Never Whistle at Night (edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr) is a dark fiction anthology that weaves together haunting tales from indigenous writers—told through various perspectives and writing styles. You’ll find folklore here, yes, and some of the stories unflinchingly look at the horrors of racism and assimilation as well.

While it’s difficult to narrow down, here are a few of my personal favorites:

“Kushtuka” by Mathilda Zeller - A chilling tale about a girl being stalked by something that looks like her—only it has meat-eating molars and a too-wide grin. This was a suspenseful, edge-of-your-seat story and the build up to the twist at the end was fantastic!

“Snakes Are Born in the Dark” by D. H. Trujillo - A visceral and dread-inspiring survival horror about a hiking trip in the desert that goes awry after one hiker decides to desecrate petroglyphs. If you're a fan of the stomach-churning grossness of The Outwaters, you’ll probably love this one as well.

“Before I Go” by Norris Black - A poignant story about one woman's struggle with grief after the death of her fiancé.

“Night in the Chrysalis” by Tiffany Morris - After Cecelia moves into a new house, she keeps smelling rotting meat from behind the walls and hearing a mysterious woman's voice. This one is a deliciously creepy haunted house story, told through lyrical prose.

Overall, the stories within this anthology will sink their teeth into you and really get under your skin, lingering with you even after you finish its final pages.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a review copy.
This is a very impressive collection! There are quite a few big name indigenous authors, as well as some I was introduced to for the first time. Like any anthology, it is a mixed bag, but by and large I enjoyed all the stories.

Kushtuka by Mathilda Zeller ⭐⭐⭐⭐
White Hills by Rebecca Roanhorse ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Navajos Don't Wear Elk Teeth by Conley Lyons ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5
Wingless by Marcie C. Rendon ⭐⭐⭐
Quantum by Nick Medina ⭐⭐⭐.25
Hunger by Phoenix Boudreau ⭐⭐⭐.5
Tick Talk by Cherie Dimaline ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Ones Who Killed Us by Brandon Hobson ⭐⭐
Snakes Are Born in the Dark by D.H. Trujillo ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Before I Go by Norris Black ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Night in the Chrysalis by Tiffany Morris ⭐⭐⭐.5
Behind Colin's Eyes by Shane Hawk ⭐⭐⭐⭐.25
Heart-Shaped Clock by Kelli Jo Ford ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Scariest. Story. Ever. by Richard Van Camp ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5
Human Eaters by Royce K. Young Wolf ⭐⭐⭐.75
The Longest Street in the World by Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Dead Owls by Mona Susan Power ⭐⭐⭐⭐.75
The Prepper by Morgan Talty ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Uncle Robert Rides the Lightning by Kate Hart ⭐⭐⭐.5
Sundays by David Heska Wanbli Weiden ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Eulogy For a Brother, Resurrected by Carson Faust ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5
Night Moves by Andrea L. Rogers ⭐⭐⭐
Capgras by Tommy Orange ⭐⭐⭐.25
The Scientist's Horror Story by Darcie Little Badger ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Collections by Amber Blaeser-Wardzala ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Limbs by Waubgeshig Rice ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I’d first like to say that short stories have never been my jam. I like a story that keeps pulling me back to a book, rather than having a new one each time. Also? Sometimes I feel like I’m too dumb to understand them. 😅
But this one I had to have. I love indigenous horror and saw that the intro was by Stephen Graham Jones, so I clicked that request button on NetGalley real fast.
And I loved it! Each story kept my attention, and I found myself excited to see what the next one would be like. Some of them were terrifying, some were quieter, hopeful, and most of them were angry. There are creature features and human monsters to reckon with.

One of the first stories, “White Hills,” really struck me. The main character was set up to be unlikable but the story shifts in horrifying ways and I was left open-mouthed at the end. “The Ones Who Killed Us” was also excellent. It was fully a stream of conscious piece, and probably one of the angriest things I’ve read in a long time. I won’t be forgetting it soon. “Snakes Are Born In The Dark” is a strong contender for my favorite. It was absolutely WILD.

This would be a perfect, spooky fall read for any horror fan, or anyone who is interested in indigenous stories in general. I fully recommended it!

First of all, I absolutely love the title!! And the cover!! I remember my cousin getting smacked for a whistle that hadn’t even left his lips yet. You just can’t be out here calling the Lechuzas. IYKYK. This was such a great collection of dark short stories by indigenous authors. It was filled with some creepy stuff, themes like racism, privilege, poverty, etc. Like all anthologies, it’s filled with different writing styles, so they all didn’t hit the same for me, but overall I loved it.

