This was a bit of a departure from Stephen Graham Jones' recent work and it definitely took me a while to get on board with the tone. It was the framing narrative of Etsy and her academic exploits that really resonated with me but I found it more difficult to connect with the historical aspects. I loved how everything tied together and thought the ending was top notch. Overall, not by favourite from the author, but still a great read.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Should I be ashamed to admit that this is my first novel by Stephen Graham Jones? I feel like I should. But after this, I'll most likely read anything Stephen publishes in the future.

In 2012 Etsy Beaucarne is a struggling academic who through a chance discovery is presented with the diary of her grandfather Arthur thinks she may finally have the ticket for tenure she has always wanted. The diary is the researcher’s dream of providing some real eyewitness history as Arthur relates the period of Montana in 1912 he lived in as a Lutheran pastor. But Etsy’s reading reveals a stranger mystery in the form of a mysterious Native American named Good Stab. In a series of encounters with Arthur Good Stab wants to confess his own life and it is a strange tale of life after death, transformation and murder. However, everyone has secrets of their own to uncover and Etsy is about to find out her own family’s secrets too will be brought into the light.

The story is told from three POVs: that of Etsy Beaucarne, a struggling academic who begins to study the journal of her grandfather; Arthur Beaucarne, a Lutheran pastor, the author of those journals, initially perhaps sympathetic but who hides a terrible secret; and Good Stab, a Blackfeet, whose story Arthur's journal alternately records and comments on. As Good Stab's story develops it is clear that Beaucamp does not believe it; it becomes equally clear that Good Stab has been afflicted with vampirism, and that Arthur Beaucamp is not a listener chosen at random.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter tears the reader in half. You'll be bewitched by the beautiful storytelling but appalled by what you're reading. The truth of it. You'll want to devour the story in one sitting, but you'll also want to look away, take a breather. It's gorgeous but grotesque. There is nothing else quite like this book out there. I came away with a sense of injustice finally being given a voice and a novel that I sense will stay with me for years to come. It is one of the best horror novels I’ve read in a while.

Strongly recommended!

They say confession is good for the soul which raises all sorts of interesting questions. Do the sins you commit simply get absolved because you’ve just admitted them? Can the slate ever be truly wiped clean? Should we try to understand you, or can we still condemn you for what you’ve done? This was one of several topics I found myself grappling with after reading Stephen Graham Jones’ superb and complex historical horror novel The Buffalo Hunter Hunter that explores two characters in confession but also sheds much needed light on some of America’s darker history.

In 2012 Etsy Beaucarne is a struggling academic who through a chance discovery is presented with the diary of her grandfather Arthur thinks she may finally have the ticket for tenure she has always wanted. The diary is the researcher’s dream of providing some real eyewitness history as Arthur relates the period of Montana in 1912 he lived in as a Lutheran pastor. But Etsy’s reading reveals a stranger mystery in the form of a mysterious Native American named Good Stab. In a series of encounters with Arthur Good Stab wants to confess his own life and it is a strange tale of life after death, transformation and murder. However, everyone has secrets of their own to uncover and Etsy is about to find out her own family’s secrets too will be brought into the light.

This was a stunning horror read bringing to life a period that I am unfamiliar with as a UK reader and delivers true horror with huge skill both in the nested set of stories within stories that this book becomes and provides a very inventive spin on the concept of vampires combined with the slow unpeeling of our three key characters’ lives and their inner motivations.

Jones demonstrates immense range as we start off with Etsy writing her own diary a 21st century middle-aged academic who perhaps is a little chaotic but also in such desperate need of tenure. We get to feel her buzz and excitement as this manuscript is found and offers such a big opportunity. The opening lowers our defences as to what is about to pass and allows a contrast with the voices to come quite familiar to us.

In the role of hearing confession, we have the elderly Arthur Beaucarne and Jones makes his voice very different to Etsy’s in tone and asides we sense an older man, worldly wise, perhaps a little food obsessed but with initially a twinkle of humour too. He feels likeable. Rather than fire and brimstone he appears quite humane, and we feel a man perturbed by a sense of mysterious murders going on where mutilated and painted bodies are being found in this small town far from anywhere. Into this comes a mysterious figure Good Stab in rows that appear to mirror a priest’s garments and wearing dark glasses and he wishes to confess to Arthur in private. We sense something is going on and then we get into the real meat of the story bouncing between the end of the Wild West in 1912 where cars, trains and ocean liners are appearing and the still frontier era of 1870 when the grab for more land and power by the US government went into overdrive and vast genocide was carried out under the eyes of progress. However Good Stab’s tale is also one of the supernatural as a chance encounter with a caged stranger creates the circumstances of his death and afterlife. One in which a thirst for human blood becomes key.

