Stephen Graham Jones seamlessly blends horror with dark humor and history in this one. Fans of "The Only Good Indians" may like this better than his "My Heart IS A Chainsaw" trilogy, because it's more similar. Still, there is some dark humor here that I think Jade would really appeciate.

"Buffalo Hunter Hunter" was a surprise smash hit. I thought there were no original vampire stories left to tell. I was so, so wrong. This was so unique, suspenseful, and folkloric. Cheers for the early copy.

I chose to read a free eARC of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter but that has in no way influenced my review.

Oh my gosh, where to begin with this book?! Stephen Graham Jones is one of my favourite horror writers, his books have a tendency to completely floor me. One of my favourite books of last year was I Was a Teenage Slasher. It SHOULD have been on my top ten(ish) books of the year but due to a technical glitch (that technical glitch being me!) it was missed off. It will, however, be featuring on this year's list. Question is, will there be TWO SGJ novels on that list? Of course there will be, this is SGJ we're talking about! Now, I know it's not fair, but there are certain expectations I have when starting a SGJ novel. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (what a title!) was as dark, as devastating and as horrifying, perhaps more so on that last point, as I have come to expect from this author.

So, back to my original question. Where do I begin? Etsy Beaucarne is an academic at the University of Wyoming. She needs to publish something extraordinary to get tenure, otherwise she is out on her ear. That's when a journal is discovered hidden inside a wall. The journal belonged to Etsy's great, great, great grandfather, Arthur Beaucarne, who was a Lutheran pastor in Montana in 1912. Could this be Etsy's key to tenure? The journal details meetings between Beaucarne and a Blackfeet, Good Stab. Good Stab's tales are astounding and Arthur's own struggles to believe his visitor are documented in the fragile pages. But Good Stab has a confession to make and he won't stop visiting Arthur until his story is told...

First and foremost, I have never read anything like this before. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is horrifying, eye-opening and completely unflinching. It marches right up to your face, stands nose to nose, and stares you the f**k down. It made me feel deeply uncomfortable, and rightly bloody so! The destruction of a nation, a group of indigenous people destroyed just because the white man thinks he knows better (he really, really doesn't). Devastating, hard-hitting and powerful. The most confidently told, yet disturbing storytelling from a master of the genre.

SGJ has taken your common-or-garden vampire and filled his veins with fresh, new blood. Which, as a historical horror novel, is quite a feat! Good Stab has a story to tell, a confession to make, and his chosen recipient is Arthur Beaucarne. As Good Stab's confession plays out, the horror, the brutality and the violence all grow. It's inescapable, it's unrelenting and it's impossible to look away from.

Would I recommend this book? I would, yes. 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 was completely hypnotised by the storytelling, reading this 448 page saga in two sittings. Most books take me a good week to read! All in all, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is an epic novel in both scope and delivery. Absolutely fascinating characters who felt wholly believable. A creeping, unsettling tale that will leave its mark on its readers, for sure! Highly recommended.

I chose to read and review a free eARC of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. The above review is my own unbiased opinion.

[Review will be published on 1st May 2025]

In 1912 Montana, a Lutheran pastor agrees to hear a confession from a local Indigenous man. Let’s just say he’s NOT prepared for what he’s about to be told…or what will happen to him after. I went into this one mostly blind and I recommend that you do the same, so I won’t divulge too much of the plot. But if you love body horror, the Wild West, and watching smug white men get what’s coming to them, you’re going to love this one as much as I did!

Not for me sadly, it lost me with the three layers of stories and then some of the imagery confused me.

Thank you to Stephen Graham Jones, Titan Books, and NetGalley for the ARC!

3.5 Rounded down

I've not read a SGJ book, so I was unfamiliar with the impressive yet laborious prose that he writes. Combine that with the length of the book and you have...a slog.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy all of the book. Blending this real life massacre of Blackfeet natives and nearly an entire population of buffalo with a fictional vampire revenge story is such an interesting concept and a bold project to undertake. It's such a good story in fact, that it's completely overshadowed by the diary entry format and slow pacing. The good, gripping parts of the story kept being halted by Arthur's character writing at length about something so incredibly boring that I found myself literally nodding off. This is of course probably intentional. Arthur is a pompous Lutheran pastor in 1912 after all. When it's so imbedded in the majority of the story though, it gets difficult to want to keep reading.