A collection of short stories that is sure to spook or creep you out! I wouldn't read these at night unless you're brave. Some of these were kind of weird, but didn't bother me, and others were downright terrifying. It was really cool to see a collection of so many different indigenous stories and wasn't what I typically gravitate towards!

I really enjoyed reading this, however I wouldn't say that I loved it. I thought the stories were mostly creepy, but some were just bizarre and didn't make sense. I don't think I knew what was happening and so it made the ending even more confusing. I tried rereading a few to see if that helped me, but I still had no clue what was going on so that took away from the book overall for me.

If you really like short stories and horror I'd definitely recommend giving these a try.

I had never really read any Indigenous horror prior to this collection of stories, so I wasn’t totally sure what to expect, but I was blown away!

The stories are all written by Indigenous folks and it definitely feels like it is for Indigenous folks as well! Some of the stories were so realistic about Indigenous fears!! They weren’t all stories that will haunt my nightmares and scare/scar me, but they all had different eeriness levels to them.

There are stories that feature different beings and creatures, some with human evils, and some that are just downright disturbing. There’s really a little bit of something for everyone.

To be perfectly honest, there are stories in here that I still don’t even understand the end!! Some were just so WILD!

I spent a lot of my mornings before heading to school reading this and I will say that reading this in the dark definitely was making me feel paranoid at points haha! The feeling of being watched was real.

Overall, I was super impressed by how diverse the stories all were and how many kinds of scary were showcased and felt! The writing for all of them had me super hooked and I loved getting to read some new Indigenous authors. I highly recommend to anyone who can handle some horror because it is the perfect fall read!

Woooee, what a collection. As editor Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. says in the afterword of this book: *It’s something else to be a monster-made man in a world of man-made monsters.**

'Never Whistle at Night’, based on the shared belief by many indigenous people that one should never whistle at night, is a wonderful idea for a collection (though not all stories involve whistling)! Its wonderful because each story can be something totally different and each diverse tale is juxtaposed within a central theme. You can have a ultra-violent monster chase story, a slasher tale, a slow and eerie haunting, or a quasi-realist story by Rebecca Roanhorse that takes disturbing look into what it means to whitewash, or to compromise your heritage for the sake of status and money - yet they all feel centralised more or less on the experience of being Indian. The stories explore so many different Native American people’s concepts of magic, of dark folklore, of horror, and of place, and mostly of struggle to exist, in the USA/Canada, it can be quite overwhelming at times, but in a good way!

As well as the downright horrific, there are some very sad stories in here, touching on the idea of internal racism (the outcast baby brother who isn’t quite Indian enough), or rejection of cultural identity (A wandering man returns home to face the truth of why his father needed to hunt).

There are wiindigoos of course, nasty witches and good witches, vengeful magic, golem type resurrections, serial killers, giant ticks, demonic homunculus slashers, people-eating plants, haunted houses, werewolves.

Some of my favourite tales were:

'Wingless' by Marcie R. Rendon - A disturbing story of child abuse and vengeance about two foster boys pushed to the edge.

The aforementioned 'White Hills' by the excellent Rebecca Roanhorse about a part Native American trophy bride who has to make a tough choice to keep her rich lifestyle.

'The Ones Who Killed Us' by Brandon Hobson - A beautifully executed stream of consciousness tale told from the perspectives of what I understood to be ghosts of First Nations, and their encounter with a group of repentant conquistadores.

I also really enjoyed 'Behind Colin's eyes', where the protagonist, a 10 year old boy, finds out about the darkness within his family and his own body, in a very well written story by Shane Hawk.

'Heart-shaped clock' is a heartrending of family trauma and seperation by Kelli Jo Ford, who was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel. Its tragic, violent realism at its best, and is one of the best stories in the collection.

'The. Scariest. Story. Ever.' By Richard Van Camp, is a bush Cree story about the power of a scary shared story, to change and empower, to heal or to destroy. It touches again on the idea of 'selling out' your culture for fame, as do many of these stories. Be that a story about Wheetago or Sasquatch or Aliens or Little People, or as in the case of this story, something even worse. A line from the writing that I really liked: ‘Devil is a handsome man in a suit but what they saw was a small boy with hay for hair and sticks for teeth. The child had no eyes. It grinned in their direction with its black stick teeth as the animals grew closer.’