Good Stab’s story is also told in his voice and its excellently designed too – if Arthur initially feels light and comedic then Good Stab feels a man full of loss, regrets and yet too has humour but slightly sharper. His story is compelling and Jones’ take on the vampire is both familiar but also quite unique. Here the vampire can drink the blood of other creatures, but this has unusual side effects, he can pass for human but the desire for blood never goes away and also comes with enhanced strength, powers of recovery and senses. Despite all of that Good Stab never comes across as someone fully inhuman and that I think comes down to the way Jones uses the vampire elements of the story to have Good Stab become a witness to the rapid changes over the next few decades as the land Is slowly taken and violent crimes are undertaken by american settlers including the mass slaughter of buffalo purely for their skin (leaving their meat to rot), mass killings of various tribes by violence, starvation, casual cruelty and just the slow endless destruction of Native American life. There is also a key plotline about Good Stab realising they are not alone as a supernatural creature, potentially meeting a powerful God who has his own plans for him but also entering a new battle for the future of his people as another with similar powers to Good Stab enters the scene. Their battle for power begins in earnest in the final stages of his tale that is gripping and ends in a place I was not expecting. Jones knows when to scare us with violence and blood but also Good Stab’s desperation as he realises his powers can let him down both due to his own nature and how bigger forces are still more cunning and powerful than he is.

So around halfway in the novel we start to think this not simply an unusual interview with a vampire. There are many hints that Good Stab is involved in what may be going on around Arthur’s little town and there is the question of why exactly Good Stab wants to confess. For all Arthur’s humour we get regularly his painful casual racism towards Native Americans being mentioned and he isn’t being fully swayed by Good Stab’s tale. More than confession is required from this tale. What evolves is a really well played reveal to the wider story that adds more tension and drama into these two characters’ lives as they are trading stories and pasts all leading us neatly back to the modern day for a finale which I won’t spoil too much but manages in just a few final chapters to be surreal, funny, tragic and also heart-racing as to what the final outcome is. It works beautifully pulling all the storylines together for one final time and really sticks the landing.

I usually read at a fast pace but with The Buffalo Hunter Hunter I found it worked best digesting each ‘confession’ and savouring the story’s revelations as to consider where we were heading. The horror is both the undead when they let rip but much more the human at what they can do to one another in the name of ‘progress’ otherwise known as greed. There are no real heroes in this story we see terrible acts being witnessed and caused by main characters all serving their own needs. That helps us keep guessing where this story finally ends. As much s it is the story of Arthur and Good Stab it also shows us the way life was about to change horrifically for Native Americans across America and the destruction of an entire way of life being witnessed by one man after his own death feels both tragic and epic. I came away with a sense of injustice finally being given a voice and a novel that I sense will stay with me for years to come. It is one of the best horror novels I’ve read in a while. Strongly recommended!

One of the best historical novels I've ever read. Horror should draw on and speak to us about blood-soaked history, which can often be hidden from us. The genocide of indigenous people, the slaughter of their food source, and their culture still happen today.

This is a vampire story with a twist and definitely one that will leave you with a lot of feelings.

This was everything I wanted in a historic horror (is that even a genre? It is now!).

Etsy Beaucarne is a washed up comms prof with a cat and a bad attitude, but someone finding the long-lost journal or her long-lost great, great grandfather may give her a project that gets tenure.

So alongside Etsy we read a story within a story - an elderly Lutheran pastor with a lack of scruples and a penchant for sweets writes his encounters with an Amskapi Pikuni man, one of the last after a century of massacre and plague.

But is this really a man, or something else? What happens when you become what you kill? And how hungry for death can one get, before you become death itself?

Stephen Graham Jones has outdone himself here. The last chapters are amazing. There’s enough in this book to make even the whitest of white girls (me) flinch in the face of European coloniser’s colossal cruelty, but it’s not overdone: just describing the facts of this time and place are enough to condemn without having to get flowery with the language or bloodthirsty with description. The horror elements are excellent, there’s some gore, some psychological torment (fish anyone?), some grief horror, a lot of colonisation trauma, and some very, very sad animal yuck (is it about Buffalo Hunters after all - DO NOT STRESS, the cat is ok).

