the buffalo hunter hunter by stephen graham jones 🦬 a chilling historical horror novel where a lutheran pastor recounts the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the blackfeet reservation looking for justice.

I’m so proud of myself for finishing the buffalo hunter hunter 🧠 SGJ’s brain is a beautiful thing- he dreams up the best ideas! I always find myself picking up his books, but unfortunately, I don’t always love them.

my thoughts: this was a very DENSE book, but surprisingly very easy to follow! I appreciated the 1912 montana atmosphere- the snowy plains felt vividly real, and the layered focus on the tragedy of Native American history adds a depth that makes this novel much more than just a “vampire diary book”.

I think for me, this book would have benefited from being 50-75*ish* pages shorter. there were multiple repeating elements that dulled the impact rather than strengthening it. the ending went a bit too off the rails for me to stay fully invested. if you’ve read an erika t. wurth novel, this ending was in her fashion and ultimately took me out of the story.

the audiobook was phenomenal 🎧 bouncing in between narrators for every pov & the added sound effects made it as if I was right there living among these buffalo hunters.

“what I am is the Indian who can’t die. I’m the worst dream America ever had.” 🌾 3 stars!

I’m super late on this review because I got the physical copies in the mail and read it in two long sittings and it’s absolutely brilliant. Detailed review coming soon, but suffice it to say it’s the best novel I’ve read in the last few years.

this was very out of my comfort zone, but i highly enjoyed this story. i wasn’t expecting how emotional this made me or how easily i became attached to the characters. i expected this to just be a creepy historical fictionesque book, but it was so much more. this made me deeply emotional and also really creeped me out at times and sometimes all at
once. i would love to read more by this author as i loved his writing style and was able to get me interested in a whole new type of story, which is very impressive!

A journal is discovered which chronicles the confessions of an usual parishioner to a Lutheran pastor. The journal reveals the origin story of a Blackfeet turned into a vampire, figuring out who he is as this new being and reconciling past actions.

Stephen Graham Jones definitely delivers in this historical fiction horror. I loved how this revenge story spans over different timelines ,and connects our modern day character to their past. The foreshadowing was great. Though I found the ending a little predictable, I loved every page turning moment. SGJ had me wanting to know the details of how things played out, enjoyed the Indigenous story telling and vocabulary. This had me thinking I was in that church during the vampires confessionals. Also, I thoroughly enjoyed this twist on vampirism. Different from the run of the mill vampires who shrivel from the sun and holy items. Buffalo Hunter Hunter is a wonderfully written story, and it read similar to a Mike Flanagan show!

I would recommend this book to everyone. A solid 4 out of 5 stars.

Thank you Netgalley, Saga Press | S&S/Saga Press and the author for the opportunity in exchange for an honest review.

I will be posting to socials.

Welcome back to Climbing Mount TBR where I, your humble Book Kaiju, struggle to climb to the top of my “to read” pile one book at a time. This time we’re looking at The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. A quick shout out to Saga Press who graciously gave Kaiju & Gnome a copy in exchange for an honest review.

So what’s it all about?

The story of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is told across a series of journal entries and interviews. The framing device is told from the diary of one Etsy Beaucarne, a professor and cat mom that just wants to get tenure. She thinks she’s finally got that project that will propel her into academic job security when construction workers find a journal belonging to her ancestor. An ancestor who disappeared under mysterious circumstances! Spoooooky!

What follows is her digitization efforts as we read the journal of one Arthur Beaucarne, a Lutheran clergyperson in 1912. This elder in the church just wants to eat cake, preach on Sunday, and forget his “mysterious past” ™. (same though) His quiet life is interrupted when a Native American gentleman enters his church service. This unusual event takes the swerve for the bizarre when the Native American man wishes to confess his sins and tell his story.

We now jump into the confession of Good Stab (that’s right this story just went three layers deep! We must go deeper!) a surprisingly long lived man who remembers when white people showed up in the West and screwed everything up. Which is really the normal cycle of human history: Everything is going alright till the white guys appear on the horizon.

Good Stab’s story is heartbreaking, but not totally uncommon. The tale of Native Americans losing everything to white settlers is the refrain in the story of Manifest Destiny. Good Stab’s personal history takes a swerve to horror when his tribe comes across a wagon with a caged man inside it. A man that looks like a rat, drinks blood, and won’t die.

These three narratives dance around each other to explore what it means to be Native American. How can one maintain a personal and cultural identity when everything that made you you is being taken away? Plus, if you are what you eat, what does that mean for vampires?

