MAPPING THE INTERIOR by Stephen Graham Jones

This elegiac new novella by Stephen Graham Jones features a haunting in the way that I believe it would actually occur. Not with translucent, floating apparitions banging on walls, levitating over you while you sleep, or chasing you down the halls of your house, but a haunting by something much more personal, quiet, and understated the way it is here.

Jones uses weaves together elements of horror, superstition, family conflict, and Native American culture and lore to tell a coming of age story about a young boy searching for ways to connect with his dead father, who has begun to visit him and his brother late at night. In many horror books, the haunting is an external thing, a disturbance that our main character has to overcome. But here, I believe that the haunting is more interior, more a product of Junior's insecurities and fears than anything else. And to overcome it he has to overcome something within himself.

I do feel like it could've been a little more efficient in it's storytelling though. It feels extra-wordy and bloated and dulled the experience a bit.

Big ups to Netgalley and Tor Books for the Advance Reader Copy in exchange for this honest review.

GRADE: B-

THE NIGHT CYCLIST: A TOR.COM ORIGINAL by Stephen Graham Jones

I've had my eye on Stephen Graham Jones' work for a while and have read nothing but awesome things about his talent. Rave reviews for his latest short story/novelette, "The Night Cyclist," led me to make it my first jump into his work. It follows a restaurant cook and avid cyclist who bikes from work to home everyday, and the unexpected encounter he has one night on a dark stretch of road. 

As promised, the story is wonderfully well-written and detailed, especially when describing the joys and experiences of bike riding as well as the eerie nights that the rider encounters while on the road. And like all of the great horror writers, Jones uses the fantastic as a vehicle to touch on the themes that are at the heart of the story, mid-life crises and second chances. I enjoyed the ending as well and now I have to decide which Stephen Graham Jones book to read next!

He'd picked my scent out of all the smells of the city. Out of all the thousands of other bodies out after dark. He'd known me through the rain.

GRADE: A-