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4.15 AVERAGE
4.15 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Ugh. I should love everything about this. But just like the first one, it doesn't do it for me. It's overly descreptive, which kills the pace for me. Add lots of characters to that, and eventually you lose who is who. At times, I even find the writing pretentious with all the meta slasher stuff. Somewhere it's mentioned that simple slashers are the best ones, and I wished Stephen Graham Jones took his own meta to heart.
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
In Scream, horror movie nerd Randy Meeks reminds us of that the key to a slasher story's success is simplicity -- make it too complex and you lose your target audience! It's advice that Stephen Graham Jones kinda-sorta eschews in Don't Fear the Reaper, the second in his The Lake Witch Trilogy. Jade's sequel isn't really all that complex, but Jones goes the extra mile or two to make it seem way more complicated than it really is, while also laying plenty of groundwork for Book 3.
Jade has spent the four years following My Heart Is A Chainsaw in court, battling for her life. Exonerated of the July Fourth Massacre, she's returned to Proofrock just in time for all hell to break loose yet again. A police convoy transporting convicted serial killer Dark Mill South is caught in an avalanche, allowing the Indigenous murderer to escape and begin a new round of slayings in this small town that's still recovering from its last slasher clash.
Jones wastes no time getting the bloody ball rolling, either. The opening chapter is a masterclass in authoring slasher horror as two teens get their comeuppance at a motel because, remember, sex equals death in this particular corner of horrordom. It's a tense, violent start that sets the stage for what's to follow. Jones remembers Randy's Rules well - the sequel is always gorier, the body count bigger, and the death scenes much more elaborate. Thus, we get a bevy of high schoolers murdered by poisoned cupcakes à la Happy Death Day, a few others gored to death by elk antlers, and plenty of stalked-by-slasher moments.
Only, it's not just the kills that are more elaborate this time around. As I said earlier, Don't Fear the Reaper isn't particularly complex at its core, even if Jones takes the long, and at times meandering, way around to get to the big reveal of why all this stuff is happening. But it certainly is much more elaborate and involved in terms of motivations and execution, with some very potent red herrings to distract readers and horror movie know-it-all Jade. Jade isn't just a gender-swapped Randy Meeks by way of the Final Girl, either. She is, in fact, a stand-in for Jones himself and his own encyclopedic knowledge of the slasher genre, recognizing and deconstructing scenes of slaughter and the movies that inspired them (only she's four years behind, thanks to time lost defending herself in court).
And although Don't Fear the Reaper is a solid enough read on its own, it also leaves quite a lot of string dangling as the middle-child in a trilogy. Jones does enough to resolve this entry's plot while paving the way for Book 3 and giving us an idea of what's to come, but there's also a few swerves into the supernatural that seem a bit out of place, at least on first blush. That's because while The Lake Witch Trilogy is Jones's thesis on slasher horror, it's also a ghost story. Proofrock is haunted, not just by the Lake Witch haunting Indian Lake, but by the history of America itself and the treatment of its Indigenous peoples. Dark Mill South is thought to be taking revenge on behalf of the 38 Dakota Sioux hanged by the order of Abraham Lincoln, but he's not the only bloodthirsty ghoul hellbent on spilling blood amidst a storm burying Proofrock in increasingly red snow. The dead want revenge, too, and Jones gives us some slight teases as to what they're capable of...and what that might mean for the final installment of this trilogy.
Jones's main focus may have been on slashers and slasher movie homages in the first two entries, but come Book 3? Well, as Randy Meeks once reminded us, when you're dealing with the last chapter of a trilogy, all bets are off.
Jade has spent the four years following My Heart Is A Chainsaw in court, battling for her life. Exonerated of the July Fourth Massacre, she's returned to Proofrock just in time for all hell to break loose yet again. A police convoy transporting convicted serial killer Dark Mill South is caught in an avalanche, allowing the Indigenous murderer to escape and begin a new round of slayings in this small town that's still recovering from its last slasher clash.
Jones wastes no time getting the bloody ball rolling, either. The opening chapter is a masterclass in authoring slasher horror as two teens get their comeuppance at a motel because, remember, sex equals death in this particular corner of horrordom. It's a tense, violent start that sets the stage for what's to follow. Jones remembers Randy's Rules well - the sequel is always gorier, the body count bigger, and the death scenes much more elaborate. Thus, we get a bevy of high schoolers murdered by poisoned cupcakes à la Happy Death Day, a few others gored to death by elk antlers, and plenty of stalked-by-slasher moments.