So what did I think?

Dang…

Just… Wow… This is the best horror novel I have ever read, and possibly even in the top twenty books I’ve read period. It was brutal, and deep, and terrifying, and heartbreaking, and fantastic.

And to think, I almost DNFed this book in the first chapter.

That first chapter was rough. Not that it’s poorly written or anything like that. It’s just… boring. I don’t care about how much cake the Lutheran pastor can eat or the academic career drama of a professor. Then the interviews with Good Stab begin and it… stays boring.

When they finally met the vampire, I actually sighed and put the book down. I didn’t realize this was a vampire novel (guess who doesn’t read plot synopsis?). I was disappointed that I was reading yet another vampire book, and those almost always follow the same tropes.

But, I powered through that first section and I am so glad that I did. This book didn’t start slow, it was stretching and getting ready for the marathon it was going to run at breakneck speed. Between the prose, the characters, the mystery, and the action I couldn’t put this book down. I had to see how it all ended.

Warning to the reader though, this book is dark. You read the story of a vampire that butchers his opponents, drinks the blood of the elderly, and sometimes has to hide in a buffalo Tauntaun-style. It is bloody and gruesome, and never shies away from the consequences of violence. Good Stab is not a Good Person.

Yet, somehow he’s still the most heroic figure in the setting. How can you make a violent, monstrous vampire look like a Boy Scout? By placing him against buffalo hunters and genociders, of course!

I read a book that graphically talked about tearing a man in half, and that wasn’t what made my stomach churn. No, it was the depictions of real life atrocities that Americans did in the name of Manifest Destiny. Bisons slaughtered by the hundreds, sometimes skinned while they’re still alive, and the flesh poisoned so no one could eat it. Native American villages murdered in the most horrific fashion because they were in the way. The culture and heritage of the people are actively destroyed to dehumanize them.

I wish those scenes were exaggerations or outright fiction, but the idealized Wild West we have in our cultural memory never existed. No, this is our history and it was nightmarish. It got so bad, I found myself rooting for the Native American vampire as he drowns hunters in buffalo blood. Sure, Good Stab is a monster, but he’s not orphaning baby buffalo and leaving them to cry out as they starve. Go Team Vampire.

What I loved most was the exploration into identity. This book takes an interesting approach to vampires. They are what they eat. If a vampire eats deer, then they start to look like a deer. Good Stab eats mostly white hunters, and starts to look like a white man. This, more than becoming a vampire, is what truly unsettles Good Stab. Not just because now he looks like one of the people that killed his tribe, but because with the loss of his community and culture he is the only one left. And if he no longer looks like a member of his people, then is he truly one of them?

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is a grim, horrific tale. It’s not for the faint of heart, but I am so glad I read it. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves a vampire story in the vein of Dracula. Just don’t let that slow first chapter dissuade you.

As always Stephen Graham Jones knocks it out of the park. I love his take on horror and the way this story was told was narratively intriguing. Every moment had me guessing what would happen next.

Obsessed with this book. Beautiful written and it all comes together in the end in ways I didn’t anticipate. Just a great read.

I loved this book that combines history and horror with some fantasy to make just a good totally original read . Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me review the book

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones was one of my most anticipated books of 2025! Everything I have read by this author has been amazing and this one did not disappoint either. There is no way to talk about the genius of this book from the historical horrific elements to the explosive ending! Just do yourself a favor and read it! Be warned that is starts off at a steady pace, which is perfectly appropriate for the development of the story and plot points because the ending paid off in spades.

Loved this book from Stephen Graham Jones. From the moment Good Stab appears on the page in his sunglasses and priestly robes, I knew we were in for a good time. It has some framing elements that bring to mind Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire, but the story goes a different direction altogether, dealing with the initial colonization of the region we now know as Montana. It's a heartbreaking story of a young Pikuni warrior turned vampire, dealing with the genocide of his people and the near extinction of the buffalo. An incredible read that I can't stop thinking about.

This book was amazing! From a history teachers perspective it’s historical accuracy but fantasy was amazing. The gore, the dread and horror are a must read!

Creepy, wildly gory, atmospheric, and with a stack of framing devices hardly seen since Wuthering Heights. A tale of the horrors of experiencing the colonization of the Americas as an indigenous person, stacked inside a story of vampires, revenge, and religious horror, stacked inside a kind of horror version of A.S. Byatt's Possession. The very ending section kind of took me out of everything a bit—the tone got a little too wacky and ended up being way more funny than scary, for me (your mileage may vary—for a time my mother kept a prairie dog as a pet, which may be a factor).