In fact, I can look back on the portion of the book that was Good Stab's story and enjoy so much of it. I loved the original vampire lore, I loved the super gnarly gore, I loved Weasel Plum- his buffalo companion. I felt the injustice and frustration of it all, and I think that will be what sticks with me for many winters.

DNF at 58%

I really struggled understanding the writing (style). It felt like not much is happening, even though I'm that far in. I kept having to go back like 10 pages and reread constantly.

I'm new to Stephen Graham Jones' work but have only ever heard amazing things, so paired with the incredibly intriguing premise of this book I was very very excited to read his new release, "The Buffalo Hunter Hunter". And it is, objectively, a very good book. It's well-written, it packs its emotional punches and it deals creatively with a horrible event in human history, one I wasn't aware of but read up on afterwards. it's real history mixed with horror, and the horror is incredibly raw and atmospheric.
It is rather slowly paced and while it makes sense with how the story unfolds, it did lose me here and there and I do think it could have been edited more sharply. But that can also simply be blamed on the fact that I never really warmed up to the author's writing style. It's objectively good and I loved the way it used authentic language, but sometimes you can recognise good writing yet have to admit it's just not your cup of tea. That's what happened here. I also, personally, didn't enjoy the way the story develops later on.
So take this review with a grain of salt, because while I, in the end, wasn't blown away by "The Buffalo Hunter Hunter" due to the writing style and pacing, I absolutely recommend it. The subject matter and themes alone turn this into an important and still relevant for today read and the vampire in this is just fantastic.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is not an easy read, nor should it be. Some books exist to comfort, to provide escape. This one exists to confront the carnage that history books so often obscure.

The type of horror that hits you deep in the soul. I thought this was written well and I would definitely read more from the author.

Fantastic. A wild ride of a read. Beautifully concocted to spook and unnerve while constantly drawing the reader further into the web of the story. The ending was unexpected and worked really well.

Historical fiction, well good historical fiction is a difficult art, the subjects are often sensitive. This book achieved that fine balance, it worked as a fine fiction/horror piece, yet was still sensitive to the historical subject of the treatment of indigenous North Americans, the mind set of colonialists in justifying their actions, is also engaged with.

As the best horror often points out who are the monsters? The horrors of colonialism in the racial prejudice, mass extermination of people, along with the decimation of entire species and destruction on the environment, are more vile than any supernatural beast.

Ok, that is my preachy part, the book has a good pace and the found manuscript device works well in this instance, the characters even the supporting cast are strongly pictured and combined with history ground this book well,

I expect to see awards for this one.

This was by no means an easy read, and at times not a pleasurable one either; however, the author's unique style and writing is worth the effort. Not my favourite of his novels, but a worthy addition to the shelf.

I love the cover and I really really thought the description sounded incredible!

This was not incredible for me.

It’s an overwhelming amount of information to describe scenes that for me by the time I finish reading them I have forgot even what we are describing.

The names, he uses names that are very similar or up to four words for one person’s name, which is very hard to follow. I went back-and-forth on pages, trying to make sure I was keeping characters straight.

The cat man, again I cannot really explain to you how something that involves pages of description is still not truly visible for me in my head. It did not scare me. It was not creepy. I just don’t feel that. This book was a good fit for me.

Thanks to Netgalley for my electronic advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

SJG is the man. I've been reading him since the early 2000s and he just keeps getting better and better. I honestly do not know how he can put out this much consistantly good work. Do yourself a favor and read this. His style might not be for everyone, but it's easy to get lost in his words

Whilst Stephen Graham Jones seems to be a very talented author, my first experience with him in Buffalo Hunter Hunter isn't what I would call a fun one. He has a unique literary style, at least in this book, that is very difficult to immerse yourself in. Choosing the framing narrative of a person reading the secondary account via a journal of a third account of events 100 years ago can be tough to get into for some. This one was a miss for me but due to my own reading preference, nothing necessarily that the author did wrong.

