I was on a roll there – I’d gotten two posts up in two weeks and I knew that a book I wanted to write about would be delivered soon – The Angel of Indian Lake, the third and final entry in Stephen Graham Jones’s “Indian Lake Trilogy,” the first two books of which I’ve already written about here and here. In preparation, I re-read the second book in one week, and then when “Angel” was delivered, I burned through it in about 5 days – I was ready to write and I would get a third post up within three weeks. Awesome.
And then that never happened.
I got hit with some difficult life stuff (which isn’t exactly resolved, but at least is somewhat less volatile at present), a month and a half went by without a post, and now, while I do still have some thoughts and observations about the book, I don’t remember it well enough, in sufficiently specific detail, to feel that I can really write about it in depth.
But I am still gonna write about it – so there, just in a brief, first lasting impressions kind of way. I had thoughts 5 weeks ago when I read it, and I do want to share them. Sure, sometimes life gets difficult, but I don’t want to neglect my blogular duties – it’s good for me, and I hope it can be of interest to you as well, dear stranger reading on the internet (glad to have you).
A preface to this review – it is spoiler free, but it is also written more for someone who has read the book – I don’t go deep on describing the events of the story. So, without further ado, let’s go…
The Angel of Indian Lake (2024)
In this third installment, we pick up with Jade Daniels once more, now four years older, having done a second stint in prison following the events of the first book, coming out of it at least theoretically more mature, more of an ‘adult,’ but essentially the same slasher obsessed outsider she ever was. And what’s more, still with the same crushing degree of self-doubt, hard wired to overlook her own strengths, no matter how many times she has risen against insurmountable foes and been the only one to walk away. She is always looking for someone else to step into the shoes of her beloved ‘final girl,’ never considering herself for the part, though she’s been thrust into it time and time again.
Whereas the first two books jumped between viewpoint characters in third person limited, this is entirely Jade’s book, told in first person (except some interstitial chapters, as in the first books). Jade is an easy protagonist to love and identify with, especially as a horror fan – a socially awkward weirdo who just can’t stop expounding on her favorite movies, surrounded by people who aren’t always that into them (who hasn’t been there?), terrified and scarred (psychologically, but also literally) by the horrors she faces, but always ultimately choosing to stand against them and do the hard things that need doing, losing friends, mentors, and toes along the way. It is a real hero’s journey – and one that never really ends – no matter how many times she learns her own power, it doesn’t matter. She will have to learn it again. She believes in her slashers and that belief fuels her, but she still has trouble believing in herself. You’d think she’d have learned by now, but perhaps that’s not how people work. You get a big moment of catharsis and everything feels clear – you’ve progressed, you’re better – and tomorrow, you’re back to your old ways. Actually changing is really hard. And Jade does, but it is hard fought, and there are many setbacks along the way.
Reading this volume, I found myself often thinking of belief and faith. Slashers/final girls constitute Jade’s religion. She has so voraciously consumed these stories to the point that they make up the lens through which she views her life, especially when the bodies start falling – which they do in great numbers in this case (the dead rise, bears attack, human killers stalk the woods, and more). Her faith in her holy texts motivates her, gives her comfort, and helps her to understand this so often blood-stained world. But a key element I really appreciated is the extent to which it is not magic. Jade is constantly wrong – through all three books. She reads the events happening around her through the paradigm of her favorite kind of horror movie, and while it offers interpretive, emotional, and psychological value, as a tool for predictions, it has a pretty weak track record. She leaps to conclusions, chases after red herrings, and is forever trying to puzzle out what is actually going on and why. She’ll make a big emotional decision and try doing something because it feels like it should work, and it doesn’t, and she has to try something else. Slashers may have easily trackable rules (thanks Randy), but life doesn’t. And as with previous cases, the underlying story – the reasons for what is happening – is pretty complicated, messy even. But I think that lends a valuable, if surprising, realism to this story of resurrected spirits, unresolved traumas, and mass killers, supernatural and otherwise – life isn’t a story; it is confusing and confused, and no lens can predict it. All we can do is attempt to interpret – to use the worldview we’ve built ourselves to lend meaning to the chaos, to see the beauty of the story playing out in the horrors we must undergo – we need meaning and beauty and understanding, even when it’s wrong.
When it comes to the killer(s) in the story this time, without going into any spoilers (if you’ve read the first two books and not yet this one, you really have to pick this up and I don’t want to give anything away – I’ll just say that there are as many or more twists, turns, and reversals as you’ve come to expect), it all had a kind of magical realism to it (notable given how the slasher subgenre is so often based in a fully human murderer). To a larger extent than the first two books (though the element was certainly present), this volume premises all local folklore as seemingly true, and anything can happen if the emotions are strong enough – if it is at least poetically justified. At first glance, this seems at odds with much of the slasher canon, but in a way, the slasher pairs well with folklore. It may be the tropeiest subgenre of horror, and its iterative qualities read like modern folk stories – sitting around the campfire, trying to scare each other with a fresh telling of the tale of the call coming from inside the house, or the little girl the lake rejected, or the hook ripped off, dangling from the car door… And the folklore here lands with deep resonance – tales of the American west: settlers, religious fanatics, people displaced from their land, human lives crushed by forces bigger than themselves, those left behind when the world moves on.
Furthermore, it is a very emotional read, eliciting tears from me on more than one occasion (though to be honest, I am an easy mark, but that said, it absolutely earned those tears). And I think this may be the strength of the series, and possibly of Graham Jones’s writing writ large. There is excitement and gore and thrills aplenty, but it is all run through with such deep feeling and characters you can love and root for and sometimes mourn. I think they are quite different writers, but in this way, Graham Jones rather reminds me of Stephen King. I feel like they both come to know characters first, and then they have to follow those characters where they will, often resulting in big, circuitous, even meandering plots which are not at all about plot – they’re about people, about their hopes and fears and compulsions and failings. The book makes a breathless dash for the finish line, but it feels like it is desperately running towards a point which is not yet known, which has to be found, which has to make that emotional, poetic, mythic sense, and which will, along with its protagonist, make false starts along the way. All of this could be taken as criticism, but I feel it is a strength of the text rather than a weakness.
So there we are – I rather liked it (though maybe wouldn’t go as strong as “love” – I’d reserve that for the second book, Don’t Fear the Reaper). I haven’t even tried to describe the story – but part three of a trilogy is nowhere to start, so if you’ve come this far and haven’t read the first two books, maybe go pick up My Heart is a Chainsaw – if you read this blog, I expect you’ll likely be into it. The story here could be stated as simply as “people start dying again and Jade has to deal with it” – but there is clearly so much more to it than that. For my part, it was nice to return to Proofrock, Idaho one last time and see Jade off. This was totally engaging and intriguing and fun, and if you have enjoyed the first two volumes, you really do need to check it out.