I loved 'Uncle Robert Rides the Lightning', an excellent horror story wrapped in literary writing by Kate Hart that follows the lives of Uncle Robert and his friend/nephew Gregory. Its a tale full of weirdness and magic realism, as the two men become the Thunder God and the Ferryman of Souls between the stars. Kate's elegant writing enhances the beautiful tale.

'Capgras' is an pretty disturbing and layered story by Tommy Orange about a famous part-Indian writer on a book tour in Europe, a story written with a weird, surreal atmosphere, as the writer struggles with the mistranslation of his novel into French, and a strange growing lump on his neck. Its one tht left me thinking about it for days afterwards. A line form the text: 'We smiled wide and wanted to yell something out into the Parisian night, against the Seine, ashamed and proud at once of being American and not American and something else, from a future once dreamed of, a hoverboard-robot eighties dream we don’t even remember anymore.’ It makes me want to read more of his work, because this story rocked.

The second to last story in the collection was also very good, 'The Scientist’s Horror Story' By Darcie Little Badger. A ‘horror stories around a camp fire’ type tale where the people telling the stories are in fact three native scientists at a conference, sitting around a lamp at a late night catchup at a scientific-conference. This well-written and compelling narrative touches on radiation-ghosts, B horror films, and the future for indigenous people who are too small to find a voice. Very well done.

You could say that this is one of the best horror anthologies I have read in recent years. A lot of the best stories are stacked near the end of the collection, and while there of course are a few I felt were quite weak (as in all anthologies) or could use some brutal editing at least, most of these stories are well written, fascinating, and well executed tales. If like me, you love the weird folklore and stories of Indigenous American/Canadian people, if you want to be scared, compelled and grossed out, if you want to feel the struggle of being native in a country that seems to want to destroy your heritage and right over your people's history, come to 'Don't whistle in the dark'. You won't be disappointed.

Book Review: Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology
Editors - Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr.


⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️


Never Whistle at Night is a collection inspired by indigenous storytelling traditions and lore. You won’t want to skip past the Foreward astutely written by Stephen Graham Jones who provides the context and set up for the stories to come. The anthology provides an array of tales from the nightmarish to the creepy. Never Whistle at Night features an outstanding cast of indigenous writers many of which you may recognize and others who are debuting their literary talents. A good spooky tale will make you check before walking into dark spaces. But an excellent story will fuel your imagination while peeking behind the veil to reveal true horrors. Some of my favorites in the collection include: Kushtuka (Mathilda Zeller), Hunger (Pheonix Boudreaux), Before I Go (Norris Black), Night in the Chrysalis (Tiffany Morris), Eulogy for a Brother, Resurrection (Carson Faust), The Scientist’s Horror Story (Darcie Little Bear), Collections (Amber Blaeser-Wardzala) and Limbs (Waubgeshig Rice).

I personally connected with this form of storytelling as I grew up listening to the Mexican legends of La Lechuza, the El Sombrerón, La Llorona and my family’s own stories of the paranormal. If you’re looking for a collection of dark tales that will take you back to sitting around the camp fire listening to scary stories or late nights watching horror films with your crew, then you need to add Never Whistle at Night to your Fall TBR and don’t forget to turn on the lights!

Many thanks to the authors, @PenguinRandomHouse and @NetGalley for the pleasure of reading this gifted eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Now Available! Publication Date: 19 September 2023
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4.5 stars <3

"Is it our blood that makes us who we are?"
- "Quantum" by Nick Medina

This book is my first time reading from Native American authors AND about Native culture. It was about time let me tell you because I've always been interested in this part of history, or more exactly, this forgotten, unrecognized part of history. The injustice, the crime, the horror of stripping an entire people of their land, killing them and forcing them to forget their own culture and traditions? I've always wondered how could so many non-Native Americans claim to have all the rights and belong there, not to mention the anti-immigration ideology which is the most ridicule thing when they are originally immigrants themselves. Anyway. Didn't mean to start a political essay, let's get back to the book.

The stories were very diverse, in the sense that I never knew what to expect from the next one, I didn't resonate with all of them but then I'd find myself really into the story and seeing the metaphors and parallels made between fiction and reality. Even if the last story wasn't all that exciting, the next one could be, and it usually was.

