This novella was released in 2017 by Tor.com/McMillan and runs about 112 pages. Stephen Graham Jones is a Native American of the Blackfeet tribe. He actually appeared on the Locus Recommended Reading List last year with the very interesting novel Mongrels, but was overlooked for the SFF awards nominations. This novella would likely be considered dark fantasy.
Junior is a Native American boy who lives with his mother and little brother Dino off the reservation. His father died under mysterious circumstances several years before, so Junior is startled to see him cross from the kitchen to the utility room in their house one night. This is his father as he might have been, a fancy dancer in full dress costume. At first Junior thinks his father’s ghost has come back to help them, but as bad things begin to happen, he begins to suspect the ghost is sucking the life out of his little brother in order to become more real and solid. Can he save his little brother, or is the sacrifice worth bringing someone back from the dead?
Jones writes great, everyman characters that suck you in gradually until you find you’re totally involved. He does his magic here, as the shape of Junior’s life, his father’s past and his mother’s needs develop gradually into a full picture. When we’re snared, then things start to go wrong.
On the negative side, this novella has slight political messages, in other words, white stereotypes. It makes clear statements about the characters being Native American and there are a couple of references to the Old West that I suspect are the result of being published by Tor. I also suspect Jones meant to write a longer piece, as this seems to cut off a little sharply. I would have liked for him to investigate the question of sacrifice a little more fully.
Three and a half stars.
Doris V. Sutherland
Aug 16, 2017 @ 04:28:38
Small correction: Mongrels wasn’t overlooked at the awards, as it was nominated at the Bram Stoker Awards, the Shirley Jackson Awards and the public-voted This Is Horror Awards. I’d imagine that its absence at the Hugos, Nebulas and Dragons is because their voting bases aren’t especially interested in representing horror.
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Lela E. Buis
Aug 16, 2017 @ 07:12:23
Do you think people ignored it in the Nebula and Hugo nominations because they thought it was horror? I didn’t really think it was.
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Doris V. Sutherland
Aug 16, 2017 @ 07:44:29
Well, if you look at the dedicated horror awards you’ll see a lot of nominees that were overlooked at the Hugos and Nebulas, but without canvassing for opinions amongst the voters I suppose your guess is as good as mine.
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Contrarius
Aug 16, 2017 @ 10:58:41
The boundary between horror and “dark fantasy” gets seriously fuzzy, but since multiple horror award organizations nominated Mongrels, it would seem a bit silly to argue with their opinions on its best categorization.
I had Mongrels on my TBR longlist last year, but never got around to it. Maybe I should try harder to check it out this year!
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Mapping the Interior - Stephen Graham Jones
Aug 30, 2017 @ 15:03:14