A review by librarycryptid
Anoka: A Collection of Indigenous Horror by Shane Hawk

dark tense medium-paced
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.0

You can check out this and other reviews over on my blog, The Library Cryptid! https://librarycryptid.wordpress.com/

If you’re looking for new talent, look no further. Anoka by Shane Hawk is short, clocking in at only 84 pages and with only six short stories, but packs a big punch. Featuring the town of Anoka, Minnesota—purportedly the Halloween capital of the world—and exploring universal human themes through the lens of indigenous life, Anoka is a debut with astounding power. 

The crowning jewel of Hawk’s arsenal is his prose. I didn’t completely have my bearings in “Dead America,” but his prose pushes you through page after page. You can see the amount of love and care that he puts into each and every sentence, leaving no word untouched and ensuring that every word counts, especially in the two flash pieces, “Soilborne” and “Orange.” In fact, one of the critiques that I have is that he might learn to restrain himself in some instances; at times the stories feel overworked, offering either too much or too little for the reader. At times the meaning is hidden a few too many layers beneath the surface, and at other times the reader picks up on the twist much sooner in the story than necessary. 

My greatest grievance with Anoka is its length. I hemmed and hawed at holding this against it, since I know that Hawk had some technological issues which led to the abbreviated length; but at the end of the day we just didn’t get enough time with this collection. Where this is especially noticeable is the somewhat flimsy connection to the town of Anoka: although some stories really lean into the setting, like the finale, “Transfigured,” others make no mention of it at all and it seems difficult to truly feel like this is a collection of stories in and around Anoka. That’s not to say that the stories that didn’t explicitly mention Anoka don’t belong—they’re excellent—but additional stories might have established the setting more firmly. 

And besides that, you just want more time with this writing. When reading collections and anthologies, I’m rarely surprised when I turn the page and encounter the end, since they are short stories, after all, and there’s an ending every few pages. But at the end of Anoka, I was surprised that we were done so soon. Perhaps this is partially because I found the finale to be underwhelming; I think a more definite and stronger ending would have fit better and rounded off the collection nicely. The open ending—the promise of a new beginning to a story—didn’t quite work for me. 

Ultimately, although Anoka had its faults, this is absolutely a book to pick up if you’re on the hunt for new voices in horror. I think that Hawk is definitely carving out a space in the genre for himself, and this is not the last we’ll hear from him. 

Also—I didn’t find a way to slide it into the review naturally, but I always try to pick a favorite story, and my favorite from this collection was “Imitate.”
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