Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Native American Horror Story

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

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I was very excited to get into this, based on the premise and the combination of genres. A historical fiction-slash-horror novel about a member of the Blackfoot tribe getting revenge on the people who massacred his people? With a murky supernatural element adding a bit of mystery to the proceedings? Sounds great. So I’m very disappointed to report that The Buffalo Hunter Hunter just wasn’t for me. My main problem is the pacing. People who like this book (and judging from online reactions, there are […]

The Indigo Room by Stephen Graham Jones

The Indigo Room by Stephen Graham Jones

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Honestly, “The Indigo Room” I swear reminds me a bit of some stories I read in a book when I was a kid. This will drive me up the wall later. But in essence, this short story deals with [redacted] and the horror it can bring. That worked for me somewhat, but the story just dragged weirdly in places and I thought that SGJ could have went a bit further with that ending. It made me think of the short story written by Ted Chiang […]

The Horror of History

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

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What I am is the Indian who can’t die. I am the worst dream America ever had. (163) Much of Stephen Graham Jones’ The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is in the vein of a lot of his work: a horror novel that is concerned with Native identity and its history in America. In the SGJ books I’ve read (The Only Good Indians, the Indian Lake trilogy, I Was a Teenage Slasher), that Native identity is a contemporary one. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, on the other hand, tackles a real-life […]

I Was a Teenage Slasher (or when the book title is so great you need to make it the title of the review)

I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

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Set at the very end of the 80’s (1989) in Lamesa, West Texas, this book is exactly what the title says it is.  It’s about a slasher (think Ghostface from Scream, or Michael Myers from Halloween and so on) who also happens to be a teenager.  The story is told by Tolly, the slasher of the title, as he explains what happened over a few weeks in 1989.  Tolly didn’t wake up one morning and choose violence, or well he did, but it was only […]

Happy Horror Days

Christmas and Other Horrors: A Winter Solstice Anthology by Ellen Datlow (Editor), Christopher Golden, Benjamin Percy, Alma Katsu, Terry Dowling, Nick Mamatas, Glen Hirshberg, Garth Nix, Tananarive Due, Richard Kadrey, Stephen Graham Jones, Nadia Bulkin, Josh Malerman, Cassandra Khaw, Kaaron Warren

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I am a big fan of horror all year round, so I am going to be that person right now and be all “Ghost stories at Christmas are Victorian tradition!”  And they were, and I like to embrace this particular tradition.  There are 17 creepy seasonal horror stories in this book, so next year if I am on the ball I might even be able to set up a spooky reading advent-ish adventure for myself. This collection is not just about Christmas, other winter holidays […]

Gruesomely delightful

I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

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This is an unusual take of the slasher genre that I found refreshing. Is that an appropriate word to use when talking about slashers? Probably not, but I’m not sure what would work better…it was gruesomely delightful. How’s that? I can’t say it’s the first of its kind – the story reminds me of Scream, or even, to a lesser extent, Cabin in the Woods, where there was a comical self-awareness of the genre embedded in the story. I was a Teenage Slasher is narrated […]



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