[Book Review]: Stephen Graham Jones’ The Angel of Indian Lake
On Final Girls, trilogies, and the passion to survive.
I have this thing about Final Girls. Most especially about disabled Final Girls. They seem to be a rarity at first blush, but when it comes right down to it, we all end up that way at one time or another. Still, very few tales of terror deal with the aftermath for the town saviors. Stephen Graham Jones’ Indian Lake trilogy has made a point of showing the meaty, pulsing underbelly of survival — and its consequences.
Jade Daniels’s journey from My Heart Is A Chainsaw to now, in the Angel of Indian Lake, has been fraught with trauma of all shapes and sizes. From the angry girl who wished vengeance on a town that by and large wrote off her pain or pretended it didn’t exist to fierce protector of all she loves, Jade has struggled, yes, but fought her way toward a life she can be proud of living.
I have, over the course of being given the opportunity to review the Indian Lake Trilogy as a whole, taken every chance to wax poetic about finding a version of myself in Jade that I never thought I’d quite see committed to paper unless I got brave enough to do it. Her love of media, unshakeable belief in right and wrong, and fierce drive to protect the ones she cares for made her a Final Girl long before she was able to consider the idea for herself.
Even now, I’m not sure she believes herself worthy of the title. But when has a Final Girl ever truly owned the title for themselves? It is a heady label we bestow upon the strongest of survivors, and rightly, but how comfortable a crown is it when it is soaked in the blood and grime of loss?
Jade’s evolution is most prominent when tracing the way she views and uses horror across the trilogy. In Chainsaw it is a virtually impenetrable shield and weapon. She would give anything to have the chance to live in her favorite genre, no matter the cost to those around her, because in her eyes the town deserves to be awash in the gore that is a prerequisite of it. There are enough guilty parties in Proofrock to make bloody justice worth the price. She speaks to us — and her history teacher, via her essays — almost exclusively from behind slasher-tinted glasses. Naturally this makes for a read that is great fun for any slasher fan, playing “spot the reference” on every page, yet there is more than that going on beneath the surface. The movies Jade touches on are not done so at random. She’s having the time of her life, showing someone she cares about her most passionate interest, but it becomes clear as the novel progresses that she is also calling out for help. For someone to listen. For anyone to see what she has come out of, and tell her it will be okay.
By the time we get to Don’t Fear the Reaper, we’re playing full time not just in Jade’s world, but the rules and dynamics of a slasher trilogy. We get new perspectives, a softer version of our favorite fighter, and plenty of up-the-ante level gore all good slasher fans know is virtually a requirement for any sequel worth its salt.
The Jade of Reaper is on a quest to find the Final Girl who will save Proofrock while she heals from her own deep emotional and physical wounds from the last novel. After the losses she’s taken, no matter that she had a hand in saving the town, she not only doesn’t believe herself worthy of the title of Final Girl, we also see her start to try and divorce herself from the genre that made her who she is. She is doing everything she can to pass the proverbial torch, and learning just how quickly the media world moves on without her there to consume it. Having gone to prison for what happened at the end of Chainsaw, she finds herself free and unmoored in a world of references she cannot place, which consequently begins to make her feel like she might be missing pieces of the pattern of events in her own life that a more savvy slasher connoisseur is more qualified to notice.
The thing is, though, is it takes more than just familiarity with the tropes of survival to be a survivor. And if Jade is anything, she is a survivor to the end. And even more than that, Jade is a protector. Even at her most raw, vulnerable, aching core, there is always someone on the other end of the pain worth protecting. And with that mindset, we enter into The Angel of Indian Lake. Now, Jade is the teacher of Proofrock high school’s history class where she once waxed poetic at every opportunity. What was suggested in Chainsaw — that Jade be the one teaching the teacher — has come full circle. Naturally, in her newfound position, she grants levels of flexibility to her students’ writing assignments most of us would envy in school. If they can defend it, it seems, it is permitted. Jade being who she is, of course, it is through just this kind of flexible assignment structure that we are thrown headfirst into Proofrock’s latest bloodbath.
Full circle is the name of the game in Angel. There are bits and pieces of the previous two entries sprinkled within this novel to drive home just how impacted Jade’s hometown is by the horrific events of the last several years. It is not only the people who remember — though there does seem to be a new supernatural folk tale afoot in the woods — but the land. Meanwhile, badly as she wants to move on from her gore-soaked past and forget it all together, we find Jade letting hints of her old self out to play as she makes quiet and calculated moves to protect the students of her school from having to go through the traumatic exposures she did.
She mourns those she lost in her own unique and pointed ways, but she has made a choice in Angel that is all but revolutionary for her. The girl who would have given herself over to the lake but a few short years before has finally decided to live. Not out of need, or spite, or anger, but out of love and the desire to protect that has always been at her center. With Angel we finally watch Jade start to see herself the way everyone around her always has: as a strong, vulnerable, powerful, complex woman capable of extraordinary efforts to make the world a better place than she found it.
Stephen Graham Jones bids Jade farewell with this entry into the Indian Lake trilogy, and parting is such sweet, slashery sorrow. But what a ride it was, and how fulfilling to know that we can keep her with us the same way she has kept her favorite films. Jade Daniels is immortalized into my — and I am certain several others — personal Final Girl Hall of Fame, ready to give me strength when I need her most. And isn’t that the kind of thing she’s always wanted?
Angel of Indian Lake comes to a bookstore near you from Simon & Schuster/Saga Press on March 26, 2024. I would like to thank the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to receive an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
