Back for Blood: Never Whistle at Night Part II
Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., eds.
Paperback/Ebook
ISBN: 979-8217007622
Vintage, August 2026, 368 pgs

Back in the August 2023 issue of Lightspeed, I was one of the first, if not the first, to review Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology. That book went on to accrue piles of acclaim and glowing reviews. It also garnered several major awards nominations and was a heavy-hitting bestseller: It chilled on the ABA Indies Bestseller List* for a startling amount of time—sixty consecutive weeks, according to Google!—and sold over 230,000 copies. Of course, as the reviews and awards nominations rolled in, I did sit back and think, “Yes, I told you so.” It’s both a great book and a historically important book,** and it’s one of very few titles that I personally think, if this book doesn’t entertain you, surprise you, and from time to time, hit you hard in all the right ways, it is not the words on the page that are lacking, but rather, the understanding of the reader. Besides my smug satisfaction? I honestly felt lucky to have read it, to have seen it early, and to be welcomed into those seriously fantastic narratives.

Editors Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. are Back for Blood with the long-awaited follow-up! Part II offers twenty-one original pieces of fiction with a range of voices, styles, and central concerns, but a consistent quality of storytelling. Remarkably, they did something incredibly rare for a major anthology with a major publisher: They opened to submissions. Many anthologies are “invite-only” books, which is one of the reasons you may notice that, to a degree, the roster of authors across some anthologies by some editors can seem to be mostly the same people for a while. Many anthologists rely on, or call upon, a fixed core of authors for their books, which can give a set of anthologies a consistent vibe and quality, but locks out potential newcomers and reduces the probability of that really unexpected but amazing surprise that a new-to-them author might bring.*** Personally, I love seeing more opportunities for new authors, and I feel like a lot of great fiction happens because new writers are pushing their craft and working their butts off to break in. On the other hand, going through submissions is tremendous work, significantly increasing the effort needed to put together a book. Back for Blood features nine pieces by invitees, ten acquired through submissions, and one from each of the editors themselves. Overall, Part II feels similar in some ways to the first book, while also feeling completely unique. I’ll describe a handful of entries to give folks a sense of what’s on offer, but honestly, you can skip the review and just go straight to your favorite local bookstore and get a copy.

Back for Blood opens with “Miss Cherokee Princess 1996” by Jessica Doe. The vibe and, to some degree, the style of this one brings me back to pulp horror like Weird Tales, with a dash of The Twilight Zone, inflected with multifaceted subtext. Emmy is determined to win a pageant, especially since it’s the last year she can enter. Having already undergone a few medical procedures to “enhance” her beauty, she turns to magic scribbled in her “Grandmaws took-book.” With initially grisly details, the narrative follows Emmy as she uses that magic to take on the attributes she believes will help her win. It’s a fun horror story on a surface level, and as you ride along with Emmy’s narrative, you know there will be some kind of twist or point at the end. Each paragraph, for thoughtful readers, offers questions, each phase of the story revealing something about the way we often think about culture, beauty, and more. The ending is satisfying and makes sense, and in the span of a few brief sentences, it lends greater weight to the events leading up to the final moment. It also adds complexity to the issues at hand, whispering truths about our macro culture as reflected within the confined railings of the narrative. This is far more interesting than the famous “Eye of the Beholder” episode of the aforementioned show. For me, ultimately, this story is about control, and some of the most insidious aspects of colonization: Who decides how identity is defined, the sneaky ways one culture imposes its definitions on another, but more importantly, the ways we let those definitions define who we are and what we want. It’s a great start to the anthology, setting the tone in terms of vibes and subtext!

P.C. Verrone’s “Animal Dumb” is about a young guy in different kinds of awkward situations. There’s the awkwardness of his body developing less . . . elegantly than others; the awkwardness of feeling out of place with racial identity; and the awkwardness of attraction that might be unwanted. It’s beautifully told in creative ways, which still feel grounded in genuine emotions and possibility. Thanks to Verrone’s deft telling, it’s poignant without being sappy, and more powerful for it. Verrone develops character efficiently, so the reader quickly feels sympathetic towards this kid who is, maybe, falling in love with his best friend, while said kid is simultaneously being tormented by his homophobic brother. It’s a story that, unfortunately, too many people can relate with, the kind of situation that doesn’t have to exist. Homophobia and bullying are not inevitabilities, but as communities, we allow these things to exist. Seasoned horror readers will guess where the story is going, but the storytelling, details, subtext, and Verrone’s narrative voice make this a great piece of writing.

