Reviews with content warning for Abortion - Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

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Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology by Shane Hawk, Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.

25 reviews

black_cat_iiix's review

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dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

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kellymacbrown's review against another edition

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Wasn’t what I was expected. Just crossed some personal lines for me. Made me uncomfortable in ways that seemed to have no real purpose. Definitely dark. Loved the first story.

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cadence99's review

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

I really enjoyed this fantastic Anthology. Many stories were deeply disconcerting, and had me jumpy and on edge after some late night reading. Some of my favorites were White Hills, Scariest. Story. Ever. and Eulogy for A Brother, Resurrected (this one in particular was my favorite, and I look forward to reading more from the author!)- I’d highly recommend this to anyone looking for thoughtful, well crafted horror that packs a punch

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eaprilfish's review

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Not quite what I expected from the marketing descriptions. All the stories I read were well written and engaging, but I think I was in the mood for more dark supernatural or magical realism stories. There was a significant amount of SA, and violence against children in the first few stories I didn't expect and had a hard time with. I wanted to push through and finish all the stories, but each one felt like a big trigger-gamble for me. This definitely isn't a knock on any of the authors! I might come back to this, but right now I was ultimately not in the mood for the intensity of the violence in some of these stories.

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theotherallie's review

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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bessadams's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

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klb77's review

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Started as good spooky stories and social commentary that I THOROUGHLY enjoyed but then pretty immediately devolved into descriptions of rape, sexual coercion, a nonconsensual forced abortion, child abuse, child abandonment, and child torture. Be aware that there are also graphic needle and syringe scenes which affected me very physically. Those are not spooky stories and absolutely not what I signed up for.

The fact that content like that is presented without content warnings at any point? or a general note at the beginning? They’re topics I can handle in small bites but not as surprises and not constantly and ideally not without justice. Maybe they get lighter or change but I’m not interested in finding out.

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warlocksarecool21's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.75

This was a really interesting collection of Indigenous short stories. As with any anthology, it’s hard to rate because you personally like some more than others. I have a hard time with anything that’s super graphic/gory and has body horror, so any of the stories with those elements weren’t that good for me, and there were a number of them like that. However if that’s your thing in horror you might like those stories more. I particularly enjoyed the ones that were either ghost stories (especially Dead Owls by Mona Susan Power) and thrillers (“Collections” and “Navajo Don’t Wear Elk Teeth” really stood out to me). There were a few like “Heart Shaped Clock” and “Sundays” that I thought were really emotional or powerful but I don’t necessarily know what genre to put them in, as they didn’t fit any of the categories I listed above. Even though many of the stories weren’t for me, I really liked seeing different elements of Indigenous cultures and history and it’s worth a read just for that alone, even if you don’t like traditional horror that much. There’s a really broad range of stories here and I definitely found some new authors to explore.

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ceallaighsbooks's review

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dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

“I should leave. This was my chance to escape, to run. I looked at the other students clustered in the living room, trying to see if anyone else was going to make a break for it too. They were all laughing and smiling. No one was looking at the heads. No one seemed bothered or on edge. All of them acted like they did in class. Was it in my imagination? Why was no one else upset?“ — from “Collections” by Amber Blaeser-Wardzala

TITLE—Never Whistle At Night

EDITORS—Shane Hawk & Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.

PUBLISHED—2023

PUBLISHER—Vintage Books

GENRE—short stories: horror

SETTING—Turtle Island

MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—Native tradition & culture, Indigenous realities, mythologies, & beliefs, stories & folklore, horrible white ppl, boarding schools & foster system, vengeance & justice, teachings & inheritance, hauntings & haunted spaces, scary ghosts, dolls/apsute’gan, apocalyptic worlds, possession & transformation, rejection & isolation, inner & outer demons, collection & appropriation, dreams & nightmares, forgiveness & self-redemption, BIPOC solidarity, body horror

Summary:

"The combination of folklore and the travails of contemporary life is potent. Hard-edged and dread-inducing, NEVER WHISTLE AT NIGHT showcases major horror talent." — Laird Barron, author of THE WIND BEGAN TO HOWL