I won't spoil anything to anyone, but I want to talk a bit more individually about some stories. The werewolf one lost me completely, I didn't understand how it fit in this anthology and how it could be linked with Native culture, apart from the main character being Native. As for my favorite, it has to be the last one, "Limbs". It was the story in which I found the most relevance and comparisons with how white people butchered and stole from the Native people and took and took after being helped and given so much, until nature eventually settles the score. It was horryfying (which is exactly what I came here for, it's dark fiction after all) and satisfying.

I also really enjoyed all the female POV ones, and all the ones where revenge is executed and justice is served. For this, Kushtuka was just perfect.

I have to say I didn't enjoy the Capgras story, mainly because I didn't understand what was going on AND how it ended. But also, there was like one french expression in the whole thing and it managed to be misgendered : "le petite souris" with a masculine article and a feminine adjective, it really is "la petite souris". I think authors need to take proofreading more seriously when they include words that are in a language they're not familiar with.

Overall, I'd say this is the best literary surprise of the year. I'm glad I got the opportunity to read from Native authors and how they adapted dark fiction to their culture and the whole indigenous theme. The cover is also a treat for the eyes!

Finally, my favorite quotes :

"But my vomit's all wrong, like I chugged black and red war paint and attempted Indian abstract art. Something else for the Smithsonian to steal."
- "Behind Colin's Eyes" by Shane Hawk

"Isn't escapism the reason everyone enjoys horror?"
- "The Scientist's Horror Story" by Darcie Little Badger


[review posted on Goodreads and will be posted on instagram and probably tiktok]

Like any anthology, some stories will be stronger than others, but this one particularly suffered from the unevenness of its highs and lows being on very opposite ends of the spectrum. Some of the stories were written awkwardly, suffered from scene transition issues, and/or just didn’t hit the mark; while others were fantastically written and completely sucked you in. Thankfully most were very engaging and unique, particularly those in the latter half of the book, which I flew through.

It used to be that I would consider myself hesitant to check out short stories collections and anthologies, mostly because I had a string of lackluster ones over a space of time. But in more recent years I've had pretty good luck with short stories collections, and it has made me more adventuresome in checking more out, especially if they sound super interesting. I had this mentality going into NEVER WHISTLE AT NIGHT: AN INDIGENOUS DARK FICTION ANTHOLOGY, in part because I'm always wanting to read stories from groups that have been left out of the narrative, but also because I have enjoyed a few of the authors in the collection, curated by Shane Hawk and Theodore C Van Alst Jr. And overall, I liked it. There were some stories that were a little too much for me, and others that were a little more telling than showing. But there were others that I really liked, either because the scares were on point or because the plots and messages themselves were powerful and heartwrenching. Some standouts include "Navajos Don't Wear Elk Teeth" by Conley Lyons, "Kushtuka" by Mathilda Zeller, "Tick Talk" by Cherie Dimaline, and "Sundays" by David Heska Wanbli Weiden (this one was my favorite). I also now have a number of authors that I am going to need to seek out and read more from! It's a varied collection with a lot of different kinds of dark stories, be it horror, thriller, or dark fantasy, and while some of them are really intense I think that readers of these genres will certainly find something to like with everything offered.

NEVER WHISTLE AT NIGHT has a lot of bold and talented voices in horror and thriller fiction which reflects their experiences as Indigenous people living in the U.S. and Canada, and I think that horror and thriller fans really need to seek it out.

This Indigenous anthology collection started off with a BANG and did not disappoint. All of these stories pulled my emotions in different ways. Some of these were spooky, some were just edge of your seat odd, and some were really emotionally dark and heavy. This book is described as " a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination" and I wholeheartedly agree that is what it is. I hope that readers will want to read this and welcome all of the emotions and learning that come with it.

Kushtuka, Collections, Dead Owls, Before I Go, & Scariest Story Ever are a few that stick out in my head as ones I will definitely revisit again. Sundays was a deeply emotional story that I cannot quit thinking about. Residential boarding schools is a topic that I tend to not read about because it hits really close, but to be able to pack that much emotion into a short story is truly amazing and I will for sure be looking up other work by David Heska Wanbli Weiden.

I am definitely buying this book for my shelf and can't wait to talk to people about it.

