We’ll be going on a journey here, buckle in.

I first discovered Stephen Graham Jones’ writing when Paul Tremblay gave a glowing review of The Ones That Got Away on Twitter. 

Father.  Son. Holy Rabbit.
If you know, you know. 

My second read was Mapping the Interior…and it was magic. 

Not necessarily good magic, but that dark, bitter magic. The kind of magic that happens when you see your mom cry. The kind of magic that gathers in your throat when a relative dies with no hope of justice.

Yeah, something like that.

Mapping The Interior is the story of Junior, a 12-year-old Indian boy living with his mother and impaired younger brother Dino, away from the Rez and trying their best to make it. The ghost of Junior’s father haunts his mind until the night he appears in the outside world as well. As Junior longs for his father to return and fix things as he always imagined he would, an unfortunate truth becomes evident. 

And at the end we’re left with the memory of heavy footsteps and the question of if and when we’ll step into them.

If you’re the kind of reader that I am, SGJ’s writing somehow reveals the truths you’ve felt in your heart but never let pass through your mind.

If you have a father that you rooted for, that you wished so much better for…

If you cursed the world for what it did to him, his dreams that it destroyed; the patterns that kept him trapped re-tracing another’s footsteps…

I think this story is for you.

But I also think it’s for those fathers that (maybe finally) figured it out.

10/10 reborn action figures

Mapping The Interior was published by Tor Publishing Group on April 29, 2025

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to revisit this amazing story as an ARC!

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Angel Down (2025)