Only, it's not just the kills that are more elaborate this time around. As I said earlier, Don't Fear the Reaper isn't particularly complex at its core, even if Jones takes the long, and at times meandering, way around to get to the big reveal of why all this stuff is happening. But it certainly is much more elaborate and involved in terms of motivations and execution, with some very potent red herrings to distract readers and horror movie know-it-all Jade. Jade isn't just a gender-swapped Randy Meeks by way of the Final Girl, either. She is, in fact, a stand-in for Jones himself and his own encyclopedic knowledge of the slasher genre, recognizing and deconstructing scenes of slaughter and the movies that inspired them (only she's four years behind, thanks to time lost defending herself in court).
And although Don't Fear the Reaper is a solid enough read on its own, it also leaves quite a lot of string dangling as the middle-child in a trilogy. Jones does enough to resolve this entry's plot while paving the way for Book 3 and giving us an idea of what's to come, but there's also a few swerves into the supernatural that seem a bit out of place, at least on first blush. That's because while The Lake Witch Trilogy is Jones's thesis on slasher horror, it's also a ghost story. Proofrock is haunted, not just by the Lake Witch haunting Indian Lake, but by the history of America itself and the treatment of its Indigenous peoples. Dark Mill South is thought to be taking revenge on behalf of the 38 Dakota Sioux hanged by the order of Abraham Lincoln, but he's not the only bloodthirsty ghoul hellbent on spilling blood amidst a storm burying Proofrock in increasingly red snow. The dead want revenge, too, and Jones gives us some slight teases as to what they're capable of...and what that might mean for the final installment of this trilogy.
Jones's main focus may have been on slashers and slasher movie homages in the first two entries, but come Book 3? Well, as Randy Meeks once reminded us, when you're dealing with the last chapter of a trilogy, all bets are off.
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I loved My Heart Is a Chainsaw and this is a great sequel. Much faster paced and full of slasher violence. I already loved Jade as a character, but I definitely warmed up to Letha too in this one. I listened to the audiobook and enjoyed the full cast of narrators.
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
There’s a lot going on in this book in a great way that’s an upgrade from the first book like the setting being in the winter, a cast of characters who seem more prepared than not, and wild death scenes. I missed the character Jade, though. It’s understandable that she is going through grief and a huge change after book 1 so it makes sense but there was a gap in the book.
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
adventurous
dark
mysterious
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:
Complicated
I gave the first in this series 5 stars-- I was so wowed by Jade Daniels' narrative POV, the encylopedic knowledge of serial killer tropes and slasher movies, and the frenetic somewhat stream-of-consciousness pace of the narrative.
This time around while I still love the inception-like slasher trope within slasher tropes nature of the plot, the twists I didn't quite see coming, Jade Daniels' fierce desire to survive, and the "fun" ways people die, I also felt sometimes like I was missing half the jokes at a party.
On one hand, its awesome going along for Letha's POV narrative as she makes decisions based on what could or couldn't happen because of slasher knowledge, but since many of the references are off hand or sometimes instead of action descriptors we get her thought reaction that is bringing in some connection instead of describing the action--I got a little lost sometimes.
Still, getting lost in Proofrock with a killer on the loose is still more fun than your average bear, or in this case, your average ghost elk with a deadly set of antlers.
A serial killer escapes his convoy on the coldest, blusteriest night of the year, and the survivors of the Indian Lake Massacre will have to deal with more bodies. More meditations on last girl tropes :)
This time around while I still love the inception-like slasher trope within slasher tropes nature of the plot, the twists I didn't quite see coming, Jade Daniels' fierce desire to survive, and the "fun" ways people die, I also felt sometimes like I was missing half the jokes at a party.
On one hand, its awesome going along for Letha's POV narrative as she makes decisions based on what could or couldn't happen because of slasher knowledge, but since many of the references are off hand or sometimes instead of action descriptors we get her thought reaction that is bringing in some connection instead of describing the action--I got a little lost sometimes.
Still, getting lost in Proofrock with a killer on the loose is still more fun than your average bear, or in this case, your average ghost elk with a deadly set of antlers.
A serial killer escapes his convoy on the coldest, blusteriest night of the year, and the survivors of the Indian Lake Massacre will have to deal with more bodies. More meditations on last girl tropes :)