Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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 […]

Here’s How to Identify a Werewolf: They’re the Ones That Never Grow Up

Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones

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This is a werewolf story. And like all werewolf stories, according to our narrator, it always means more than one thing. Mongrels follows a family of werewolves – aunt Libby, uncle Darren, and our unnamed narrator – as they migrate back and forth across the southern US, moving whenever towns become too hot to hold them. Mongrels is a coming-of-age story, following our narrator from late childhood into his teenage years, navigating familial bonds and first loves. Mongrels is a story of being poor in […]

“‘I’m all right,’ I told her. This is a lie, when you’re twelve. And all the other years, too.”

Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones

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A lot happened in this short book; it feels much larger in my brain than 108 pages. It’s always a challenge to talk about novellas without giving too much away, but I feel like that’s not going to be the case here. Mapping the Interior is pretty dense with both happenings and themes, despite the deceptively readable prose. Junior has moved away from the Blackfeet Reservation with his mother and younger brother Dino, after his father’s death. His mother wanted to give the boys a fresh start. […]



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