"Can you draw power from the spirit of a story? If the twenty six tales in the essential NEVER WHISTLE AT NIGHT anthology are any indication, the answer is an emphatic yes. The title itself provides its own warning, but I'll go one step further: Never read this collection of spine-chilling stories alone at night. You just might not make it to morning.” — Clay McLeod Chapman, author of GHOST EATERS

My thoughts:

This outstanding collection starts off strong with an incredibly insightful and engaging Foreword by Stephen Graham Jones (which, if *that* doesn’t hype you up for some Indigenous dark fiction you better just give up now 😂) before moving into the empowering, ambiguous story, “Kushtaka” by Mathilda Zeller, featuring some of my favorite horror tropes: folk horror vibes, folk storytelling elements, revenge-flavored justice, strong femme MC, human monsters, & an unreliable narrator-MC.

This is then immediately followed by the absolute gut punch of a story that is Rebecca Roanhorse’s “White Hills.” From there please to enjoy the edgy, queer “Navajos Don’t Wear Elk Teeth” by Conley Lyons (!!CW for sexual content!!), which looks at the horrifying results of colonization, appropriation, and collection in romantic relationships, before having your heart broken by Marcie R. Rendon’s devastating “Wingless” (!!CW for child abuse!!) about Native children’s experiences in the systemically racist and abusive foster system.

Nick Medina’s “Quantum” has a satisfying creeping gothic pace and atmosphere with a very solid philosophical underpinning. Phoenix Boudreau’s “Hunger” (a feminist campfire story) and Cherie Dimaline’s “Tick Talk” (!!CW for entomophobia!!) are similarly entertaining and thematically deep horror stories perfect for sharing at night.

And then, lest you get too comfortable, you get to Brandon Dobson’s “The Ones Who Killed Us.” The writing style, syntax, and use of language in this story was *amazing*. I was so obsessed that I read most of it out loud. Something about the rhythm of this story felt like drums, too. And maybe, a summoning. 👀 And *then* you get “Snakes Are Born in the Dark” by DH Trujillo (who may have a small dog with the same name as mine 😆) which was initially infuriating but then had the *most* satisfying ending. 😚🤌🏻 “Before I Go” by Norris Black was an eerie and atmospheric folk horror story about grief and loss that also featured some scary camping scenes.

“Chicago hitched ever so slightly but breathed the same as it ever did; in the normal course of things, that honky donkey carload would never tell their grandchildren what they'd done, even as they tilted out of their caskets into the long chute down to Hell while middle-aged Marys and Josephs ate wake-scented ham salad sandwiches and caught up on their kids' sad Little League triumphs and news of other white mediocrities. The city sighed along, settler sons and daughters telling its tale for a while, but not forever.” — from “The Longest Street in the World” by Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.

Ok I won’t go through every single story since there were lots and they all had something special and unique to offer (not a weak one among them!) but my favorites from here on out were definitely:

“Human Eaters” by Royce K. Young Wolf—About the Sight and supernatural justice, an eerie but wholesome folk horror fairy tale type story. Tied with Van Alst’s for my favorite in the whole book.

“The Longest Street in the World” by Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.—Which had some Krampus the Yule Lord by Brom vibes—I loveee sassy supernatural creature characters—and the writing style was extremely excellent.

“Capgras” by Tommy Orange—The horror of mistranslation, misappropriation, & being misunderstood. Losing oneself in people’s mistaken & racist perception of you—the violence of their questions and offhand comments that they pretend to not even realize are violent. The exhaustion of that weighing you down. Learning to let it go even though that shouldn’t be your burden. But doing it anyway for yourself.

I also especially loved “Dead Owls” by Mona Susan Power, “Eulogy for a Brother, Resurrected” by Carson Faust, “The Scientist’s Horror Story” by Darcie Little Badger, and “Collections by Amber Blaeser-Wardzala.

I feel like there should definitely be a special edition for this collection because I’ll be rereading these stories again and again.

