Don't Fear the Reaper (novel)
 | This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. (March 2024) |
 Hardcover edition cover | |
| Author | Stephen Graham Jones |
|---|---|
| Audio read by |
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| Series | The Indian Lake Trilogy |
| Publisher | Gallery/Saga Press (US) Titan Books (UK) |
Publication date | 2023 |
| Media type | Print, ebook, audiobook |
| Pages | 464 pages |
| ISBN | 1982186593 US first edition hardcover |
| Preceded by | My Heart is a Chainsaw |
| Followed by | The Angel of Indian Lake |
Don't Fear the Reaper is a 2023 horror novel written by Stephen Graham Jones. It is the second novel in the The Indian Lake Trilogy, following the 2021 novel My Heart is a Chainsaw.[1][2] The book received generally favorable reviews.
Plot[edit]
On December 12, 2019, nearly five years after the events of My Heart is a Chainsaw, 22 year old Jennifer “Jade” Daniels is released from prison and returns to her hometown of Proofrock, Idaho. Jade was arrested because she was captured on video killing her father, however she could not be convicted of his murder because his body, which sunk to the bottom of the lake, was never found.
A blizzard covers the Proofrock area, blocking cellular and internet service, and making travel difficult for the rest of the novel.
A Proofrock high school student, Toby Manx, is lured out of a motel where he was having a romantic tryst with his classmate Gwen Stapleton on the outskirts of town. He believes another one of his female classmates wants to have sex with him but isn’t sure who it is. Once outside however, he is eviscerated and dies in the motel parking lot.
On the same day Jade returns and the blizzard begins, an Indigenous serial killer, Dark Mill South, is being transported through the area under armed guard in order to lead authorities to the bodies of some of his victims. Dark Mill South seems to be a supernatural figure, he is unnaturally strong and resistant to injury, and doesn’t seem to feel pain. His real name and history is unknown and he is rumored to be over a hundred years old. A previous confrontation with one of his victims left him with a missing hand, which he has replaced with a hook.
Dark Mill South escapes custody near Proofrock. Later, it is explained that the vibrations made by the large convoy caused an avalanche, killing everyone (including two Proofrock police officers), except for Dark Mill South and one snow plough driver. South kills the driver and steals his snow plough, escaping to hide in the ruins of Terra Nova, the luxury home development across the lake from Proofrock that was abandoned after most of its residents were murdered in Chainsaw.
Jade first meets with former sheriff Amos Hardy outside of town. He shows her a beautiful white elk he has observed; the elk is walking on the frozen lake and later walks around downtown Proofrock during the blizzard, seemingly lost.
Hardy and Jade are driven from the town’s dam control, where Hardy now works, to the town by junior deputy Banner Tompkins, Jade’s former high school classmate, now married to Letha Mondragon, who Jade believed in Chainsaw was the final girl who would save the town.
Jade and Letha have not spoken in several years, after Letha withdrew her support from Jade’s defense when Jade implicated Letha’s father Theo Mondragon in several of the killings in the previous novel.
Letha and Banner have a 2 year old daughter named Adrienne. Letha, who was severely injured in Chainsaw when the ghost of Stacy Graves tried to rip off her jaw, has spent the intervening years becoming an expert in slasher movies like Jade, believing that she could have saved the massacre victims if she had been more aware of the supernatural threat. Letha has a replacement jaw; however, she still has difficulty talking and eating, and needs to take antibiotics and pain killers multiple times a day.
Cinnamon Baker, a survivor of the previous massacre and now a high school senior, calls 911 and speaks with Banner and Jade. She claims that Toby was killed after they had met for sex in a car, which the reader knows is incorrect based on the book’s opening scene. Cinnamon also claims to have found the body of Toby’s first lover, Gwen, disemboweled and hanging from a tree. She evades questions about inconsistencies in her story by sounding panicked and claims that she saw someone matching Dark Mill South’s description committing the murders. Jade notes that the deaths sound similar to the opening scenes of the slasher movie Scream. Cinnamon is taken to the police station for her safety overnight but is not locked in a cell.
The next day, Jade is picked up by Letha and taken to the police station. Banner has not heard from the other police officers, and no one in town is aware of the avalanche. The three discover that Cinnamon has escaped. Banner and Jade follow her footprints to a nearby retirement home.
