The difficult second instalment of the Indian Lake trilogy - This was a bit of a disappointment after the excellent "My Heart is a Chainsaw" kicked off the trilogy. Things in this story are bigger, generally - The stakes are higher from earlier, we get more expansion of the Indian Lake mythos (and satisfying stuff it is, too) and we have more setpieces, but... The plotting felt off. The story felt a bit more like Halloween II, shuttling characters between setpieces, rather than using setpieces to punctuate a plot. Jade and other main characters have satisfying arcs, but they take a while to get going, leaving the side characters to shine - Territory in which Jones always does some of his best work - But it would have been nice to have the story be a bit tighter throughout. Similarly, the essays on slasher films return in this book, but they are less focused and less satisfying than in the first book - The world in this book seems to accept the importance of slasher films, it's all a bit too knowing and a few too many people are in on it. It's a bit too much.

Still a good book, though, and I very much look forward to the third!