I have read several SGJ books prior to this, and while I liked them all, there was something about them that didn’t quite connect for me. This one, however, hit me like a punch to the gut. It’s a masterwork of suspense with imagery both gross and chilling (the coming off the cross scene especially sticks with me, it feels like a scene from Hereditary). I would highly rec this book to readers new to SGJ as well as those who have enjoyed his previous works.

A journal written by a Lutheran pastor in 1912 is discovered in a wall. Told in transcribed interviews with a Blackfeet Native American named Good Stab, it shares the narrative of his life and unveils a massacre, starting with 217 Blackfeet Native Americans dead in the snow.

This was such a well-written book, but also incredibly difficult to read as it gives depictions of how Native Americans were actually treated during the 1800s. The book was a bit slow at times, but I was thoroughly engaged with the story and kept wanting to come back for more.

Read if you like:
Vampires
Historical fiction
Revenge
Multi-POV
Multiple timelines

One day, Etsy Beaucarne is contacted by a librarian with an interesting find. A construction worker restoring an old rectory came across a journal, crumbling in his hands. The book, now in the capable hands of this trusty librarian, is the journal of Etsy's great-great grandfather. Arthur Beaucarne was a Lutheran pastor in Miles City, Montana, in the early 1900s. Etsy is thrilled; a tale from her ancestor and a way for her to achieve tenure at her university. Unfortunately for her, the tale seems unbelievable. Except it's true...

Good Stab, an Indian man who began visiting Arthur's church, desired confession. As any good pastor would, Arthur listened to his increasing bizarre tale week after week. Despite his skepticism, the more he listens, the more he believes. Problem is, if the story is true, Arthur is in grave danger.

As usual, it took me a bit to get into Jones' writing. His writing is the equivalent of enjoying a fine dining meal - each word is to be savored, to be ruminated on. It always takes me a little while to get used to the experience but once I'm immersed, I can't stop until it's done. Normally I wouldn't be interested in a historical vampire novel, but I loved this book. Arthur and Good Stab's story was fascinating, but the way it tied into Etsy's was perfect. Yet another 5 star read from SGJ. I just can't get enough of them!

Unsurprisingly, another banger from Stephen Graham Jones, this time including vampires, a lovable buffalo, and a sweeping colonial revenge story that I can’t help but to believe will be a new classic.

The story is set in 1912 American West and follows the testimony (or in this tale, gospel) of Good Stab, a Blackfeet vampire who meets with a Lutheran pastor nightly to confess his story and detail the wrongs done by him - and to him. It’s Interview with a Vampire meets Deadwood, but there’s so much more to it.

Let’s start with the vampires. It’s hard to mine new material out of this classic monster, but Jones has done just that. The monster here shares the usual vampire flair (fangs, blood sucking, immortal, etc.), but adds a consequence to the feeding. The more of something they consume, the more they assimilate their prey. Not just the appearance of humans, either, it’s anything they consume. In this vampire origin story, what starts with the usual new-vampire promise of “I’ll just hunt animals” like buffalo and deer result in the beginnings of horns and fur. You are what you eat, quite literally. This fits so well in a story of revenge and western expansion. Feeding on the white oppressors enough leads to being indistinguishable from those same villains. And more tragically with Good Stab, keeping his Blackfeet identity requires feeding on his own people. 

Identity is a huge theme here, and not only in the story itself. The distinct voices of the three narrators was immediately impressive. After Jones’ recent, contemporary Indian Lake Trilogy it was such a treat to go back in time with both the Lutheran pastor and Good Stab, each with their own perspective and way of thinking. Structurally this back and forth was exciting and evocative, a call and response with many of the themes tackled, and really challenged the reader to reckon with who the most reliable narrator was. 

These point-of-view recollections, while effective in character building, did feel drawn out at times. Long stretches of characters lost in the wilderness (figuratively and literally speaking) were challenging, but it all leads to a conclusion that delivers a shocking, satisfying ending. Truly, hats off for this one.  As always, in Stephen we trust.

Stephen Graham Jones delivers what might be his masterpiece in "The Buffalo Hunter Hunter," a work that initially reads like meticulously researched historical fiction before revealing its horrific, beating heart.

The life of Good Stab/Blackie unfolds with such vivid texture that you'll feel the prairie dust on your skin. His relationship with Weasel Plume, the white buffalo, creates one of the book's most tender moments—while simultaneously foreshadowing the supernatural transformation awaiting our protagonist. This symbolism works brilliantly as the narrative progresses.