“The Making of Monsters” by Kimberly Blaeser brings us to an unspecified near future. After a climate disaster leaves Lake Superior dry, a monster of legend rises to hunt the remaining survivors. But before this happens, Blaeser absolutely hypnotizes the reader with prose bordering on narrative poetry. It makes sense, given the author’s background with poetry. The lines are approachable and readable but are also often possessed with rhythms and sounds that work wonderfully when woven into phrases by an artist like Blaeser. At the outset, the story wavers gently between a sense of collective “we” and the narrator, Namid, creating a tone that works perfectly for a story like this, which is as much about community as it is about one’s part in the community, while also being about a person’s individual experiences within a collective experience. Namid’s community initially tries to communicate in some way with the creature, which does not go well, so they end up trying to hide underground. Namid’s journey becomes one of questioning faith and tradition and even the validity of one’s contributions in the face of things that seem impossible to overcome. Blaeser offers no overly simplistic answers and, if anything, seems to say through story that there are yet more questions to ponder. I personally loved that towards the end, Blaeser brings in a fairly well-known but usually misrepresented legend and utilizes it in surprising and innovative ways¬¬—at least, surprising and innovative to me. This story is a work of art.

In a culture like ours, where simply existing is automatically politicized, where different folks are afforded different levels of opportunities, rights, respect, and so on, writing from any kind of marginalized perspective, even if focusing on the ordinary concerns of a marginalized group (or individual from that group), naturally carries with it some kind of “politics.” Quite literally, some readers will politicize the simple act of having a main character who is not white, regardless of the author’s intention. (Picture, for example, the backlash a director would face if they cast Peter Parker with a Black actor. I can hear the accusations of “woke agenda” now, even if the director simply felt the Black actor had the best audition.) That said, some stories really are far more direct in their critique of society, their revelations around history, and their positioning of events within narrative; some stories are deliberately, unapologetically, obviously political. It doesn’t make those stories less true or less important; if anything, to my thinking, it takes courage to be direct and to speak plainly. And in my opinion, it also makes sense that those who benefit from structural racism feel rubbed the wrong way when a narrative is too direct. Controlling the rules of conversation is, after all, one of the cleverer tools of oppression: demanding that marginalized folks speak in a way that makes those who benefit from structural racism feel comfortable, to me, is like breaking someone’s legs, then demanding that if they want to complain about it, they do so without raising their voice. “Civilized” by A.J. Eversole is one of several great examples of a story that has something to say, one that is less interested in hiding the message behind nuance and metaphor. The piece opens with acute observations via a point of view character named Charley, a young Cherokee man reflecting on the fact that even though his family and the family of his friend Joannie have been in the Tulsa area for roughly the same amount of time, it was safer for Charley to smuggle alcohol because he looks white and is, therefore, as a baseline fact, less likely to get hassled by the marshals. So much is packed into this deceptively simple moment, including the ways that race-based bias impacts one’s basic ability to move from place to place. The setting is 1920 Tulsa, but we see authorities hassling people based on assumptions around appearances and connection to race continuing around the US to this day. Things get even more complicated for Charley when he flashes his blue eyes to get out of potential trouble. He knows white people see him as white, and the more he learns about it, the more uncomfortable he is with it. Charley is caught between different forces and feelings, including his mom, who tells him he is “lucky.” When young Black women start showing up dead, things get even trickier. Even though this story is more direct than some, this is not an overly simplistic approach to the issues. For example, when Charley asks if his father really is Andrew Jackson, a family friend points out that the Cherokee had their own versions of Jackson, folks who were just as bad, and that those folks also participated in the enslavement of Black people. This is definitely an issue-driven story, and there are so many important elements to unpack throughout the piece. At heart, as the title suggests, is the concept of civilization itself, and on full display, for readers who put it all together, is the outrageous hypocrisy of the way the term has historically been used, even weaponized. If you’re keeping up with events since 1920, you will know that the tradition of this hypocrisy is alive and well today. The piece is short, perfect for what it does, and has so many essential things to say. Great work!