Cinnamon’s twin sister Ginger is essentially imprisoned at the same retirement home, supposedly for her own safety. During the massacre of the Terra Nova residents that took place during Chainsaw she had a panic attack and was left behind alone on the yacht while construction worker Grade Paulson (called “Shooting Glasses” by Jade) rescued Cinnamon and Galatea Pangborn. Ginger escaped the yacht and survived in the woods for several weeks, becoming violent and experiencing delusions. Ginger and Cinnamon are identical twins, but Ginger’s head is kept shaved so she doesn’t try to pull out her hair. It is later revealed that Ginger is capable of escaping the retirement home and does so regularly.
Banner leaves Jade at the retirement home and returns to the station. While waiting to hear about Cinnamon’s recovery, Jade sneaks into Ginger’s room speak with her, and later stumbles onto the bodies of two high school-aged retirement home employees, who have been stabbed to death after sneaking off to an empty room to have sex. Jade notices that these murders are similar to the deaths of two characters in another slasher film, Friday the 13th (the boy was pierced through the throat with an arrow and the girl was killed by a fire axe to the face). Deciding she needs to return to the police station to warn Banner about the killings, she discovers the body of another teen employee, who was suffocated when a garment bag was placed over his head. Jade notes this death is similar to a death in the movie Black Christmas. She uses the teen’s snowmobile to return to the police station.
Concurrently, three students (Abby, Wynona and Jensen) sneak into the high school to play a game of strip basketball. Wynona is attacked and killed with a heavy trophy, and Abby is attacked with the lid of a toilet tank, which destroys one side of her face. Jensen is stabbed in the head from behind and then runs into the antlers of a mounted elk head while trying to escape (resembling a death in Silent Night, Deadly Night). The scene is shown from Jensen’s perspective, and he never sees his attacker(s).
Abby, badly injured but alive is able to call the police station. Banner and Jade are eventually able to bring the town doctor to the school to help Abby, although she is said to have later died of her injuries.
Jade calls Cinnamon from Abby’s cell phone. Cinnamon claims to still be at the retirement home. Jade asks Cinnamon to confirm a story that Ginger had told her earlier, about the two girls finding a blob of organic tissue under a pier in 2015 that got bigger when they fed it meat, and that Cinnamon (after Ginger was locked up at the retirement home) saw grow into a human girl who later disappeared. Cinnamon confirms seeing the blob, but believed it was gore left from the massacre, and denies feeding it. Jade is unsure if she should believe Cinnamon.
Meanwhile, Letha, alone with her daughter at the station, sees a figure outside and shoots him, believing it to be Dark Mill South. She actually shoots Rexall, the school janitor, who is out because he believes he saw Tab Daniels, his best friend and Jennifer’s father, through the cameras he has hidden around town. Dark Mill South was previously said to resemble Tab.
Rexall, in pain but not severely hurt, lashes out at Banner and Lonnie (the town mechanic and another friend of Tab and Rexall) when they try to help him. Banner shoots the weapon Lonnie was going to attack Rexall with out of Lonnie’s hand, and then places Rexall in a holding cell since he doesn’t have anywhere else to put him.
Banner and Rexall later hear something heavy slamming into the side of the police station, and Rexall, terrified, shouts that “she” is trying to get him. The attacker is later implied to be the white elk.
Jade believes that the blob the twins found under the pier may have been a reanimated Stacy Graves, so Letha and Jade take a snowmobile across the frozen lake to investigate Terra Nova. While there, Jade and Letha bond over their situation and their shared love of slasher movies. Jade also points out to Letha that many of the deaths resemble deaths from slasher movies.
Jade and Letha accidentally stumble across Dark Mill South, who has been hiding in one of the abandoned homes. South’s internal monologue reveals that he has been hiding at Terra Nova the entire time since his escape, and therefore he could not have been involved in the recent murders.
Letha slightly injures South by throwing knives at him, however he quickly recovers, and throws one of the knives back at her, injuring her shoulder. Forcing Jade to hide under a sink, Letha leads South away by running to another house. Jade follows and attacks South from behind with a hammer, causing him to fall through rotting floorboards of the house to the basement. This slows South down slightly, but injures Letha further when the house collapses.
The two women lose the snowmobile key in the struggle, and are forced to walk back across the lake. On the way they meet Claude Armitage, the high school history teacher.
Armitage has been using cross country skis to ski across the frozen lake to Camp Blood, as he is obsessed with slasher films as well as the Proofrock massacre.
