ROAD TO STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES’ OFF THE RESERVATION: An Obsessive’s Fiction Review Column
We’ve come to the last stretch of road. In just one week, the new novel from award-winning author Stephen Graham Jones, Off the Reservation, will be out there waiting for you. And if you’ve hitched along this six-column road trip I’ve been taking, you’re more than ready for it.
ROAD TO STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES’ OFF THE RESERVATION: An Obsessive’s Fiction Review Column
As we near the end of this column series, I’ve been reflecting on why I wanted so passionately to take on a project of this size. Yes, like other fans, I am beyond excited for Stephen Graham Jones’ upcoming novel, Off the Reservation (in fact, I’ve just begun re-reading The Only Good Indians in preparation). But more than anything, as I watch (and cheer for) his growing popularity, I can’t help but think of a younger me, just fresh off discovering this new-to-me author. As I scrolled through social media pics and reviews of Mongrels and his other major titles, I started spotting the spines and covers and titles of SGJ books I’d never heard of. It was as if I were suddenly inside of the Stephen King novella Ur, stumbling across the bibliography of my favorite author but from a parallel universe. And there was so much of it. I didn’t know where to start; I didn’t know when I’d reach the end.Continue Reading
ROAD TO STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES’ OFF THE RESERVATION: An Obsessive’s Fiction Review Column
Stephen Graham Jones is largely known as a horror writer—the horror writer, one could argue—but one of the greatest pleasures upon reading through his immense backlist is discovering just how widely he’s drawn from other genres. There is always that vein of horror running through his work, but today we will discuss books that could also be categorized as crime, thriller, noir, and the like. All can and often do share a relation to horror, but to just call these books “horror” would be reductive. I’ll speak more on SGJ’s specific style in the final column of this series, but for the purposes of today’s column, the common denominator is one in which he excels quite deviously: the mind of a serial killer.
ROAD TO STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES’ OFF THE RESERVATION: An Obsessive’s Fiction Review Column
Short stories are a form of magic. Perhaps dark magic, if we’re talking about horror short fiction here, though of course with SGJ we’re never talking about just one genre. For me, horror short fiction has always been that siren song, luring me out into the deep. It started with “The Tell-Tale Heart,” was re-ignited by Joyce Carol Oates’ 1966 story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” and became truly ravenous when young Spencer discovered the cosmic tales of H.P. Lovecraft and the stacks of books collecting the short fiction of Stephen King.
For Stephen Graham Jones, you could say his siren song was, of all things, the author bio of late modern writer Stephen Dixon. As the legend goes, some 30 years ago, near the beginning of his career, SGJ would seek out that author bio at the end of a Stephen Dixon short story to stare at one particular magic number: “[Dixon] has some 300 stories published.” Jones would dream of having that many of his own stories out there. And though I may not have an exact count for you, I would bet that all these years later, he does. And then some. And, SGJ being the dictionary entry for “prolific,” he did it in half the time.Continue Reading
ROAD TO STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES’ OFF THE RESERVATION: An Obsessive’s Fiction Review Column
Last time we spoke, I recommended you read my picks for what I called the SGJ Starter Pack—Night of the Mannequins; Killer on the Road/The Babysitter Lives; I Was a Teenage Slasher—and here you are now, ready for more. That, my friends, is the typical experience of a reader falling in love with the fiction of Stephen Graham Jones. When I discovered my first Jones book (one I’ll name in a future post) over six years ago, I too was hungry for more. I read eight (8!) of his books in quick succession—one of which was this column’s very first pick, Night of the Mannequins—a single-author binge I’ve never replicated until this year with, again, Stephen Graham Jones. He has a way of pulling you in, close to the characters and the inner details of their lives, while at the same time expanding your imagination greatly. In this writer’s humble estimation, Jones is singular in his expansive readability.
ROAD TO STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES’ OFF THE RESERVATION: An Obsessive’s Fiction Review Column
Horror, as a fiction genre, is having a moment (e.g., Obsession, Backrooms, Sinners). So it’s only fitting that one of the 21st century’s greatest storytellers would finally take his pound of flesh and rise with this wave of fictional blood. Stephen Graham Jones has been steadily putting out his particular brand of fiction for a quarter century now. Many of us this summer were, though unsurprised, thrilled to watch him accept the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, Locus Award for Best Horror Novel, and Nebula Award for Best Novel for his masterpiece, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. Give the man his flowers, we said, all while knowing he’d keep feeding us, and well. Our next meal? Off the Reservation, his upcoming novel from Saga Press—and surprise follow-up to 2020 fan-favorite The Only Good Indians—in stores everywhere October 13, 2026.Continue Reading
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