I know very little about the colonisation of the Americas or about the people that populated that land before then (I really need to read those Gear novels), and I feel like that wasn’t a problem here, and that I learned something along the way. Highly, highly recommend!

A blood-soaked and unflinching saga of the violence of colonial America, a revenge story like no other, and the chilling reinvention of vampire lore from the master of horror. This is the third Stephen Graham Jones novel I have read, all clever twists on horror, full of unique takes on familiar tropes, tapping into an atavistic dread, a creeping uneasiness which then explodes into full-blown bloody terror. Yet the strongest thread in each of the stories is the treatment of the Native American tribes, both historically and their place in America today.

The story is told from three POVs - that of Etsy Beaucarne, a struggling academic who begins to study the journal of her grandfather; Arthur Beaucarne, a Lutheran pastor, the author of those journals, initially perhaps sympathetic but who hides a terrible secret; and Good Stab, a Blackfeet, whose story Arthur's journal alternately records and comments on. As Good Stab's story develops it is clear that Beaucamp does not believe it; it becomes equally clear that Good Stab has been afflicted with vampirism, and that Arthur Beaucamp is not a listener chosen at random.

The horror, at least the fantastical elements, are introduced slowly, but the horror of the treatment of the Blackfeet, of the systematic extermination of the buffalo, on which their existence depends, is clear from the start of Good Stab's narrative.

The physical, and mental, transformations that Good Stab experiences as he feeds on, and takes on the characteristics of, his prey is a metaphor for the attempts to force the tribes, at least those who had not been slaughtered, to assimilate by forcing 'Christian values' on the young, ripped from their traditional lives.

There are no real heroes in THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER, all the characters are flawed. The book is horrifying, incredibly entertaining, and intensely moving. For all the skill with which Stephen Graham Jones builds his world and creates his uniquely terrifying take on the vampire myth, the real horror is the genocide perpetrated by the Europeans on the Native American peoples.

There’s something quietly mesmerizing about The Buffalo Hunter. The writing is understated but rich, drawing you into a world that feels both distant and deeply human. I was surprised by how much emotion crept in as the story progressed—it sneaks up on you in the best way. It’s not flashy or fast-paced, but it’s the kind of book that rewards patience. A thoughtful, beautifully crafted read.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝑰 𝒂𝒎 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑰𝒏𝒅𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝒘𝒉𝒐 𝒄𝒂𝒏’𝒕 𝒅𝒊𝒆. 𝑰’𝒎 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒔𝒕 𝒅𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒎 𝑨𝒎𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒂 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒉𝒂𝒅.”

native american vampires? say less.

a tale about greed, preservation, and revenge. i absolutely loved the main character good stab. the vengeance with which he attacked the other characters had me rooting for him the entire fucking time. also his self-reflection, grief, and loneliness from having to cast himself out of his tribe & his people from what he had become. i felt really emotional for him!

i also loved the telling of the story. it's from the lens of a found diary and the reader is the descendent of the diary's owner. very poetic in a way for a modern white woman to be reading this confession from her great-great grandfather, a preacher who claims to be a holy man. but, what man is ever that holy?

this is going to stick with me for a long time. it's so much more than just a horror story of vampiric history, but really a tale of early america and the reshaping of this country by colonialism. the ruination of the native american tribes, their culture, their languages is felt so deeply from this story.

highly, highly recommend this one. you're doing yourself an injustice by not reading.

3.5 stars!!!

After really disliking Stephen Graham Jones' previous novel, I went into this with super low expectations and I'm so glad I did! While this book was never going to be a favorite of all time, it ended up being one of my favorite of Jones' novels! I really enjoyed seeing his take on vampires and how he intertwined vampire lore with Indigenous American history. My biggest complaint is that this book was too long. I felt like it started to drag at the mid-way point but I quickly became invested again by the 80% mark. While that is more of a me problem than a book problem, I often feel that way about Jones' novels.

I struggle to set aside a book that I recognise as significant but, unfortunately, I did with The Buffalo Hunter Hunter.

With genocide at its core, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter delivers a raw, unflinching portrayal of history. Blatant murder, survival, and brutal realities. It’s not an easy book to digest. It’s meant to be uncomfortable.

