GeekDad: Stephen Graham Jones’s ‘The Angel of Indian Lake’ Is More ‘Dream Warriors’ Than ‘Season of the Witch’

Of the many insightful meta-analyses provided for us throughout the Scream franchise, none rings truer than that of Detective Kincaid in Scream 3: “All I know is that in the third one, all bets are off.” Such is certainly the case with The Angel of Indian Lake, the final entry in Stephen Graham Jones’s Indian Lake Trilogy.

While the bulk of Jones’s fiction mines the gore-splattered ground of horror cinema, this series approaches it unapologetically head-on, wearing its slasher, suspense, and giallo influences on the proverbial sleeve—largely through the driving insight and observations of troubled protagonist Jade Daniels.

Book three finds Jade returning to her hometown of Proofrock after a four-year prison stint. This fast-forward gives us a Jade that’s a little older, a little wiser, and hellbent on not becoming one of those clueless adults that dooms countless teens to their gruesome demise in this inevitable cycle of violence that seems to plague the sleepy Idaho town at regular intervals.

Though this novel never quite hits the high-water mark of the franchise original—what third chapter can?—it’s still a satisfying conclusion packed with all the brutality, call-backs, and blatant misdirection we horror-lovers crave.

Unexpected Backstory and a Preponderance of Exposition

Putting Jade more firmly back in the narrative driver’s seat after Don’t Fear the Reaper‘s Gal Pangborne-penned “Horror 102” missives, The Angel of Indian Lake easily returns to the recurring themes of the previous installments, though through the (slightly) more mature lense of a grown-up Ms. Daniels.

Though seldom stated outright, the emotional scars of abuse, the isolating effects of poverty, and the ways in which gentrification tends to reopen old wounds of generational trauma are never far from the slow-motion train wreck that is this new unfolding tragedy. That said, this tale feels less unmoored than its predecessor as it sees a new generation, specifically Jade and longtime frenemy Banner Tompkins, fulfilling the vacant roles of savvy history teacher Mr. Holmes and town defender Sheriff Hardy this time around.

Yes, making skin-of-her-teeth high school graduate Jade Daniels the town’s newest educator was a big swing, but it pays off in the long run.

Readers will notice many other familiar names too, from debutantes to the destitute, as no small town ever really changes in earnest. And the same can be said for Proofrock’s killers du jour.

Once again the community is faced with twin threats: one a hyper-motivated strain of everyday malice and the other a slightly different face of the lingering supernatural evil that has plagued Proofrock practically since its inception.

Without getting too spoiler-y, I’ll simply say that the recurring cast does much of the heavy lifting—even when you don’t pick up on it at first—and the story is all the better for it. This does lead to some rather convoluted twists and leaps of logic, but those too are hallmarks of the later chapters in any horror epic.

Anyone Can Die

The danger in The Angel of Indian Lake is palpable, so don’t expect to emerge from the story unscarred. Or, for that matter, unscared.

Previously defeated foes emerge rotten and waterlogged from the lake’s depth, new threats defy belief (and gravity) as they brazenly stalk the townspeople, and even the most mundane of monsters unsettle the reader with their audacious wrongdoings.

This is only amplified when the danger extends past Jade’s considerable reach to threaten the Mondragon-Tompkins family, including best friend Letha and her young daughter. While truly no one is safe at the close of a trilogy, Jones uses clever feints to always keep you guessing, not only about who’s the next to die but also the very direction of that potential killing blow.

As with all things in Proofrock, though, it ultimately comes back to the town itself, where buried secrets seldom sleep soundly and shared suffering is never metered out equally between the haves and the have-nots. Yet, by the same token, Stephen Graham Jones also goes to great lengths to make this cursed patch of Idaho wilderness a place where even the most well-worn horror trope can turn on a dime.

Again, I’ll try and sidestep any spoilers and just say that the way in which he deconstructs the old chestnut of the “ancient native burial ground” is some real next-level inspiration to any other potential storytellers in the audience.

Discovering Something That Wasn’t True From the Get-Go

Just as there’s a lot of humor to be found in misunderstanding, Jones reminds us that there is ample horror there as well. Proofrock is, perhaps understandably, cursed by its past, but does that make it destined to repeat those same mistakes?

If its greatest sin is not protecting those who need it the most, the poor and the defenseless and those who yearn for community and acceptance, it certainly seems so. Thankfully, by the book’s end, Jade and her cohorts seemingly crack the code and even discover a way to shift that historical power imbalance.

While this doesn’t make for a perfectly happy ending, Jones neither paints this as a simple morality tale nor Jade Daniels as some single-dimensional Disney princess one right move from ultimate happiness.

Though still weighed down by the pain of her past—both regarding the things she had no control over and her own admitted missteps—The Angel of Indian Lake does find Jade Daniels coming into her own, just not likely how you expected.

What loyal readers like myself have anticipated from the start is that blissful moment when Jade Daniels finally realizes that she is her own hero, when she removes the shackles of her tragic circumstances, acknowledges her innate inner strength, and fully becomes the ultimate final girl that we’ve spent so much of the last three years cheering for. But, Stephen Graham Jones being Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake doesn’t exactly give us that.

Instead, the book closes with a Jade that’s, somehow, something more. Something purer and heartier and even more hard-fought, a veritable angel to those who need her most. And maybe that’s the ending that we all deserve.

The Past Is Not at Rest

When it comes to the third installment of a franchise, a creator can go a few different ways. They can bring things to a tidy conclusion, they can change the game entirely thus subverting expectations, or they can use this final entry to elevate rather than simply iterate. They can make a jump rather than just take another step forward, which is what Jones does.

In each book in the Indian Lake Trilogy, Stephen Graham Jones has yes-and-ed himself into bigger, weirder, and more challenging narrative leaps. Surely not every element will be to each reader’s taste and there’s an argument to be made that his deep dive into slasher-dom may alienate those not already firmly in our creepy little camp, but it’s damn sure hard to argue with the results. 

I guess what I’m saying is that you can question the author’s choices and even his underlying motivations, but what you can’t question is his mastery of the craft. Even if I hadn’t already read the bulk of Jones’s creative output, which I have, the Indian Lake books are more than enough to place him firmly in the hallowed halls of horror luminaries like King and Barker.

By the same token, Jennifer “Jade” Daniels has similarly earned her place alongside the likes of Laurie Strode and Ellen Ripley as one of our chosen genre’s fiercest survivors… even if she still doesn’t recognize it herself.

Access to an uncorrected reader’s proof of The Angel of Indian Lake was provided for the purposes of this review. This post contains affiliate links. You moved the cemetery, but you left the bodies, didn’t you?!

Click through to read all of “Stephen Graham Jones’s ‘The Angel of Indian Lake’ Is More ‘Dream Warriors’ Than ‘Season of the Witch’” at GeekDad.If you value content from GeekDad, please support us via Patreon or use this link to shop at Amazon. Thanks!