**spoiler alert** First half: 鈥淚 just don鈥檛 really see how this is horror.鈥�
Page 129: * The Horror begins *
Second half: Basketball overdose
Last two pag**spoiler alert** First half: 鈥淚 just don鈥檛 really see how this is horror.鈥�
Page 129: * The Horror begins *
Second half: Basketball overdose
Last two pages: 鈥淭his ended exactly the way I wanted it to.鈥�
Pros: 鈥� I鈥檓 rooting for Elk Head Woman all the way here. Just the sheer power of tradition and memory coming back to tell a modern world to chill the hell out. 鈥� The symbiosis of Indigenous communities balancing traditional protocol and living in the 20th/21st century. The world 100% forgets that Native Americans are a modern people. The internal dialogues of the characters captures this relationship well. 鈥� Denorah turning into the secret heroine with those last two pages. Compassion would have changed (and did eventually change) the entire course of events, so of course it is up to a woman to provide that and Save The Day. 30% of this could also go in the cons list; see below.
Cons: 鈥� I really could just care less about the basketball details 鈥� Wanted a bit more of a backstory on why the four men were pursued for such a lethal vendetta; surely there must have been more to it than the actual hunt? Deer Head Woman is the protector of children and women - did these men have a history of disrespecting children and women beyond the events of The Thanksgiving Classic? Not to mention Lewis was incredibly repentant about it from the first moment. 鈥� Lewis鈥檚 character was not only entirely capable of providing the emotional self-sacrifice required to break the cycle but also DID do his best at redemption. Should the opportunity have presented itself for him to save Elk Head Woman AND her calf, I believe he could have become the 鈥渉ero鈥� and shattered the trite male/female relationship with empathy. Elk Head Woman takes empathy a step TOO far - let鈥檚 see male characters move the needle the same distance. 鈥� Some of the prose is a bit choppy and I had to reread to understand what was being said - nouns verbing nouns with some clauses peppered in for spice were in an order that made the subject bleary. It鈥檚 hard to describe so my sentence describing it is probably doing the same thing. 鈥� I鈥檓 going to reiterate how much I could live without the basketball details.
Note: The animal gore did not bother me as much as I thought it would? Not that it was necessarily important to the story, but I understand why and how it had to happen in the context of a hunter鈥檚 survival. Elk Head Woman鈥檚 whole point was giving them a taste of their own medicine PLUS she couldn鈥檛 risk discovery. Just my hot take, but I know and respect that it disturbed other readers.
Despite my lengthy list above, FANTASTIC read. ...more
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