Reviews with content warning for Blood - Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

I had a hard time keeping track of who was who but this was a very informative read about an issue that doesn’t get enough attention. I’m looking forward to watching the movie.

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omair's review

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dark informative sad medium-paced

4.0

WARNING TO THOSE READING THIS BECAUSE OF THE FILM ADAPTATION:
After all of the hype and excitement I had for the film adaptation, I knew I had to read the source material as soon as possible. I had thought I would take to the book far more than the film, which I did thoroughly like, because I went into the film expecting more police procedural and less story of love

and betrayal

.

Yet as I read this book, I found myself agreeing more and more with the decisions the film made. This is not a slight against the book, but further praise for the film. The purposes of the film and the book are not one and the same, and so it is vital to anyone that, like me, is coming to read because/after the film to understand before they begin.

REVIEW THE BOOK INDEPENDENT OF THE FILM (which is what I intend to do)

Killers is as informative of a book as I could've imagined considering the personal story the primary focus is on. The book is overflowing with descriptors that will make you feel sorrow and anger, leave you wondering what humanity is and why it is missing. While only covering a handful of incidences, the cold factual presentation will leave you reeling, as if sensing how small a fraction the sample is compared to the population. All totaled, the official death count may

only be a couple dozen

but Grann will easily convince you that there were hundreds more victims during the Reign of Terror, and he may well be right.

If you can make it through the pain and sadness, there is a beautiful story here of a people's survival. The heart to endure and rally is as much a light as the era is an inky darkness. The book may focus on Thomas White, his team of agents, and their investigation that finally tore down the veil behind which the atrocities hid, but the real heroes are the Osage people.

For as strong as the book is in its cold, clearly well-researched, tone, I also found this to be a slight undoing. The voice can feel rather impersonal at times, leaving the reader as a student of history rather than immersed in the moment. This is why I agree with the decisions made for the film adaptation. Maybe I would feel differently not having known the details from the film first, I can never know for sure. But the progression of the book, and some of the detours along the way, played loose with risking a reader to set the book down only to never return and finish.

Ultimately, I will recommend this read to anyone with an interest in the Reign of Terror, interest in the era, an interest in the realities of White American Exceptionalism, or a morbid curiosity of a casual genocide. Sticking through some of the uneven pacing is well worth it for the resulting reverence of the Osage, and Mollie in particular, all carrying inside of them something no man could ever kill.

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dxnatelli's review

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dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5

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dontwritedown's review against another edition

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dark informative sad tense fast-paced

5.0

I wished I had read this before I saw the film opening weekend.

Being Native and being in Indigenous spaces, this case was familiar to me, though I didn't know the full story.

While I, like many others, would have liked an Osage to tell this story, I do not have an much of a problem with Grann telling the stories. Because Grann is a journalist and stuck to the facts and acknowledged not only in the acknowledgments who he was getting these stories from throughout the book. It is refreshing to hear someone not from our community accurately portray the prejudices Natives face in the court system. He asked "would any white man at the time convict another white man for killing an Indian?"

I highly recommend, especially if you are Indigenous and had to walk out of the movie due to the gore.

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