Lewis is the only one who makes a guess as to why this spirit is hunting them now, but given how unreliable his narration is, and how he admits he’s making a supposition, the reason for the spirit coming after them after a full decade remains ambiguous. There are scenes where we know he imagined things, because he manages to talk himself off the ledge. We don’t know how much of what Lewis sees is accurate. We watch his uneasiness turn to full-blown paranoia. We see what he sees, regardless of how accurate to reality it is.
With Lewis, Jones gives us no reprieve, no other points of view. The Only Good Indians does exceptional character work, especially in Lewis’s section. We aren’t given much of an idea of what the spirit hunting them is capable of, but early on she seems to enjoy toying with them and letting them ruin themselves. The spirit hunting them doesn’t want to directly confront the hunters. By structuring it this way, the shorter scenarios give just enough time to set up all the pieces that will cascade together into their tableau of horror. It having been a decade since the hunting trip, two of the characters have moved away from the reservation, and two remained.Įach of these sections follows one of the men involved in the hunt. They work like dominos, the prologue touching the first story, the first story punching into the second, and the second crashing into the third. The Only Good Indians has a prologue and three sections that read essentially like novellas tied together. It follows four Indigenous men, a decade after a disastrous hunting trip, as they are hunted by a vengeful spirit.
The Only Good Indians, by Stephen Graham Jones, is an absolutely incredible horror novel.
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