Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology
Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., eds.
Paperback / Ebook
ISBN: 9780593468463
Vintage, September 19, 2023, 384 pgs

Lightspeed readers probably love short fiction as much as I do. This love is why Christie Yant and I brought back Fantasy Magazine in 2020; it’s also why I come back to anthologies so often for this review column. The past few years have been difficult for magazines, and we’ve seen many cool venues close. If you’ve seen the notes in the editorials of our Adamant Press mags, you already know that for some, survival is about to become even more challenging.

On the other hand, for short fiction lovers, the range and quality of anthologies available to us is better than ever. Our own John Joseph Adams has another great Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy coming out, this time teaming up with the brilliant R.F. Kuang to select a stellar set of short works. Samira Ahmed and Sona Charaipotra recently published Magic Has No Borders (a “collection of magical South Asian tales”); g. haron davis had Transmogrify!: 14 Fantastical Tales of Trans Magic; Jenn Northington followed up the stunning Sword, Stone, Table: Old Legends, New Voices with Fit For the Gods: Greek Mythology Reimagined ¹, teaming up with S. Zainab Williams. These are just a few of the books from major publishers deliberately seeking to expand the visibility of various people, and to create space for a broader range of perspectives than has typically been centered in genre. And then there are the folks who’ve been doing it for a while, smaller presses who have championed authors from marginalized backgrounds and who continue to do so. As I write this Somos en escrito, the folks who published El Porvenir, ¡Ya!: Citlalzazanilli Mexicatl, have two submission calls going, and I can’t wait to see those books get published.

I pretty much stopped what I was doing when I saw the email for Never Whistle at Night come in. I’ve written before about genre overlooking Indigenous authors; I was absolutely elated to see this book. I was even happier to read it and discover just how good it is. I’ll touch upon a few stories—a sampling, if you will—but I encourage you to pick this one up and savor it.

The book opens with Mathilda Zeller’s “Kushtuka”, which begins with an immediately compelling (and seriously creepy) problem: a white man wants a village girl, Tapeesa, to carry his child. To complicate things, it’s Tapeesa’s mom who is trying to convince her to do it. This sets the stage, smoothly establishing fascinating and multifaceted conflict, while also infusing everything with layered subtext around power and wealth, colonial practices, complicity, gender roles, and more, all in the span of a single page. One of the major themes at play is about generational perspectives, both the mom’s almost mercenary pragmatism versus the main character’s desire to follow her heart; and then there’s an accident at the mines, which the main character’s “aged but ageless” Aana describes as the work of the mistress of the underworld—of course the younger folks aren’t so sure. The comfortable flow of the story, grounded dialogue, and careful details make the characters come to life, giving the impression of people you might run into if you were in the area. The prose is straightforward, and the storytelling is excellent, delivering mood and moments with admirable efficiency and precision, while still playing with subtext, all blended seamlessly. Importantly, the building horror here is twofold, the more horrific being the too-real monster: the white guy who has a young woman trapped by leveraging privilege and pretense, who plays it all off as if their hangout is an innocent good time. And, yes, the other horror is a supernatural monster. What would resolve as a standard comeuppance story—albeit a really good one—becomes even better by the narrative direction the ending takes.

I’ve learned to trust that Rebecca Roanhorse is going to take me on a narrative journey somewhere interesting. “White Hills” is no exception. Within moments of reading, thanks to Roanhorse’s style, you get a strong sense of character and place. Marissa has brought herself up out of poverty—by landing a guy with money. Of course, she’s enjoying her status, she’s absolutely marinating in it. She even potentially makes a friend at the country club, Candy, while Marissa’s hubby is busy rubbing elbows with a golf pro. Things get tense when Marissa spontaneously shows up at the club to surprise her man, and here Roanhorse demonstrates her mastery of building and layering tensions which, for some of us, are all too familiar; Roanhorse also toys with the way we as readers both relate to and kind of despise the protagonist. Part of the price of Marissa’s newfound status, it turns out, isn’t just about gender roles, because she is perfectly willing, if not quite totally happy, to play some version of a “good wife”. Nope! It’s also about race, and an undisguised distaste for anything even faintly “ethnic” within Marissa’s new, ritzy circles. As the next page break comes, we get the deep sense of foreboding that an expert storyteller can deliver. Ultimately the story examines the complexities of desire and sacrifice, the ways we harm ourselves to get the things we are taught to want, the nature of the things some people demand of us, and more. It pushes these ideas to brutal points, yet many of us will see sharp parallels in our own relationships, decisions, and social groups.

Mona Susan Power gifts us “Dead Owls”, an incredibly well-crafted tale of a girl named Amy sent to visit her aunt Phyllis. Smooth, easy writing and intriguing details carry the first half, developing in short space a character we want to journey with and people who feel both distinctive and real. For folks who read carefully, the story is rich with emotion and depth and social observations. Without close examination, the second half may seem random, but there is a connectedness being expressed in the subtext, in the subtle layering of histories, identities, and suffering that inhabit a place. The piece becomes gently gripping and then releases, letting the reader breathe and reflect and feel; and then, offers a brush of tenderness in its final lines.

“Uncle Robert Rides the Lightning” by Kate Hart, showcases fantastic narrative voice and style. It starts out by embodying Americana in vibe and flavor, with its near-fable character sketches, while also glittering with subtle power and pain. Every passage is engaging, each page will have you wanting more. Then it shifts into a clearer sense of anger. Finally, it embraces the fantastic, transforming into triumphant vengeance. To call it the story of Robert and Greg, to say it’s about their friendship and life, well, that would be true; and yet it would be altogether inadequate. The narrative is dense with meaning, observations, and cool, unexpected moments. Thanks to Hart’s skill, the tale rolls on easily, like you were sitting at a bar listening to someone share local yarns over beers. Seriously wonderful storytelling.

“Heart-shaped Clock” by Kelli Jo Ford isn’t necessarily speculative but it is another example of excellent storytelling. It’s the story of a tremendously flawed group of people, a family which can’t quite seem to figure out how to love each other. Joseph is the elder of two brothers, and he has come back to stay with his mom after all these years, leaving his own wife and son behind, mostly because his wife kicked him out. There’s a powerful tension between Joseph’s desire to feel human and loved, and the circumstances of the family, including who they are as people; and, of course, a history of hurt. Joseph struggles and makes a lot of bad decisions, but those decisions aren’t just contrived friction, they feel right for the story, they feel grounded in truths. He also has an occasional dose of bad luck, but again, it is the kind of luck that points to how messed up our real world can be—such as cops who assume the worst and help very little—so it all feels, unfortunately for Joseph, grounded in truths. The piece is superbly structured and delivered, and is perhaps, among many things, an examination of just how complicated and rough life can be.

I confess that I don’t know much about the editors, Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., but if this is what they can do together then I hope they will do more. Their taste is extraordinary, and they’ve put together a wonderful book. I mean, yes, pick it up because it is important to support projects like this, because sales will tell the publishers to keep it up. But also, get this book because it showcases some truly exceptional writing. If you love short fiction, you really shouldn’t miss it.

¹. It looks awesome, and true to the mission of Sword, is a clearly diverse table of contents; it should be noted that some have protested that it doesn’t feature Greek authors.