THE ANGEL OF INDIAN LAKE – Stephen Graham Jones

It’s been four years in prison since Jade Daniels last saw her hometown of Proofrock, Idaho, the day she took the fall, protecting her friend Letha and her family from incrimination. Since then, her reputation, and the town, have changed dramatically. There’s a lot of unfinished business in Proofrock, from serial killer cultists to the rich trying to buy Western authenticity. But there’s one aspect of Proofrock no one wants to confront…until Jade comes back to town. The curse of the Lake Witch is waiting, and now is the time for the final stand.

New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones has crafted an epic horror trilogy of generational trauma from the Indigenous to the townies rooted in the mountains of Idaho. It is a story of the American west written in blood.

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There’s an introduction by Saga Press editor Joe Monti in the ARC for Stephen Graham Jones’s THE ANGEL OF INDIAN LAKE. In it, he mentions the scarcity of the completed horror trilogy, which…yeah, wow. It’s a struggle for me to name many at all, whereas my shelves are literally filled with sci-fi and fantasy trilogies. It’s a curious thing, for sure. I’m not sure what it is about horror that, more frequently than not, relegates it to the world of standalones.

Maybe just…the high body count? I’m not smart enough to figure it out.

BUT ANYWAY.

Stephen Graham Jones has gone & done it! THE INDIAN LAKE TRILOGY seems to have gone by in the blink of an eye, and now that I’ve had some time to reflect on it a bit? This is one of my favorite trilogies ever, regardless of genre. I had some small struggles with MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW, but both DON’T FEAR THE REAPER and THE ANGEL OF INDIAN LAKE are legit masterpieces, and two of my all-time favorite horror novels.

Things pick up back in Proofrock a few years after the events of DON’T FEAR THE REAPER. Jade Daniels, our favorite final girl, has been…well, away. Again. But while on “the inside,” she got a degree, and she’s now once again haunting the halls of Henderson High.

But this time out, she’s in the unlikeliest of roles; as a history teacher. It’s kinda poetic, in a way. This book is different from the first two in the trilogy in that, for the most part, it’s told from Jade’s first-person POV. This actually feels kind of perfect for the trilogy ender…bringing it all back home: this is Jade’s story, after all. But at times, it feels almost like an epistolary novel, with Jade reaching out to Mr. Holmes, her gone-but-certainly-not-forgotten history teacher.

The one who always believed in Jade.

Oof.

We hit the ground running here, the bloodshed begins in earnest, and it’s on. The final showdown in Proofrock.

This is definitely a wiser, more mature version of Jade that we’re seeing here. But she still has her encyclopedic recall of ALLLL THE HORROR MOVIES to help her try and make sense of the strange (and brutally violent) new happenings in town.

It’s kind of like all the secrets & horrors that the titular lake has swallowed over the years are about to be uncovered, and the effects are just…terrifying & shocking & upsetting.

(There’s a very minor spoiler ahead, feel free to skip if you like)

The thing I latched onto so hard in DON’T FEAR THE REAPER was the friendship between Jade and Letha. Over the course of the first two books, the dynamics that emerged between these two became the soul of this whole trilogy. Which was why it was so hard that Letha is absent for a huge portion of THE ANGEL OF INDIAN LAKE. That being said, Letha’s presence looms large in this story from beginning to end, and when she does show up…it’s nothing short of fucking epic.

I have been working on this review for way too long & I don’t feel like it’s anywhere near coherent, but it’s gonna have to do.

This was a fucking beautiful & bloody send-off to a character that has meant a lot to me these last couple years. I think if you’re a horror fan on any level, it’s hard to not feel some sort of kinship with Jade. She has been through the goddamn wringer in these books, and just keeps getting up. Oof. What a treasure this trilogy has turned out to be.

Endless thanks to Saga Press for the ARC! THE ANGEL OF INDIAN LAKE releases March 26th!