I would recommend this book to readers who don’t get scared too easily, or readers who like their horror to have some substance and to be a bit more on the literary side. This book is best read in daylight. 😈

Final note: In her blurb for this book Amina Akhtar wrote: “Your next favorite author is absolutely in this book.” So the authors whose work I’ll be *especially* seeking out after reading them for the first time in this collection are: SGJ (i know, i know, i’m super late on his work), Mathilda Zeller, Tiffany Morris, Royce K. Young Wolf, Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., Carson Faust, and Amber Blaeser-Wardzala. (I’d only read Roanhorse, Dimaline, Orange, and Little Badger before from the authors in this book.)

“But what feels like an even better explanation for why we tend to like our stories to end like that, with bleeding over, bleeding across, haunting *us*, it's that it feels kind of fake and wrong and all too American to throw up walls between what's real and what's maybe not real. So, telling ourselves stories about the world being bigger than we thought, big enough for bigfoot and little people, that's really kind of saying to the so-called settlers that, hey, yeah, so you took all that land you could see. But what about all this other territory you don't even *know* about, man? Or, really: Why you don't come over here into the dark with us, *into* that other land? We can show you a thing or two, maybe. About the way things really are. And about the way they should be. The way they can be. The way they will be again.

I can't wait.”

— from the Foreward by Stephen Graham Jones

🌕🌕🌕🌕🌖

Season: November, or late in the camping-season

CW // forced abortion (graphic), sexual content (graphic) & emotional abuse, toxic relationships, child abuse & abusive foster parents, sexual assault of a child by a priest in a boarding school & other sexual assault (graphic), entomophobia (ticks), genocide, racism, grief, violence, torture (graphic) (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—

TAAQTUMI edited by Neil Christopher
THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS by Stephen Graham Jones—TBR
BAD CREE by Jessica Johns
THE REVENGE OF BRIDGET CLEARY by Mathilda Zeller—TBR
VENCO by Cherie Dimaline
FUNERAL SONGS FOR DYING GIRLS by Cherie Dimaline—TBR
GREEN FUSE BURNING by Tiffany Morris—TBR
MOONFLOWERS edited by Samantha Kolesnik—TBR
more Royce K. Young Wolf
more Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
NIGHT OF THE LIVING REZ by Morgan Talty—TBR
WHEN THE LIVING HAUNT THE DEAD by Carson Faust—TBR
THERE THERE by Tommy Orange
ELATSOE by Darcie Little Badger
more Amber Blaeser-Wardzala
MOON OF THE CRUSTED SNOW by Waubgeshig Rice—TBR

Favorite Quotes—

from the Foreword by Stephen Graham Jones:

“What stories like this do for us is make the world just a smidge bigger, yes? We now have to expand the borders of the real, to allow for, say, two timelines to simultaneously exist. No, not just exist, but *intersect*.”

“Or maybe that driver, leaning down to dial a late-night show in on the AM, catches a shape in their rearview mirror: that painted rider is in their *back seat* now. At which point we have to decide whether this driver's Native or not, yeah? If not, then, no, you don't want to see someone in traditional getup suddenly, and wrongly, in your back seat. Because you know some justice is probably coming for you. There's not a lot of room to swing a war club in the tight confines of a car. But I bet there's enough room.”

“Indians are pretty nervous about possession narratives, since those are more or less stories about a body being colonized, which we know a thing or two about, but... the way to twist that, it's to make the entity possessing you *itself* Native, yeah?”

“…the way he told it was more... it was more about how there's more to the night, and the land, than we generally acknowledge. Which is to say: when we feel his story in the base of our jaw, in the hollow of our chest, in the sway of our back, then the world clicks that smidge wider, to allow more stuff to be going on.”

“…the story of us in what's for the moment called America—hasn't quite processed all the way through yet, hasn't completed. Things can happen. This place can be ours again. Why not.”

“Just, don't look back at your footprints.

Best to not look back at all, really.”

from Kushtaka by Mathilda Zeller:

“There was something outside the house that was clearly murderous and looked just like me. There was something inside me that was clearly murderous and felt nothing like me.”

from THE ONES WHO KILLED US by Brandon Hobson:

“Imagine that, won't you, what an awful pity that he begged us to have mercy on him, which was especially dangerous for him because our anger was too strong to let his pathetic cries persuade us, goddamn it, so we pushed through branches and brush while birds flew from the dark trees, hurtling the rocks we found and carrying our fury to strike down the soldier for what he had stolen and all the horrible things he had done during the migration, that puckish, bearded bastard, and then he shot us with his rifle, or rather attempted to shoot us dead, and how exactly was that supposed to work anyway under the circumstances that we were already dead and wandering as risen dust, so we told him the truth: all actions come to face justice in the end.”