Christianity, both as an organization and upon examination of specific figures who call themselves Christian (and who were empowered by the organization), has a history of serious violence. One of its most violent traditions is going into a place and forcing local communities to adapt Christian practices. Historically, Christianity has used murder and torture as tools in this practice and has even described non-Christians as fair game for things like taking their land, their wealth, and even wiping out Indigenous populations. Many think of this as ancient history, but the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act wasn’t passed until 1975, and the Native American Languages Act didn’t happen until 1990. So, first white people take over your land, murdering lots of people. Then they outlaw your language and customs. Then they set up institutions to continue the violence. They often used boarding schools run by Christians to force kids to speak only English. Abuse in these environments—and let’s be very clear here: adults physically assaulting children—was common, and often racially motivated, as well as excused by claiming that they were converting people to Christianity. Like many terrible things that white Christians have done, particularly in the US, these historic facts don’t get broadly discussed. Moreover, many of the people who committed these abuses are still around: They are that old priest smiling at the back of the church, that nun mumbling prayers sweetly to herself, or they may be your grandparents; they were slapping, shouting, and leaving bruises or broken bones or worse in the bodies of Native kids back when they were twenty or thirty, and now they are giving you grief for not coming to visit more, or maybe they are making your favorite pie during a holiday get together. It is this topic that Debra Magpie Earling’s “The Corpse Room” takes on. What glimmers between the lines with vibrant anger right from the first page is the utter sense of helplessness of being a child in that situation, paired with the willful insistence of reclaiming humanity and freedom in any way possible, even if all you can really do is act out in tiny rebellions—actions that are bound to end in punishment. What makes this more universal than some may know is that the feelings of oppression here, and of being confined to desperately doing something, ANYTHING, to alleviate that sense of being controlled to the brink of oblivion, is echoed in many other communities, even today. If you haven’t experienced it, you might not recognize it. And so, here, for example, the kids cuss even though the white adults will literally wash their mouths with a soap that burns their tongues, because what else can the kids do to feel human and to claim some tiny amount of self-determination? Of course, this is a horror story; and, on the one hand, right from the beginning, the author lets us know, “the true horrors is the real shit people do,” All the same, we also have a story-specific punishment enacted on the kids: They sometimes get locked in a room with dead bodies. More specifically, dead kids who were probably made dead because the Christians murdered them. The kids talk about Goatman and about how Goatman likes to hide in the Corpse Room, perhaps as a way to scare each other, or perhaps as a way to process fear, or perhaps because Goatman is real. But what is truly terrifying is the priest who abuses the girls in the Corpse Room; again, reality is scarier than fiction. While the priest is committing sexual violence, the nuns are punishing the girls for following their actual desires with the people they actually like, a historically common hypocrisy which, again, continues to this day. The story is propulsive and full of truths. It goes in unexpected, interesting directions, landing in a place I didn’t see coming but thoroughly enjoyed, one which is better than where many writers might otherwise take a similar plotline.

“Summer Vacation” by Billy-Ray Belcourt opens with a wonderful tone, lending depth and substance to the main character through emotional connectivity with place and person. We learn of his feelings of connection to the forest and to his significant other, both of which are expressed beautifully. Even the way Belcourt describes the cabin is layered, fresh, relatable, and yet artful; moreover, Belcourt uses the main character’s engagement with place not just to describe setting, but to actively reveal the nature of the character, while also sketching observations about life and culture. This is the kind of writing I really love! When smoke from a distant forest fire encroaches on their vacation, the owner of their rental cabin shows up. Little things about the owner are unsettling, and the way Belcourt draws the feelings of the encounter are brilliant and grounded in experiences many people of color and queer people will find relatable: hard to prove, hard to specifically describe, but definitely “off” and unnerving. Belcourt’s writing is also effective in instilling a subtle but growing dread. Careful readers may catch lovely moments of symbolism as they follow the narrative. Thanks to the smooth and engrossing telling, they may just follow the story and enjoy the immersion and emotions of the piece. Horror often expresses emotions that are real, things people experience, even if the specific circumstances of the horror are different from the things that we are worried about in reality. As with many of the stories in this book, when the escalation hits, as we struggle through the grip of anxiety and tension the author has instilled in us, we are faced with the fact that there is so much very real horror happening in the world, committed by very real people against very real people who didn’t deserve to be harmed. In this sense, often the best fiction, in some way, reflects back those things we know to be true, even if we may have forgotten them, ignored them, or, in some cases, deliberately tried to obscure them.

Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. have great taste, and they’ve put together another stunning book. They’ve put a lot of work and love into this project, and it shows. Yes, again, it’s still an important book, it’s still historically relevant, and these stories have so many crucial things to say. But also? These are, simply stated, great stories by talented storytellers. If you love short fiction, you should get this book. I hope these anthologies become a long-running series, and I hope they continue the tradition of finding quality pieces by fantastic storytellers for many years to come. I will, year after year, be eagerly awaiting my early copy.

*American Booksellers Association list of bestsellers compiled from reporting independent bookstores.

**For more on this, see that review (bit.ly/4uqyHAk).

***Many of those anthologies are great! That core set of authors are often reliable storytellers, and some of them do amazing things with fiction. It always comes down to the editor’s selections, and if you as an individual reader have similar taste.