This story follows four Blackfeet men as they are tracked down by an entity 10 years after a hunting expedition that went awry. TW/CW: animal death, gore, suicide (this story touches on a lot of potentially triggering topics but the animal death, gore, and suicide were the ones that I felt were most explicit on the page).
This was an amazingly layered story and the simple one line synopsis doesn't do it justice. I think that is true for a lot of horror books where the plot can be given in just a line or two but the actual book has so much more complexity and depth. This was one of those books that I heard a ton of hype about when it came out so I chose to give it a bit of a rest before I read it to calm down any over-hyped expectations. While I did really enjoy the story, it wasn't quite what I was expecting given what I'd heard from other reviews. Looking back, I think this is just a difference in reading tastes where I think a lot of people who might not usually read horror were really affected by the story and thus talked a lot about it. Because of this, I was expecting the book to be a little more shocking and horrifying than what I experienced while reading. However, this book is pretty much my preferred brand of horror (supernatural/gore) so I just think I wasn't as shocked as other readers because I've read books with similar levels/types of horror elements.
I really liked the way the horror elements were revealed throughout the story - unflinching would be putting it lightly. We the reader are not shielded or protected from the horror elements in any way. The descriptions are clear and almost clinical with how graphic they are. This allowed the reader a little bit of emotional distance from the events, but not so much distance that we could sort of glaze over what happened. There is a really good mix of supernatural horror and gore elements to the story where the underlying plot is really elevated by these spiritual/supernatural elements. The gore is horrific enough, but the stakes are raised because we know that it was this spiritual entity that put the wheels in motion to cause that gore. I also appreciated how early on we get the full details of what happened during the hunting trip ten years prior. We aren't left guessing until the climax at 80%, we find out around the 25% point. This, again, adds another element to the horror where the reader knows what is going on but we have to watch the characters on page knowing they don't know the whole truth behind what is happening. In contrast to the clinical descriptions that allow the reader some distance, we get sections that are written in second person which draw the reader into the story. The constant sort of push-pull tension this creates is really great and I think listening to this as an audiobook would be really interesting to see how that comes across.
The one element of the book that I didn't really like was the overall structure. Since we are following all four men in this story, I was expecting their stories or chapters to be intermingled. Like we get a chapter about person A and then a chapter about person B etc. However, we get the story of one of the men in the prologue, then the next 45% or so is another man, then the last two men are more intertwined because they are spending time together. I understand plot wise that since the entity is only following one of the men at a time why the reader is only with one man at a time. However, I found it a jarring when the story would just flip to a new character after we spent so long with another one. It felt to me like the book was almost more of a short story collection where the story of each man was connected but overall separate. I did like the second half where we did get alternating chapters of the two men and that's the sort of structure I was expecting the rest of the story to be. I do think the sense of dread we got each time we switched characters was well done because we just saw what happened with the previous character so we have an idea of what's coming next. But I felt some of that tension was lost because then we have to spend time getting to know this new character and what his life is like before we get back into the horror. I can see the pros and cons of this narrative structure choice and I think it just comes down to a matter of opinion on if this was the most effective way for the story to be told.
The atmosphere throughout this book was amazing. Obviously, this is a horror book so it isn't going to be all sunshine and rainbows but the book does not pull any punches. There is this creeping, sinking dread that grows through the first half of the book as we find out what happened 10 years ago and we start to suspect what is happening now. There are a lot of moving parts and questionable narrators happening in the first half so as the reader, we can't quite get a handle on what is going on. Then, once the truth is shown to the reader, the tension changes from the question of 'what is happening' to the reader hoping that the next character is able to survive. With this change in the plot, the atmosphere also changes from a sort of creepy, unsettling atmosphere to one of inescapable despair because as much as we'd like the characters to make it out we know that isn't very likely. I loved in the second half that the reader knows more about what is going on than the characters and that internal tension in the reader really heightens the tension on the page. One example of this is the entity explaining in a few scenes that if the man looked a little to the left or if he walked just a little farther that they'd see the entity but they don't and it is that feeling of almost that gets really played up during the later parts of the story.
I thought the choices around the characters in this story were really interesting. They weren't really the typical horror protagonist archetypes. In fact, on paper, they were wholly unremarkable. I think a lot of the time for these sort of revenge stories we see the characters do a bad thing, then they go on to be somewhat successful and then part of the revenge is their fall from that success. Or, alternately, the characters end up worse off after doing the bad thing and then they might get a redemption arc of sorts. However, in this case, all of the men seem to be leading pretty mediocre lives - they aren't doing horribly, but they also aren't thriving. This sort of middle of the road type of character also leaves the readers in a bit of a middle position where we don't (or at least I didn't) feel super strongly about the characters one way or the other. We aren't rooting for the evil protagonist to get his fall from grace or for the down on his luck character to be forgiven. Without super strong feelings on either side, I was left just watching the events unfold. The only time I got super emotionally invested is when side characters who weren't involved in the initial hunting party were pulled into the revenge. I think this characterization choice was interesting because most people in real life end up more in the middle. It really made these characters seem more realistic because they're just normal people. They made a bad choice back in the day, faced consequences back then for that choice, and moved on with their lives the best that they could - the exact progression I think a lot of people can relate to. We also got enough backstory on the characters to see their potential going forward which made it all the more heartbreaking to see those characters lose.
Overall, this was a really great slow burn type of horror book - great atmosphere, characters, and horror elements all wrapped up together.
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