Another One for the God of Insects by Cobalt Stone
Publisher: KDP
Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Paranormal, Contemporary
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Sanderson McCaffrey knows two things for certain.

The first is that some land takes care of the people who respect it.

The second is that government men never know when to leave.

For generations, the McCaffrey family has farmed the same South Texas soil. The crops survive droughts that should have killed them. The harvests come when they shouldn’t. And whenever outsiders push too hard, ask too many questions, or dig too deep into things that don’t concern them, trouble has a way of finding them.

Sanderson doesn’t pretend to understand it.

His father didn’t understand it.

His grandfather didn’t understand it.

But they all learned the same lesson.

Some questions are better left unanswered.

Twelve-year-old Sally McCaffrey has grown up hearing stories, working the farm, and learning the unwritten rules that have been passed down through her family for generations. She believes the world works the way nature works. Flies feed spiders. Spiders feed birds. Everything feeds something.

When a young state agriculture inspector arrives to investigate the McCaffrey farm’s impossible production records, he finds a family hiding something he can’t explain and a field that refuses to behave the way fields should.

The more he digs, the more determined he becomes to uncover the truth.

The more determined Sanderson becomes to send him home.

Neither man realizes how little control either of them actually has.

Set against the backdrop of South Texas farm country, Another One for the God of Insects blends rural folklore, family legacy, quiet dread, and Southern Gothic suspense into a story where the greatest danger is not what can be seen in the fields, but what has been waiting there all along.

Some inherit land.

Some inherit money.

The McCaffreys inherited something else.

Nothing is more important than respecting the land that sustains us all.

The world building was understated but complex. Readers who have any experience with farming or rural culture will have a little bit of an advantage with this piece as the descriptions of people who are from these subcultures was subtle, but I think it can also appealing to anyone who is unfamiliar with these subjects so long as they pay close attention to the dialogue and character development. This was something that should be slowly savored, especially once the inspector from the Texas Department of Agriculture arrived and began disregarding the instructions the main character gave to him.

Speaking of character development, Sanderson’s gruff, no-nonsense personality was perfect for a protagonist who had spent his entire life on the family farm. He valued choosing one’s words carefully and embracing the silence of the countryside if one didn’t have anything useful to say. Other readers should get to know his other personality traits for themselves, but he struck me as a solid example of what the average farmer is often like.

This tale included one of those endings that can make someone pause and go back to reread the last few paragraphs. I adored how open to interpretation was and how much it trusted the audience to pick up on the few clues that had been provided in order to know what deep secrets Sanderson and his family had been protecting for so many generations. If the rest of Mr. Stone’s work is anything like this, I want to read it all!

Another One for the God of Insects made me yearn for a sequel.