“…the pale leader's face hung from his skull, which made his strabismic eye rutilant in the night, and we were certain when they saw us they would become fearful as we besieged them, howling.”

“…which meant paying close attention to any formulas of puerile solemnity or treaties they tried to make with us even in their own language, just as their predecessors had done, those spiritless ancestors whose illusory consciences evaporated in the wind like smoke.”

“…but they kept going on laughing and singing, those diabolical scrotes, because that was the type of people they were, uncaring and selfish, oblivious to the health of others while plotting to project an immense disposition of suffering or torture as they saw fit, convinced they could kill half-asleep, half-dead, docile and inert even, each one his own national emblem of guts and blood, maddened and fearful with their bodies wrapped in the American flag…”

from BEFORE I GO by Norris Black:

“"I've had many names, none of which you would recognize. I am the Night Mother. I am the last, wet gasp of a punctured lung. I am the quiet sound of blood cooling in dead veins. I am the end of all things, and all things that end are my domain." As she spoke, a dozen or more hands appeared around the hem of her ebony cloak, each clawing its way across the ground before being sucked back out of sight only for another to take its place. On the last word, they all pulled back and disappeared as one.”

from NIGHT IN THE CHRYSALIS by Tiffany Morris:

“Why had there been a doll? Her mind raced. A doll: apsute’gan. "Apsute’gan." Her nukumij's soft fingers made the doll dance. Cece reached for the doll and her grandmother pulled it gently away, her eyes imploring and focused on hers. "In Mi’kmaw, tu’s: apsute’gan." Cece repeated it and grasped the doll from her grandmother's hand. She made the doll dance, like her nukumij had. "Apsute’gan," she repeated once more in a singsong voice, and skipped out of the room.”

“…she felt nothing, just the rage of becoming, the rage of undoing, the promise, under it, of what she could build in its ruins.”

from SCARIEST. STORY. EVER. by Richard Van Camp:

"'Are you sure you want to hear my scariest story?’ she asked us. She looked sad for us. I should have paid attention.”

from HUMAN EATERS by Royce K. Young Wolf:

“The sky stretches on forever to the east. The clouds roll over the mountains to the west. The storms crash over the ridges like waves on sea cliffs. The sky is clear today, but up there on the cliffs, it'll hail and snow year-round. But when the lightning dances in the distance, you can glimpse the light shows once seen by our ancestors. What would they think of us now? So different, but our eyes the same.”

“"They're not the ones that twist our faces. The dead are. It's a little trick, you see. The hungry spirits still wander around because they can't let go of what they've done wrong. Their sins, their wrong ways of living. They carry that and it keeps them here, bothering around. They come and go. Sometimes, with that food or drink you put down, they'll get pulled to that and eat on it a bit, instead of hovering around your face while you eat and drink."

No Filter: "Oh, sick!"

I chuckle a little. "That's why you don't eat outside at night and not put some down. Who knows what you're feeding from your own face…””

"We, well, we're not like most humans. Most humans don't have the sight anymore. Especially after all these white people and other ones who are backward without culture arrived here, our own relatives, other Natives, they lost their sight. Some, they don't want nothing to do with getting it back, either. But us few, we still know what is out there. We know the stories and why things happen that others can't explain. My elders told me stories about them, and I'm doing my best to tell your folks and now you both, so you don't end up all gih-dih-shaz-zih, 'pitiful,' half-eaten and lost."

"You see, there is always a balance. Even the little people that change their faces and frighten so many people, some of them are here to help…”

“…Those boarding schools, they took our people's memories. They blocked many from being able to remember how to work with those things. I tell this now, so you'll know not to be afraid. They'll look into you both and they'll see our ancestors living in you. You both have the sight, but it fades if you let the fear get you. And it fades if you're stupid like a drunk, a druggie, or violent and cruel."