Not just anyone can create a character like Good Stab, but Stephen Graham Jones definitely can and he does it with weight and nuance. This book has heart, and you can feel it. I felt every character as if they were my neighbour, my friend.

While I respect how the writing style builds character voice and atmosphere, I often found myself rereading passages, trying to grasp what I’d just read. The prose felt dense and at times disjointed, which made it difficult to stay immersed. Sure, I could have pushed forward to finish but at the halfway point I recognised that enjoyment is fundamental to my reading and I was not enjoying my time with this book.

This book is a horror about real life horrors, uncomfortable but needed.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC copy of this book.

This is a dark and twisting novel that's practically a shoe-in for the critics' choice of best horror novel for 2025. It's that good.

And yet: this is not an easy book to read. There were several times when I was considering giving up altogether on BHH and more still when I just had to admit that I was completely out of my frame of reference, I didn't even know for certain what was actually going on and had to let the prose just wash over me.

This book demanded an unhurried read that will no doubt reward me richly on a future careful reread (or 3). The story of Good Stab and his dark confession to Lutheran priest Arthur Beaucarne will stay with me for quite some time. This is the single most inventive and refreshing take on the vampire that I have read in memory: so many new and unexpected elements are introduced to fit Jones' vision of the Blackfoot vampire as a time travel - riding a virus, an affliction, as opposed to some magical machine. This is a story about identity and your place in the world, about the weight of history to come back on you in the present and, of course, the relentless pursuit of harsh justice or bloody revenge, depending on exactly which side you stand on.

A sweeping western that is emotional, heavy, and just incredible. I’ve always enjoyed SGJ’s work and this is my absolute favorite.

3⭐️

This was unfortunately underwhelming. The story dragged on and on and I lost interest. The writing was well done, and the premise was really interesting, but by 75%, I couldn’t force myself to keep reading any longer and ended up skimming the rest. For something that was so highly anticipated, I sadly think this one was a little overhyped.

Simply wonderful. A historical horror spanning hundreds of years, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter had such a fantastic, rich mixture of character voices, each being entirely distinct from one another. As a horror author, Stephen Graham Jones never misses - always finding the horror in such mundane situations, and his take on vampires in this story was truly exceptional (with my Western viewpoint of what vampires are, at least).

What a fantastic historical gothic horror that will visually and emotionally sit with me, and I hope it’s made into a movie. Vampires, revenge, real historical brutality, and storytelling that becomes sublimely inescapable.

I went through three stages with this book. The first stage was nearly dnf-ing when first introduced to the authors excessive writing style (e.g., “doddering perambulations”). The second stage was realising I was being initiated and integrated into a compelling plot where the language itself becomes a puzzle that keeps giving, revealing, and layering new experiences. Not only are you decoding the common English of 1912, from the perspective of the pastor, Arthur Beaucarne, but also attempting to navigate the world through the Blackfeet Native American man, Good Stab, and his amalgamation of native tongue and English. The third stage was complete obsessive immersion, where the page length and linguistic density no longer mattered, and there was even slight grief at the concluding of the story.

Experiencing the story through three main characters' perspectives gave it such richness. We initially follow the academic of modern-day 2012, Etsy Beaucarne, who deciphers the old manuscript left by her great-great-grandfather, Arthur Beaucarne. He details a series of conversations and confessions made by a wandering and enigmatic Good Stab, well as the details of a great massacre of his people. Most interestingly is the tale of a vampire that prowls the prairie land in search of revenge.

I fully appreciated the cleverly slow build crescendo of intensity and the revealing atrocities. I also loved how atmospheric each detail became in that true gothic portrayal. I really enjoyed Good Stab’s point of view to the point I forgot I was reading a book, I could see all the events as clear as day in my mind. I think this book had a lot of thought and research put into it, and I think the representation of the real historical horrors that occurred during the colonisation of the Americas is the most heart-breaking of all. I found myself looking up facts around bison populations, Native American tribes, and geographical references. It was a real joy and privilege to be able to experience the feelings I did from this book.

Please note there are strong triggers throughout this book, including gore, animal abuse, dismemberment, child abuse/ sexual assault, and torture.