What makes this vampire tale so refreshing is how Jones reimagines bloodthirst through Indigenous folklore rather than European gothic tradition. While Dracula represented the aristocratic foreign threat, Jones's vampire emerges from colonization's shadows, creating a powerful metaphor about cultural preservation and survival.

Good Stab's desperate struggle to maintain his Pikuni identity, especially after his fateful encounter with the enigmatic Cat Man, adds psychological depth rarely seen in horror fiction. The transformation isn't just physical—it's a spiritual rebirth fueled by vengeance against historical injustices.

The dual timeline structure brilliantly connects threads between past and present. Those epistolary sections chronicling the Reverend's experiences create perfect counterpoints to the main narrative, gradually revealing how these seemingly separate lives intertwine in blood-soaked destiny.

For the full experience, the audiobook version is extraordinary. Shane Ghostkeeper, Marin Ireland, and Owen Teale deliver performances that heighten the emotional impact, especially during transitions between prose and epistolary sections.

If you crave horror that weaves historical trauma with supernatural elements, "The Buffalo Hunter Hunter" won't just satisfy—it'll haunt you long after the final page.

Thank you, Saga Press and NetGalley, for my free e-book!

I really struggled to get into this but once I did, it was an incredible read. Scary. Engrossing. I am glad I pushed through.

I am very much a Stephen Graham Jones fan. Especially once I listened to him read a story (he's on YouTube, currently all about this book, but you can find the author's note for this one pretty fast). His unique speaking cadence provided the rhythm to his books and unlocked layers for me. There is a blurb about this work being his masterpiece, and I may agree, but hold out hope for more surprises. But vampires do have so many layers and uses and time travel! Second only to zombies in my world. It's the medical historian in me.

One of the big plusses for me - it doesn't require knowledge of genre tropes. You can follow this if you don't know the slasher conventions, vampire books (it's kinda better if you DON'T go in with traditional vampiric expectations), etc. That said, if you have trouble following Jones and have relied on those conventions to find your footing in his past works, then you're SOL here. I cannot articulate how much I would have loved to be in that vampire seminar.

This is the story of an academic who finds relation to a Lutheran pastor in 1912 Montana. Of course, there is more to the story. That's part of the point. I especially want everyone who says their ancestors didn't x as part of the nastiness of American history to read this. But they may not get it.

Even more than hearing the confession of a Blackfoot man turned vampire by a "catman" from the Old World. Not technically a slasher, there is still tons of gore. All sorts of things die. If you have issues with death, why are you here? Move along please.

Unique characteristics of these vampires - you turn into what you eat. Race, relationship with the land, consumption, what civilization even is, the death of the bison, building and scattering of communities, a splash of eugenics. It's all here. Most central though - the violence and dehumanization of colonization. In spades. I would argue that the vampire isn't the point but a tool. Dr. Who fans, there is a bit of Ashildr's plight here. Vampires also take the long way through time. That's why the academic is the point, and I wish we had more time with her, even though I found her (or the narrator, I'm not sure) quite annoying. Overall, I found her storyline rushed.

I agree with others who recommend reading the Wikipedia of the Marias Massacre f you aren't familiar with it. If you have some basic background on the all too common narrative of the darkness of Westward Expansion (road, removal/massacre, destruction of fundamental cultural heritage piece, removal/massacre/famine, forced assimilation,) and can trust SGJ, then just let yourself go on his ride. It should all make sense by the end. If the parentheses didn't make sense, read the Wikipedia.

I had the book, but got behind in deadlines. I went outside my normal comfort zone and listened to the audio on this one. OMG this was done so well! Yay for different narrators. At the end the sound effects got a smidge cheesy, but not enough to ruin it.

This is one that will flip over in my mind often, and I'd love to somehow work into my history classes. One of my survey courses already do virtual museums on an indigenous culture framed by colonization (so it's not a bunch of arrowheads that miss the point), and this begs the same questions while standing firm in the point - indigeneaity isn't historical. It's the present and will continue to be. Just like Good Stab..

Pick up the book or audio. Then let's talk! So much to chew on.

Fantastic, phenomenal, amazing! Words can’t describe how perfect this book is. This is definitely one of my favorite books of all time. Usually second half of books are either better or worse than the first half but i enjoyed both parts equally. And let’s talk about that reveal with the father and Good Stab. This story had so many emotions…i was sad, angry, infuriated and also vengeful. The only other book from this author i have to compare to this one is the only good Indians and this blew it out the park.