This excellent collection features stories from twenty-six different indigenous authors from the so-called U.S. and Canada. The dark stories in Never Whistle at Night range from kinda weird to unsettling to downright disturbing. There's a tick that never stops growing larger, there's a werewolf, there's skinwalkers, there's undead folks, there's torture, there's possession, there's necromancy. Some of the scariest stories of all, though, are those that portray manifestations of trauma and genocide. There's one particular story - Sundays by David Heska Wanbli Weiden - about a man's experience at a residential school that absolutely wrecked me.

Overall, I would highly recommend Never Whistle at Night to anyone who loves fiction that's bizarre and/or scary. These stories are perfectly bite-sized forays into the dark. (It's all around us, you know.)

This was a wonderful collection of stories by some absolutely brilliant authors! So many new to me authors and a few I recognized or have read before. This is exactly what I was looking for in a dark, creepy anthology. These stories were so creative, so entertaining and so unsettling! There were a few I felt were maybe a little out of place and didn’t work for me but my overall rating was a 4.2. I loved reading about the folklore and it just worked so well in this book. I would highly recommend it.

Let me preface this review by first saying I love to learn about cultures I may or may not share. I appreciate folklore from around the world and have found that through stories, you can learn so much about the deep seated cultural beliefs of your fellow humans or your ancestors through the exploration of what they have found exciting, brave, adventuresome, and worth staking ones’ life on in addition to what scares someone, or how someone seeks revenge and the cause of it. This was a very interesting prospectus on the people of the Americas, whose land was taken and settled and what myths, legends, and beings still exist here beyond our sight and will continue to exist long after our bones are forgotten and tangled in the roots of the very soil that still belongs to them.

I first found out about this book in my ‘suggested reads’ through Amazon. When I found out it was an ARC I was desperate to get my hands on it. I was approved and that was the the beginning of a truly wild adventure into some of the most viscerally engaging horror stories I’ve ever read. It was a true bonus that they were all told from Indigenous voices. Not only do I continue to think about these stories weeks later, but the level of unsettling most of them gave me still gives me such pause and a depth of learning that continues to roll around in my subconscious like some sea serpent, surfacing on occasion into my conscious thought.

One of the major benefits of reading these as an anthology is that you get to visit different heads and learn new fears you either had never been exposed to or fears you absolutely share with the author. Every one gave me a different kind of chill or a dark feeling or something new to really dwell on. Some had stories that caused me to rethink my perspective entirely and deepen my own understanding of cultural pitfalls that I myself do not experience.

Regardless of how you want to approach this book, you should.
This book is a must read for everyone and you can bet I’m going to be buying a copy of this to keep on my shelf. The cover is just a preview of the unsettling feelings you will get reading these stories.

I’ve been followed by books I’ve finished in the past, but I haven’t been haunted like this one haunts me. I don’t reread books usually, but there are definitely some stories here that I plan to reread, if only to get them out of my head like a song turned earworm you play on a loop to dislodge. Wish me luck.

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Random House for the advanced copy and to all of the authors who contributed.

Heavy hitting, dark and ‘stop you in your tracks’ powerful. Every story felt so full bodied and hit me in my heart whether it was the monster or the man that was the villain. A top read of 2023 and will recommend it to everyone. There’s so much we can take away from this beautiful collection.

This is a wonderful collection of short stories! All my ratings ranged from 3-5, as most short story collections do for me, but overall it’s a 5 star collection. I had a lot of 5 star stories, but a couple of standouts for me were Hunger and Before I Go.

I love that there is a mixture of well known authors and authors that haven’t published books before- some of my favorites were by these “newer” authors. I also really liked that it’s a mix of mythical creatures and people (mainly white people) as the evil of the story. I’d love to read another anthology collection like this!

There are many recognizable names in this collection: Rebecca Roanhorse, Richard Van Camp, Cherie Dimaline, Mona Susan Power, Darcie Little Badger, and Waubgeshig Rice. There’s even a foreword by Stephen Graham Jones. But I was especially excited to be introduced to some new (to me) Indigenous authors.

The stories in the anthology vary from fun campfire stories about werewolves (Night Moves by Andrea L. Rogers) and ghosts (Night in the Chrysalis by Tiffany Morris) to more serious and disturbing tales about residential school sexual abuse (Sundays by David Heska Wanbli Weiden), [HA1] mental health (The Prepper by Morgan Talty), stolen land (Limbs by Waubgeshig Rice), and missing and murdered Indigenous women (The Ones who Killed Us by Brandon Hobson). There were bits of Native languages sprinkled throughout the various stories, for example I learned Uguku is “owl” in Cherokee, Kwe’ is “hello” in Mi’kmaq, and Mahsi’ cho is “thank you” in Gwich'in. This felt especially nice to see since so many Native languages are endangered. I can’t possible review all the amazing stories within the collection (and they are all amazing), so I’ll focus on a few of my favorites.

