough, given its context, and there were more than a couple of scenes where I had to put the book down and just sit with what I'd read for a while, working through it and putting the pieces together while also trying to not just give up due to some more distressing aspects. The book is too good to give up on, I can say that for certain. It's not always easy to put those pieces together, sometimes a struggle to read the book's darker sections, but the story deserved my time, deserved my emotions, deserved me being challenged by what I'd just read.

It's a difficult book to talk about. The writing is beautifully evocative, the story terrifyingly dark and layered, full of social commentary, but the story is something that has to be experienced, rather than read about. Anything I writing in this review will not do the author's work justice. It's a tragic and brilliant horror novel, one that was never going to be an easy read, and I respect it for that. I'm interested in reading more of the author's work, and now I'm a bit more prepared to enter into that kind of darkness once more. The Only Good Indians is a book that leaves a deep impact, and deserves to be read more by horror fans and fans of Indigenous literature alike.

Song of Silver, Flame Like Night - Amelie Wen Zhao

 

About the Book

Lan spends her nights as a songgirl in Haak’gong, a city transformed by the Elantian colonizers. Her days are consumed by the search for knowledge about the strange mark—an untranslatable Hin character—burned into her arm by her mother in her last act before she died.

Zen is a practitioner—one of the fabled magicians of the Last Kingdom. He’s never seen anything like Lan’s mark, but he knows that if there are answers, they lie deep in the pine forests and misty mountains of the Last Kingdom, with an order of practitioning masters planning to overthrow the Elantian regime.

Yet, both Lan and Zen are hiding secrets—secrets that are buried deep within them. Secrets that even they have still to unearth. Both hold the power to liberate their land, if they don't destroy it first.

Now the battle for the Last Kingdom begins.

480 pages
Published January 3, 2023

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While I don't typically gravitate to wuxia and xianxia stories, it isn't as though I inherently dislike them. If the story sounds interesting, I'll read it, even if it isn't in the genres or subgenres I tend to prefer. This was the case for me with Song of Silver, Flame Like Night, which thoroughly impressed me with its story and commentary on colonialism and cultural identity.

Set in the Last Kingdom, an analogue for China that never once tries to be anything but that, Song of Silver, Flame Like Night follows the dual perspectives of Lan and Zen, both trying to survive as best they can at a time when their heritage is under threat from colonial invaders. Lan is a songgirl, an entertainer in a city largely given over to the invading Elantians, who steals moments here and there to investigate an invisible scar left on her wrist by her mother, many years prior. Zen is a practitioner, a student of the last hidden martial arts school, someone who can manipulate qi but who has to hide that around Elantians, lest they find the school and wipe out the last holdout of the country's old ways. Their stories converge, with Zen agreeing to help Lan find the secret to her mystery scar, and Lan getting training in her own newfound ability to manipulate qi, what the book calls "practitioning."

I often ended up pausing in my reading to contemplate Daoism; it was never called such in the novel, but the spiritual practices were also a clear analogue for something in the real world. Arguments ran around in my head. "If demons and such are born from high concentrations of yin energy, is there a corresponding bad thing born from higher concentrations of yang energy?" "What right do humans have to eliminate yao and other such creatures, if the Way is balance; shouldn't those yao also be part of the balance?" "If plants and animals can be surrounded by enough energy that they can gain sentience and become yao, then did humans start off as monkey yao?" By the end, I felt like I had so many questions that I'd need to find a whole panel of Daoist scholars so I could pick their brains! As I said in my review of David Walton's The Genius Plague, sometimes the best books are the ones that make you stop and really think about what they're saying.

I might have gone a bit overboard with that sort of thought process here, as Song of Silver, Flame Like Night holds no answers to such questions, but merely introduces some basic concepts of Daoism and lets the reader absorb them as part of the story. But I find that books which present me with a lot of food for thought are the ones I enjoy most, the ones that stay with me over the years.

Also of note was the way the novel subverts expectations in multiple small but important ways. Lan, for instance, masters practitioning techniques far quicker than most people do, but there's an actual reason for that beyond, "She's just that awesome." I hesitate to explain what those reasons were, for fear of spoiling too much of the later parts of the book, but rest assured that there is a reason. Too many books have phenoms for protagonists, and that's fine, but sometimes it's nice to see someone who's a rising star for reasons beyond being just naturally so much better than everyone around them. 

I will say that there were some aspects of the book that threw me out of my reading groove, though they were all related to the writing rather than the story itself. Multiple little niggling things that came through as carelessness at some part of the writing or editing process (I don't know which, and couldn't even hazard a guess). Things like an entire room being lit by the tiny glowing embers of a couple of sticks of incense, or a room being completely dark and yet characters can somehow see what's in there. A character calling someone "the Winter Magician" since childhood, but being being surprised that magic might exist at all. Little things like that, things which don't ruin the reading of a book but that did take me out of my immersion whenever I happened to notice them. 

Song of Silver, Flame Like Night walks a fine line between question and answer, between history and progress, between cultural change and cultural destruction. It asks the reader to consider whether it's worth it to return to old ways, whether doing so is even possible, and who has the right to decide whether things stay as they are or whether they change. It's a good book, one that manages to juggle action and introspection quite well. I'm interested in reading the sequel, when I can, since the ending of this book was such a cliffhanger. I went into it thinking it was a standalone novel, only to realise near the end that there was no way the story could wrap up before the final page. But not once did the story feel bloated so that the author could squeeze out a second book where a single book would have been fine. The pieces were right where they needed to be.