Armitage’s internal monologue reveals that he has or had an illicit sexual relationship with Cinnamon Baker. He is also implied to be grooming Galatea, who is only 14.
Upon returning to the shore of the town, Armitage, Jade and Letha discover the mutilated body of Lonnie. Armitage believes Lonnie’s murder resembles the opening scene from It Follows.
They also find the snowmobile, meaning Dark Mill South found the key and is already in Proofrock.
The trio return to the police station. Letha passes out from her injuries and is not involved in the rest of the plot.
Hardy and Cinnamon also arrive separately at the police station.
Prior to arriving at the police station, Cinnamon has, at Banner’s request, driven to Main Street using Banner’s truck to warn eight of her high school classmates to lock themselves in the video store they run for a class project, for their own safety. The students were previously unaware of the murders and were out shoveling Main Street to keep it clean for local businesses.
At the station, Cinnamon explains that she lied to Ginger about feeding the blob so her twin would continue talking to her. Ginger wanted the blob to kill Proofrock residents and for the murders to be blamed on Jade, in revenge for the twins' parents and the other Terra Nova residents being murdered and Jade not being able to stop the massacre.
After this however, “Cinnamon’s” wig falls off, and she is revealed to apparently be a disguised Ginger. Ginger then runs away.
Jade and Armitage leave the station. Jade plans to get the doctor from the high school to help Letha, and Armitage goes to the retirement home to see if the real Cinnamon is still there.
Jade passes through Main Street and sees Banner’s truck, left unlocked and running.
She finds one of the twins murdered beside the truck. Jade believes the dead twin is Cinnamon and that she has been killed by Ginger.
The truck is next to the video store. Jade sees a body in the video store window and goes inside. Most of the teens are dead. They were given poisoned cupcakes by one of the twins, a reference to the film Happy Death Day.
After they died, Dark Mill South entered the store and began mutilating their bodies. Jade believes it was South who killed the twin Jade found outside, and since she has not seen Happy Death Day, which came out when she was in jail, she believes South killed all the teens. Two of the eight teens survive the encounters, because they didn't eat the cupcakes and because Jade distracted South before he could kill them.
Jade and the still-living teens try to fight Dark Mill South. Jade escapes onto the street. South follows, and the other twin (who Jade believes is Cinnamon) arrives and confronts South, claiming that he killed her sister.
South is slowed by Cinnamon, but when he turns to attack Jade, Kimmy Daniels, Jade’s absentee mother who was working at the dollar store nearby, attacks South with her purse, distracting him momentarily.
Suddenly, Kimmy is killed by the white elk, which is still wandering Main Street.
The white elk, which is also implied to be the blob Ginger and Cinnamon found under the pier, is a manifestation of the vengeful spirit of Melanie Hardy, sheriff Hardy’s daughter who drowned nearly 30 years prior at age 12 while swimming with her friends. The elk only attacks the people who were with Melanie when she died. It was therefore the elk that killed Lonnie and attacked Rexall when he was in the jail cell.
The elk leaves after killing Kimmy.
Cinnamon tries to attack South again, but he is too strong and he throws her into the truck’s bumper. Cinnamon is badly injured but lives.
Near the end of the novel it is revealed that both twins had shaved their heads and were wearing wigs. It is implied that Cinnamon may have been the one committing the murders, in retaliation for her classmates spreading rumours about her relationship with Armitage.
Jade also comes to believe, near the end of the novel, that Cinnamon killed her classmates, and also killed her sister, although she doesn’t fully understand Cinnamon’s motivations. Jade reasons that Cinnamon planned the murders to resemble murders from slasher movies in order to frame Jade, but later decided Dark Mill South was a more believable scapegoat.
Armitage returns and attacks South with a machete, but South shoots him. Armitage is badly injured but lives.
Before South can recover and attack Jade again, Banner, who has found the snow plough South stole to escape, hits South with the plough and drives it into the lake, hoping to drown South. The town's historic pier is destroyed since it can't hold the weight of the plough.
Hardy comes to Main Street after hearing the commotion, and Jade, Banner and Hardy are shocked to find South still alive and walking across the ice to attack again.
Hardy tells Jade and Banner to escape, but they know his gun is only filled with birdshot that will not kill South, meaning Hardy will be killed.
Jade runs through the snow to find a weapon. She finds her trash picking stick (she had a job picking up trash in Chainsaw), which she hidden behind some bushes in the previous novel. She rushes Dark Mill South and stabs him in the heart with the sharp end of the stick, finally killing him.