Kushtuka by Mathilda Zeller is about an Alaskan Native woman named Tapeesa. Recently an obnoxious White man named Hank Ferryman and his son Buck have moved to the area to build a monstrous lodge full of stolen Native artifacts. Tapessa is sent to the lodge cook for one of Hank’s parties and on the way the grotesque man asks her to tell him a “Native story.” Tapeesa warns that telling stories after dark could catch the attention of a spirit, but Hank laughs this off as silly superstition. She tells him the story of the Kushtuka, a shape-shifter that can take human form and tries to lure people away. As predicted, the story summons a Kushtuka which attacks Hank’s lodge. We also see this idea of attracting the attention of evil spirits in Before I Go by Norris Black, where a woman’s grieving causes the Night Mother to appear and offer to bring back her dead husband (it doesn’t end well).

One of the things I related to in Kushtuka was Tapessa being called “basically White” by Hank because her dad is White. As a biracial person myself, having others (especially White people) try and tell you your identity isa pet peeve of mine. Historically, I would’ve been considered Black since my father is Black (due to the “one-drop” rule which I discuss below), despite having light skin. Yet these days most White people label me White because I’m White-passing. In both cases, White people choose my identity for me without listening to what I have to say, much like Hank does for Tapessa.

In White Hills by Rebecca Roanhorse, a White woman named Marissa is judged for having “too much” Native blood by her White in-laws. Marissa is your typical rich, White woman. She’s married to a wealthy business man named Andrew, is very concerned with her appearance, and lives in an HOA neighborhood in a big house. After going to the country club to announce her pregnancy to her husband, Marrissa makes the mistake of mentioning she’s a small percentage of Native (in reference to not being offended by a racist mascot) and her husband becomes visibly upset. The next day Elayne, Andrew’s mother, takes Marissa to a “specialist” who has racist phrenology drawings on the wall. Elayne explains that she doesn’t want a “mutt” grandbaby who may be dark skinned and “savage” (despite Marissa being white). The way in which Elayne views Marissa’s child is very reminiscent of the “one drop” rule. The one-drop rule was a legal principle based on a form of hypodescent, the assignment of a mixed-race child to the ethnic group considered "lower status." In other words, anyone with Black ancestry (no matter how far back) was considered Black. There were strict classifications for mixed-race individuals that were given offensive names like “Mulatto” and “octoroon,” I discuss more about how this racist system allowed the US to hold up White supremacy here. I mentioned above how annoying it is when other people (especially White people) decide my identity for me, butit’s even worse when the government does it.

And this leads me to blood quantum. Blood quantum is highly controversial and personal, and since I’m not Indigenous and therefore shouldn’t weigh in on such a heated debate I will tread carefully and stick to the facts as best I can. If you’re not familiar, Blood Quantum laws were enacted by the United States government to determine if someone was considered Native or not dependent on their degree of Native ancestry. The first "Indian Blood law" was originally created in 1705 when the Virginia government wanted to limit the civil rights of Native people and people of Native descent. Some Native tribes continue to use blood quantum to determine who can enroll for tribal membership, others do not. Leah Myers, a member of the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe, gives an example of the importance of tribal enrollment in her Atlantic essay:

"Tribal citizenship is more than symbolic. It determines eligibility for educational assistance, medical care, and other social benefits. Plus, only members can attend citizen meetings and vote in tribal elections. If my future children don’t meet the blood requirements for my tribe, they could still participate in events, cultivate plants in the traditional-foods garden, and take Klallam-language courses. But no matter how much they served the community in love and time, they would be deemed a 'descendant' and marked as separate."

Here’s a guide to Blood Quantum that gives both the arguments for and against blood quantum (full transparency, most Native sources I looked up were against these laws). Basically, blood quantum proponents argue that getting rid of blood quantum rules will make scarce resources even scarcer due to population growth and that it will allow disconnected outsiders and pretendians to join the tribe, which will erode their culture. Opponents of blood quantum argue that statistically it will eradicate Native nations, and point to the law's racist origins which were intended to control and erase Indigenous people. It also makes relationships complicated, as Indigenous people must calculate their potential children's percentage of Native blood and if they can enroll or not, which can put a strain on families. Blood quantum also conflicts with traditional Indigenous ideas about kinship and has“no basis in Native American traditions.” Essentially, both proponents and opponents disagree on the best way to preserve their tribal nations.