Horror hits differently when it’s built on the bones of real, genocidal history. The blood, viscera, and supernatural vampire horror is plentiful in The Buffalo Hunter Hunter but it pales in comparison to the real horror story: the brutality of colonisation, the events of the Marias Massacre, and the hunting of the buffalo to near extinction.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter dredges up the historical truth of the massacre, reminding us of the ways history is often written by the victors/colonisers, and consequently sanitised, whitewashed or buried. We get the story through three different perspectives: the eyes of a Blackfeet named Good Stab, a Lutheran pastor and a professor seeking tenure at the University of Wyoming.

The book is a reckoning, an excavation of memory and trauma wrapped in the intimacy of Good Stab’s confessional-style recordings. The epistolary format makes it feel almost voyeuristic, like I’ve stumbled onto something not meant for outside eyes.

Initially, the language of Good Stab took time for me to settle into, because it wasn’t diluted for convenience. There’s no glossary, no hand-holding, no neat little footnotes.

Instead, I had to work for my understanding. It’s a deliberate artistic choice by SGJ, and one I respect and revere. My interpretation is that the language is something to be felt, experienced, understood through context and immersion. The effort you put in to adapt to the flow makes the emotional payoff all the richer.

Additionally, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is not an easy read, nor should it be. Some books exist to comfort, to provide escape. This one exists to confront the carnage that history books so often obscure. The sheer amount of blood, brutality, both against people and animals, is staggering, so be mindful of the content warnings. This book doesn’t just shock, it opens up a wound that never really healed. And that's a history we can’t afford to forget, no matter how ugly it gets.

I’m going to have to add SGJ officially to my favourite list of horror writers. Obviously I recommend this one highly. But that recommendation comes with a warning for a gut-wrenching, painful, but necessary read for understanding the true weight of history.

Thank you so much to NetGalley & Titan Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. This one is going to stick with me for a long time.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author for access to this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4.5

"You can't stop a country from happening!"
"Yes, but we were already a nation."

THIS WAS SO GOOD !!
Wow. I love that I can still be surprised by horror.
SGJ does amazing things while tackling vampire lore in the formation of Montana in the early 1900's in this story-within-a-story!
This was enthralling, horrific, and so heartbreaking. I bought a physical copy as soon as it was released and I will be RE-READING soon to fully annotate and experience all over again. I think this is SGJ's best written work, his storytelling shines, his character's felt so real, the AMAZING prose throughout. I will say, for me there was a dip in pacing around the 60-75% mark but before and after that I was flyinnnnggg through this book.
highly, highly recommend.

Weasel Plume !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Read If You Like:
- Horror
- Westerns
- Psychological tension
- Native American folklore
- Revenge stories
- Unreliable narrators

Set against the vast, unforgiving landscape of the American West, this novel follows a man obsessed with avenging his family, who were slaughtered by a notorious buffalo hunter. What begins as a straightforward revenge tale quickly spirals into something much stranger and darker, as the lines between man, beast, and spirit blur. The protagonist’s relentless pursuit of his target drags him deeper into a world of hallucinations, curses, and blood-soaked violence, where nothing is as it seems or is it?!

The novel masterfully blends horror with Western tropes, turning the traditional frontier mythos on its head. The prose is sharp and unrelenting, mirroring the brutality of both the setting and the story. The psychological unraveling of the main character is as gripping as the external horrors he faces, making the novel feel like a descent into madness.

Steeped in Native American storytelling traditions and the eerie loneliness of the frontier, this is a chilling, atmospheric read that lingers long after the final page. Fans of genre-bending horror will find themselves enthralled—and unnerved—by its haunting vision of vengeance and survival.

Thanks so much to the publisher for my eARC and audiobook!

Thought provoking and emotional. Stephen Graham Jones takes you on a journey through young America. A historian fiction retelling with a fantasy twist. Vampires.
Veed I say more: The writing is very reminiscent of Anne Rices Interview with the Vampire, the details, the exploration the unapologetic subject matters. LOVED