"All things need to eat to survive. The human eaters, they eat those of us who are not living as we should. That's what boarding schools did to our people. Colonization took our memories.

Assimilation has us feeding our own eyes and ears to the fire. Some even feed their own young to it. Many of our people may have forgotten the old ways, but agreements were made that haven't ended just because our peoples choose to be blind and deaf. I tell you two this because the human eaters are standing behind you. Waiting silently in the dark."

from THE LONGEST STREET IN THE WORLD by Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.:

“Johnny Lee Junior cast his angry vision onto the avenue at street level through the thin, watery glass from inside a chilly fifty-eight-degree office where the sadness of living and never being known to anyone for anything of note, of any exterior accomplishment, was a thing unto itself.”

from EULOGY FOR A BROTHER, RESURRECTED by Carson Faust:

“Our bodies are both earth and flesh. We are buried and we are alive. We nourish the roots that burrow into us. And when those we love fade away, fall to the earth, get swallowed up, we will take them in. We will soak up their skin, pull it up with the roots of the plants that wind through us, and they will be with us. We will not be trinity. We will be more.”

from CAPGRAS by Tommy Orange:

“It was like a vision of the future in the present no one had recognized fully as the future yet, and maybe never would. The future itself was constantly being replaced by the ever-present present, which never looked enough like the future to be the future plus there was always more future to be had, and the past could loom too, always threatening to come back.”

“Nothing makes sense the more you look into it.”

“…ashamed and proud at once of being American and not American and something else, from a future once dreamed of, a hoverboard-robot eighties dream we don't even remember anymore. We wanted to yell because we knew the future might not come; or this might be the closest humanity, in its current iteration or incarnation, gets to the future. So we rode our electric scooters along the Seine, happy because nothing makes sense, with enough sense made within ourselves, our trio, to feel that, if even just for the moment, we were riding into the opening light of the Parisian night with purpose; even if we were not thinking of happiness, it was happening.”

“We'd all end up knowing later, maybe when it was too late, or maybe when we were old enough to want to remember better times, having lost hope in a future that more and more seemed wouldn't come, or, if it came, meant only the end of time.”

from THE SCIENTIST'S HORROR STORY by Darcie Little Badger:

"Hence the reason I don't watch B-horror movies anymore," Bets said. "That feeling of helplessness it's seductive, but it isn't true. We can be heard. We can make change. We have a future. Our children have futures. Right?" …The writing on the wall promises: there is no tomorrow. It's lying. "Right?" Her friends didn't respond, instead choosing to drink. Unsure of what else to do, Bets leaned across the table and blew out the candle.

from COLLECTIONS by Amber Blaeser-Wardzala:

"Did you know my collection actually inspired some of my colleagues to start their own? Dr. Ludwig, you know him, correct? Well, he has an absolutely wonderful collection, but he has the full, stuffed bodies. You really get a good sense of who they were before when you have the whole body. Especially since Dr. Ludwig made sure the taxidermy modeled their poses off photos of them from when they were alive. Really excellent work. They feel almost like people."

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akizato's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Really great anthology, with some stories resonating with me harder than others. Note if you're reading the reviews before reading yourself: there are some triggering topics in some of the stories. I'll use a spoiler tag here if you want to remain unspoiled.

As well as the usual horror collection tropes like body horror and gore, there are a few stories with some on-page depiction of things like child rape (story title: Sundays- and this happens immediately at the start of the story), forced abortion (story title: White Hills), pretty graphic torture (story title: Limbs), and depiction of severe psychosis leading to murder (title: The Prepper, though it's told in a past tense by the person involved that makes it clear what the person is experiencing was not real).

Overall, I really liked it! My favourite stories were:
- Kushtuka by Mathilda Zeller (very strong opener!)
- Hunger by Phoenix Boudreau
- Snakes Are Born in the Dark by DH Trujillo
- Scariest. Story. Ever by Richard Van Camp
- Dead Owls by Mona Susan Power
- Sundays by David Heska Wanbli Weiden
- The Scientist's Horror Story by Darcie Little Badger (too real as someone with a life sciences degree)
- Collections by Amber Blaeser-Wardzala

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