Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

I am a Southern Native, which means my family is native to Mexico, Tecuexe and Nahua, however I am in community with Northern Natives and live in the states. This book contains a very wide variety of native based stories that play with the notion of the word HORROR. Some are creature stories, some are supernatural, some are just violent, but they are all chilling. They are read by different people but so far all good. I am still reading this book so I will just give my impressions of the first 3 and will include no spoilers. 1. Kushtuka: Action packed supernatural story in the cold Alaskan setting. Good pacing and incorporated some good elements of race relations without any activist or academic language. If you liked the new season of True Detective you'll like this. Gory. I liked it. 2. White Hills: This one is a psychological thriller dealing with a "white passing" character who finds herself amongst the higher class of racists; the torture is mostly mental and deals with a truly evil villain. This story was devastating to me, left me feeling disgusted and sad for the protagonist until the end. I could see this being the first or second chapter of a righteous serial killer novel. Good story. 3. Navajos don't...: A tale about trusting your gut and not ignoring red flags. Gay protagonist finds himself losing his grip on the boundaries he set for himself by a dominating good-looking white man. Slowly but surely, he is groomed by the man and does things, and has things done to him, that he swore he would never do. He is aware he is being groomed and should stop, but what is he being groomed for? A chilling read with an action-packed ending. So that's the first three, but I will mention there's a story within a story about a cat in this book that absolutely chilled me.

Thought it was just gonna have some creepy interesting stories but surprisingly one of the first ones was nsfw and I could've gone without reading it. Some of the stories are hit or miss and I do take breaks from this book to finish other ones 😅 So far there were a few really interesting stories (not necessarily creepy) that have made the book worth it.

Love these stories of indigenous people's and their flaiir for scaring you to death. Turn the bed lamp on and read in the dark. Have fun! Just don't whistle!

As I read the book, I rated each story out of 5. My average rating was 2.3, which isn't very high, but I still enjoyed the anthology. Though I wouldn't read it again, and if I reccomended it, it would only be for specific stories, not the collection as a whole. With a title like "Never Whistle at Night" I went into this expecting paranormal horror stories that draw on Indigenous oral traditions or folklore. While there were some paranormal/spooky stories I found that a majority didn't fit into that category, which was disappointing. This likely affected my ratings. The paranormal stories were the ones I enjoyed most, while the rest were more hit or miss. Some of the stories seemed to focus on the lived realities and hardships of Indigenous communities - boarding schools, systemic oppression and racism, substance use and mental health struggles. I often found these stories to be sad and heavy, sometimes too grounded in real life experiences for me to enjoy.

This book is absolutely amazing. Would recommend a million times over.

This book is slowly becoming one of my favorite books. Sometimes I have to read it in the daylight with the lights on. Every writer tells stories in a way that has you on the edge of your seat. I grew up in a place where many of these folk tales were prevalent and it feels nice to see a piece of the mountains in a book. It gives off a cozy up around the fire and take turns telling ghost stories kind of feel. Absolutely love it.

A collection of very distinctive voices, horror-ish. 4 stars overall, with half of the stories being very strong 5 stars. Eagerly looking forward to the next collection. Even with the misses, the editors did well in their selections. * Kushtuka. 5 star. Spare, ruthless and efficient vengeance. I would have liked a lead in to the second strand, but otherwise excellent. * White Hills. 5 star. A brittle social climb / social reach faces a crossroads. A little too quick, a little too spare, but good. The end bumps this up. * NAVAJOS DON’T WEAR ELK TEETH. 4 star. R rated man on man toxic relationship like a gay Lifetime movie. Gripping but YMMV. * Wingless. 2 stars. A skeletal outline of a story; not bad for what it is, but somewhat slight, with an abrupt conclusion. * Quantum. 2 stars. A tale of divergent youth, and differential treatment. Unsettling. There feels like a few missing steps in the story. * Hunger. 5 stars. Intense, uncomfortable confrontation with a malevolent spirit, mostly from the spirit’s POV * Tick Talk. 5 star. Descriptive with unique turns of phrase. The New Orléans’ take: “the city melting into the Gulf like cardboard left out in the rain. Except for the Quarter. That was melting like a wedding cake under an August haze.” A crossways father/son reunion, then the left-turn aftermath. A lived in story. * The Ones Who Killed Us. 3 stars. Verbose. Well written but completely alien to spoken language. A ghostly resonance of unquenched vengeance. * Snakes are Born In The Dark. 4 stars. A strange, quick fever dream of a desert hike gone sideways. * Before I go. 5 stars. Tragic longing and the Night Mother. * Night in the Chrysalis. 3 stars. A quick overnight in a house horror * Behind Colin’s Eyes. 5 star. Very descriptive of person and place. Intense and ambiguous * Heart Shaped Clock. 3 star. Meandering study of a reckless character’s tragedy. Well constructed, YMMV. * Scariest. Story. Ever. 5 stars plus. An inspiring story as the key to the story of the title, then inspires again. * Human Eaters. 3 stars. A campfire warning. A little tension, a lot of folklore that is interesting but imprecise. * The Longest Street In the World. 5 stars plus. Humor, horror, and a shaggy demon to never get on the bad side of. * Dead owls. 5 star. An interesting story with an interesting twist at the end * The Prepper. 3 star. A brief history of a spiraling life. * Uncle Roberts Rides the Lightning. 5 stars plus. A spare, emotional, semi-tragic, efficient modern mythology. * Sundays. 3 stars. Decisions and vengeance. YMMV depending on how much a history of child abuse triggers. * Eulogy For A Brother, Resurrected. 5 Star. Detailed. Compelling. Intense. * Night Moves. 4 Stars. An efficient, quick werewolf story. * Capgras. 3 stars. A difficult main character, with a story that perhaps could have fleshed out how the underlying trauma came about. * The Scientist’s Horror Story. 5 stars. A two-version frame story that makes you think. * Collections. 5 star. A taut story of potential horror, in a bright mundane setting. * Limbs. 2 stars. A modern folk mythology. Gruesome, unpleasant, cliched. The pacing is rushed and uneven. An efficient conclusion, with the last two paragraphs echoing what could have been if the rest of the story was better.

An absolutely fantastic collection of stories that weave their way through all the shadow corners of horrors both interior and exterior, all too real tales that illuminate terrors being faced everyday but rarely confronted alongside the terrors of supernatural monstrosities that are full of mythic potency and poetry normally reserved for the legends shared in hushed tones by elders imparting wisdom. Seriously there is a bit of everything, serial killer thrillers, domestic terror, ghosts and gods told by a collection of fantastic authors that all turned in powerful and affecting works.