Thank you kindly to NetGalley, Stephen Graham Jones, and Titan Books for this advanced readers copy.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter was honestly a five star from the first page. Stephen Graham Jones just does not miss. All the perspectives have such distinct narrative voices, making it easy to differentiate between the different characters and their timelines, despite somewhat frequent perspective jumps. The stylization of the storytelling really made this a unique historical horror. The prose was smart and incredibly descriptive, making especially the historical passages immersive. The historical part was action heavy and harrowing, leaving me constantly on the edge of my seat and frantic to pick the story back up every time I put it down, While the story had a slow start the horror built and built and then slammed into me headfirst. I really enjoyed some new elements factored into the traditional vampire lore that most people are familiar with. Additionally, though at first it seemed really disconnected, I really enjoyed Etsy’s perspective as a personification of generational guilt and trauma.

This was my first dive into Stephen Graham Jones' work, and I'm so glad I got the opportunity to try it! SGJ is clearly a talented author, blending real life historical fiction with mythology and fantasy of vampire-like beings. There was so much to keep track of in this story, truly SO much going on, which is a testament to SGJ's skill and the sheer amount of research needed to write something like this, but it also made it hard for me to keep plot and characters straight, especially with the Native American language and lingo used. The pacing was also very slow for most of the book, which made it hard to slog through at times.
Again, this is clearly a work of skill, it just wasn't right for me. I am excited to pick up more of his work though, and I am so appreciative to Titan Books and NetGalley for the eARC and for the opportunity to leave an honest, voluntary review.

I think this book undoubtedly proves that I would read anything by Stephen Graham Jones!

There were so many things I enjoyed about this book, but I think the setting and historical context explored here was the shining centre. It felt so real and vivid, but also sprawling and intense, and it's clear Jones has not only drawn from history but lived experience to draw this story together. There’s also a human, emotional centre to this book that I felt made the horror even stronger and exceptional, as well as was a big factor in keeping me turning the page!

As a Brit with a glaring lack of American history of knowledge this was a challenging read for the first quarter or so - not bad, just difficult. It took time to acclimatise to the historical context and language of the book, but I am so glad I persevered because this book is special.

My academic days are behind me but if I was still in that field I would push and push for this book to be studied. It’s the kind of book that marries raw emotion, real history and metaphor to shed heart wrenching and damning light on the events of the past. The past never stays buried forever and the buffalo hunter hunter strikes a bloody stake through the heart of those who think otherwise.

3.5 Stars

It took a few chapters for me to get into this book, mostly because of the writing style; there was another reason, but I’ll get into that later. The sentence construction was a bit odd and can take some getting used to. For most of the book, it can be attributed to the historical setting and the writing style common in those times, but even in the chapters set in Etsy’s P.O.V. in 2012, it was written the same way. I got used to it after a while, but I do think it’s something that could turn readers off.

Stephen Graham Jones is a very skilled writer. ‘The Buffalo Hunter Hunter’ showcased his talent for writing characters so brilliantly that they are able to evoke very visceral feelings in readers. Or at least for me. The rage I felt reading Arthur Beaucarne’s journal entries, that racist piece of shit had my hatred from the get go. The cast of characters and their introductions were woven throughout seamlessly. Each character, no matter the length of time we “see” them, felt intrinsic to the story.

His writing ability also carries over to the setting and descriptive elements of the book. The narration from every single character in this book painted such vivid imagery. Not only Good Stab’s narration but also Arthur and Etsy’s writing. Overall, every aspect of the author’s writing style led to an immersive reading experience.

Unfortunately, Etsy’s character had an entirely negative impact on my enjoyment of this book. Her voice is so irksome, and while I do acknowledge that her presence in the book allowed for some scenes that added to the story and characterisation of Good Stab, we spent too long following her. Also, not only was her narrative voice annoying, but her P.O.V. was a bit nonsensical in the sense that what she was “saying” didn’t match the format. She was supposed to be typing in a majority of her chapters, and then there were a few scenes where she is speaking into a digital recorder. But there were lines of her talking to herself or something like that, and it made no sense for her to be typing these things out.

Overall, I enjoyed this novel. It is a book that deals with and features heavy topics, so it definitely isn’t a lighthearted read, but I had a good reading experience.

Trigger Warnings for:

Racism, Genocidal Massacre, Blood, Violence, Rape, Death, Child Death, Animal Death, Murder, Fire, Gore, Grief, Body Mutilation, Bodily Injury