This idea is explored more fully in the story Quantum by Nick Medina. A woman named Amber is so obsessed with blood quantum and getting her children on the tribal roll that she favors her son Grayson, who’s 5/16 Native, while ignoring his brother Sam, who is only 1/8 Native, to the point where Sam is practically feral. She even tries to steal blood from a deceased Native man from their tribe so she can inject it into Sam.

Another story I enjoyed is Collections by Amber Blaeser-Wardzala, an incredibly creepy story about collecting human remains. Professor Smith, a liberal White woman, collects the heads of all the students she’s helped. She’s very proud of her collection: she has all the sexualities and genders, all the religions, and almost all the races. An Indigenous head would be her “white whale.” Megis (called Meg by the White professor) is understandably horrified by the collection, as is one of her Black classmates, but none of her white classmates seem to be. Professor Smith implies she wants to help Megis so she can have her head for her collection. Megis, the first person in her family to go to college, is desperate to stay on Professor Smith’s good side so she can maintain her scholarship and get a good job, and therefore doesn’t have much choice but to stay in the house of horrors. While an extreme example, the story underlines how troubling it is when museums collect human remains without consent and how academics will treat bodies as mere curiosities.

“When [Native American artifacts and human remains] were acquired, collectors weren’t thinking of Indigenous peoples as human beings. People were resources, and human remains were to be preserved alongside pots” says Jacquetta Swift, the repatriation manager for the National Museum of the American Indian and member of the Comanche and Fort Sill Apache tribes. It’s the unfortunate reality that most human remains on display and in private collections, are unethically sourced from BIPOCs against their wishes.

This theme is also lightly touched on in Navajos Don’t Wear Elk Teeth by Conley Lyons where a Native man named Joe has a summer fling with White man named Cam. Cam collects teeth, some of which turn out to be human (he claims his last boyfriend was a Navajo man who gave him an elk tooth for “good luck” which Joe is dubious about). One of Joe’s friends refers to this as “bad medicine” and suggest Joe get an elder to sage his house.

Not all the stories are quite so dark, however. Snakes are Born in the Dark by D. H. Trujillo felt like a Goosebumps book or a fun story kids tell to scare each other, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. In the story, an Alaskan Native boy named Peter goes hiking in the woods with his white cousin Maddie and her rude boyfriend Adam. They come across Native petroglyphs in the Four Corners desert which Maddie and Adam both immediately touch. Peter warns them not to touch the carvings but Adam continues to do so while mocking him. Unsurprisingly both Maddie and Adam suffer unpleasant (though non-lethal and impermanent) fates which results in a humorous ending. It’s a fun twist on the classic “Indian curse” where we (and Peter) are rooting for the White people to get their comeuppance.

I could go on and on about the stories in the anthology, like Hunger by Phoenix Boudreau where two Cree college girls, Summer and Rain, outsmart a Wehtigo. Or Scariest. Story. Ever. By Richard Van Camp that touches on who gets to tell Native stories and how to share culture without stealing it. They’re all great. I also felt like I learned a lot while reading the anthology.

Never Whistle at Night was definitely an interesting read. The first batch of stories felt like they had very interesting premises but didn't find a satisfying way to wrap them up, but as the book went on the quality grew significantly and when I went back to reread the first half of the book again, I found those stories to be better upon a second look at them.

For the most part, the tone of the stories matched one another, something that is rarely present in anthology books... and what a tone these stories had. Never Whistle at Night puts the "dark" in "dark fiction" and every author keeps this tone up masterfully. My main positive of this book is that none of the stories are ever boring; every author knows how to create engaging stories that will have you hooked all the way through.

I highly recommend this book for anyone looking to pick up a solid collection of short stories and not have to read them all in one sitting... although after reading just one story, you'll likely be hooked.

3.5 stars rounded up

I love this gorgeous cover! This is the perfect book for fall. Some stories were hard to stomach, some made me scared to go to sleep, some I liked more than others, but they were all beautifully written. I loved reading the bios of each author.

I will say this book might not be for everyone, definitely check the trigger warnings!

Thank you to NetGalley and Vintage Anchor for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.