After South’s death, Jade and Hardy sit outside and Rexall is sent to bring them inside. The white elk arrives and tries to gore Rexall but can’t, and Rexall shoots the elk. The dead elk seems to dissolve, and inside it is a version of Melanie Hardy, who is also slowly dissolving. Jade and Hardy walk across the lake in order to return her spirit to the lake. It is implied that Hardy decides to drown with his daughter so their spirits can reunite.
When the authorities arrive, Jade takes responsibility for driving the snowplow into the lake so Banner doesn’t lose his job, both out of friendship and because she believes Banner can better protect the town from future threats than new officers.
Jade is arrested, since destroying public property violates her parole.
Before being taken away by police helicopter, Jade holds Dark Mill South’s hook hand up in triumph.
Development[edit]
For the novel's setting Stephen Graham Jones chose to set the story in Proofrock, Idaho, as he wanted to show that "there’s not a single American Indian story" and that it does not have to be limited to areas he's lived or on reservations or to one specific idea of what it was like to be Native American. He also wanted the setting to feel like an authentic, genuine small town and drew upon his own experiences living in small towns while writing. In an interview with Barnes & Noble's Poured Over podcast Graham Jones stated that the trilogy as a whole will cover the process of Jade "coming of age" as he views the term as being "really kind of like a ritual that you go through to go to your next stage of maturation or just your next place. It doesn’t even have to be higher just to the next place."[3]
Release[edit]
Don't Fear the Reaper was first released in hardback and e-book in the United States on February 7, 2023, through Gallery/Saga Press.[4] A paperback edition will be released on September 26 of the same year, also through Gallery/Saga Press.
The audiobook has received a full cast recording and features Isabella Star LaBlanc as Jade Daniels; the character was previously voiced by Cara Gee for My Heart is a Chainsaw.[5] The rest of the cast is made up of Jane Levy, Alexis Floyd, Pete Simonelli, Timothy Andrés Pabon, Marni Penning, Dan Bittner, Corey Brill, Matt Pittenger, Jesse Vilinsky, Migizi Pensoneau, Lee Osorio, Gail Shalan, and Alejandro Antonio Ruiz.[6]
Reception[edit]
Critical reception for Don't Fear the Reaper has been favorable, as the work has received praise from outlets such as Cemetery Dance and Tor.com.[7][8] The Los Angeles Review of Books also reviewed the work, writing that "You don’t need to have read Jones’s previous works to enjoy Don’t Fear the Reaper, but it helps. Reading Jones’s works sheds light on the deep, palimpsestuous connections running throughout his career: popular culture and lowbrow slashers teaching strong, complex young women the skills and the How to Survive Male Predators mindset better than any traditional self-defense course."[9]Audiofile praised the cast adaptation of the novel, highlighting LaBlanc's performance and stating "For what is essentially a slasher story about a hook-handed killer, the performances are filled with surprising heart."[6]
References[edit]
- ^ "Don't Fear the Reaper: Interview with Horror Author Stephen Graham Jones". Gizmodo. 2023-03-21. Retrieved 2023-05-12.
- ^ "Stephen Graham Jones DON'T FEAR THE REAPER Book Tour". FANGORIA. 13 January 2023. Retrieved 2023-05-12.
- ^ Seery, Jenna (2023-02-07). "Poured Over: Stephen Graham Jones on Don't Fear the Reaper". B&N Reads. Retrieved 2023-05-12.
- ^ Jones, Stephen Graham (2023). Don't Fear the Reaper. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1982186593.
- ^ My heart Is a chainsaw, 2021, ISBN 978-1-7971-2332-5, OCLC 1311440138, retrieved 2022-07-02
- ^ a b "DONT FEAR THE REAPER by Stephen Graham Jones Read by Isabella Star LaBlanc Jane Levy Alexis Floyd and a full cast | Audiobook Review". AudioFile Magazine. Retrieved 2023-05-12.
- ^ Mandelo, Lee (2023-02-07). "Slasher 102: Don't Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones". Tor.com. Retrieved 2023-05-12.
- ^ Hart, Gabriel (2023-02-13). "Review: Don't Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones". Cemetery Dance Online. Retrieved 2023-05-12.
- ^ Wigard, Justin (2023-03-18). "The Final Girl Returns Home: On Stephen Graham Jones's "Don't Fear the Reaper". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 2023-05-12.