The Genius Plague - David Walton

About the Book

Neil Johns has just started his dream job as a code breaker in the NSA when his brother, Paul, a mycologist, goes missing on a trip to collect samples in the Amazon jungle. Paul returns with a gap in his memory and a fungal infection that almost kills him. But once he recuperates, he has enhanced communication, memory, and pattern recognition. Meanwhile, something is happening in South America; others, like Paul, have also fallen ill and recovered with abilities they didn't have before. 

But that's not the only pattern--the survivors, from entire remote Brazilian tribes to American tourists, all seem to be working toward a common, and deadly, goal. Neil soon uncovers a secret and unexplained alliance between governments that have traditionally been enemies. Meanwhile Paul becomes increasingly secretive and erratic. 

Paul sees the fungus as the next stage of human evolution, while Neil is convinced that it is driving its human hosts to destruction. Brother must oppose brother on an increasingly fraught international stage, with the stakes: the free will of every human on earth. Can humanity use this force for good, or are we becoming the pawns of an utterly alien intelligence?

386 pages
Published October 3, 2017

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I've often said to friends that the best books are ones that make you pause and really think. That isn't to say there's no room for fluff reads or that people who enjoy such reads aren't "thinkers" (whatever that means), because after all, I also enjoy a good fluff read now and then, but books like The Genius Plague are definitely more of the former than the latter. It asks questions about the nature of symbiotic evolution, communication, and acceptable sacrifice.

A new fungus has been discovered in the Amazon, one that infects humans with varying degrees of success. Those who survive the infection gain increased intelligence and pattern recognition, their neurons boosted by the fungus's own ability to send and receive information through its hyphae. But more than that, the infected quickly seem bent on expanding the fungus's influence to all humans, heedless of the fact that many won't survive the infection. There's an interconnectivity between the infected, one that prioritises the wellbeing of the fungus over the wellbeing of their hosts, though in absolute fairness, the fungus does boost a lot of physical strength and resilience in people. Those who survive that infection are going to become what we would think of today as almost superhuman.

Aside from the spy thriller aspect of The Genius Plague (which was very interesting enough, as it involves a lot of cryptography, and that's a hobby of mine), the setup really begs the question as to whether humans have a right to determine their own evolutionary future when it comes to something like a symbiotic fungus, as one of the reasons we are who we are today is due to something quite similar. Humans house within themselves a teeming microbiome of bacteria and fungi, ancient viruses helped shape our very DNA, and what's one more added to the mix when it can yield such obvious benefits? Some people won't survive, but that's just how the process of evolution works. If the situation changes, we have to change with it, we have to adapt, or else we risk losing everything.

I don't mean societally when I say that, but purely biologically, evolutionarily. Right now we're at a social stage where "survival of the fittest" holds less meaning for humanity than it once did, but we're still evolving, we're still adapting. Evolution is a tricky beast, with murky boundaries, and what helped us thrive once might not always help us thrive in the future. The Genius Plague poses that sort of "what if" scenario that makes us question what it means to be human, what it means to adapt, and what it could be like to play a more active role in humanity's genetic future.

As I wrote that, I realised that it could sound like The Genius Plague was condoning eugenics, and I don't think it was. For one thing, the fungus didn't "win," per se; humanity was changed by the experience, came away older and wiser for it, but it didn't enter some new "phase" of evolution. But there were echoes of eugenics in there, absolutely. Survival of the fittest, the so-called "acceptable losses" of those who couldn't survive the fungal infection being inconsequential against the potential future of a symbiotic relationship between humans and fungi... It takes the question of eugenics and frames it in such a way that it seems natural to fight against it.

But the framing, especially against the whole history of symbiotic life across the planet, did make me stop and think. It wasn't as cut-and-dry as you might expect, when seen from that angle.

On a less... distressing aspect of The Genius Plague, I want to talk a bit about the protagonist, Neil. He's the sort of character who has a good heart but not always the best head, and while he's an interesting person to read about, after a while I had to roll my eyes a little at how often he stumbles into situations because he's sure he's right and no one else could possibly understand or help, gets in way over his head, has to be bailed out while others clean up his messes, and the worst part is that the situations he bumbles into turn out to actually need something that he can provide. He was intelligent and had a lot of knowledge and passion under his belt, but some of the situations he found himself in (or I should say that he deliberately walked right into) stretched credulity after a while.

Still, he was a great character to follow along with. His interest in code-breaking and his treasure-trove of seemingly random obscure knowledge made him fascinating, and more than a bit relatable (ironic, then, that I said I rolled my eyes at some of the situations he got into where his obscure knowledge saved the day; though my own treasure-trove of random knowledge isn't going to save humanity!), and while he got berated more than once for not thinking before acting and ending up in situations he needed rescuing from, he never lost his conviction that he needed to do something. That sort of mentality can get burned out of us so easily when faced with adversity and a constant barrage of problems, but Neil kept his, and that part of him was easy to love.

Plus he's into cryptography, and I can appreciate that.

Overall, The Genius Plague was a fantastic and thought-provoking read that I might like to revisit in the future. It's fast-paced but feels like it lingers, weaving tendrils into your mind that force confrontation and reflection. For all that it asks some big questions, I never felt like I was in over my head, and I think Walton's writing was a big part of why. It can be easy to understand complex issues when someone explains it all in a clear and concise way. I'd like to experience some more of his writing now, after having enjoyed my experience with The Genius Plague so much. Loved it, would easily recommend it to speculative fiction fans who are looking for a story that skirts so close to believability that you start to wonder what might actually be possible in the world.