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4.27 AVERAGE
4.27 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A traditional vampire tale colored by an unflinching overlay of American history in all its bloody and gory detail. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is told through diary entries and written recounts of an oral narrative. Although parts are strange and feel more unreal than others, the historical reality of how settlers treated Native American tribes, the land, and the buffalo, lends an overwhelmingly believable tint to what is otherwise a horror fantasy novel.
It is impossible to escape the cultural reckoning that reading this inspires, and as a reader, you don’t want to. You want to turn your face toward it, grimacing though you might be, and face the past head on. To open up and drink from the history, swallowing it down, and letting it change you irrevocably.
Change - and its permanence, or impermanence, is a short theme in this work. Can redemption exist? Can we seek absolution from the past? Is it even possible to build something safe on ground watered in blood?
The twist on the traditional stories of having the vampires be influenced physically by what they drink, forcing Good Stab to drink of his own people who he knew and loves, is one of the best parts of this book. It adds such an incredible layer to the eventual reveal (although it isn’t a surprise and is written to make the reader understand quite early that this is what’s happening) that he is the cause of the bodies left on the Montana plains.
His reasons for them - and that he does not use them in the way the reader assumes, lends all the more gravity to the crimes committed against his people. It is impossible to not be moved by this work. To not see him struggle with who he is and what he knows he must do - with his loneliness, his pain, his rage, his desire fore revenge… and not be left as changed by our reading as he was by his nature.
“With my face still lowered, I laughed to myself because, even though I wanted to be, I wasn’t a boy anymore.
“I was a child, but not my father’s. I was the Cat Man’s son now.
“Behind me was my friend’s mother, the marks of my teeth on her neck deep enough that they’d touched behind her windpipe. Her blood had woken my nose and my eyes and my ears. My arm was already unbreaking, making me want to itch it. The sword cut in my leg was already closed up, and my side where I’d been shot was pulling tight over itself.
I reached down before it could close all the way, pushed my greased-shooter out.
“I held it up between my fingers, against the sky.
‘“Are you going to kill them all?” my father asked, watching what I was doing.
“I had to be a shadow to him. “The ones killing the blackhorns?” I asked, still studying the shape of the greased-shooter.
‘“The napikowaks,” he said, holding his smoke in. The same way he still called your soldiers Long Knives, he still used the older words the right way.
‘“There’s too many,” I told him, settling the greased-shooter down on the mirror. “They’re like the blackhorns. There’s always another one.”
“My father looked over to me about this, said, “You think that? That the blackhorns can’t all die?”
“I looked down at the grass between my feet.
Of course the blackhorns would always be there for the Pikuni. They always had been. Even the napikwans couldn’t kill them all.
“I couldn’t push back against Wolf Calf, though. He was still my father.
‘“Tell me about Curly Hair Woman,” I said to him then, my mother. It was another thing I’d always asked for when I was boy.
‘“You’re not a child anymore, Good Stab,” my father told me back, quiet.
‘“I don’t know what I am,” I said, and he might not have even heard.
“He clapped his hand on my wrist like a hug and held it there, and I shook my head no, not to cry out Yellow-on-Top Woman’s last blood, but some of it slipped out anyway.
“No Pikuni had touched me like I was a person for
I licked the blood from my eyes back in. I hid my face and shook my head back and forth, and told my teeth to stay where they were, that this little taste of blood didn’t mean anything.”
It is impossible to escape the cultural reckoning that reading this inspires, and as a reader, you don’t want to. You want to turn your face toward it, grimacing though you might be, and face the past head on. To open up and drink from the history, swallowing it down, and letting it change you irrevocably.
Change - and its permanence, or impermanence, is a short theme in this work. Can redemption exist? Can we seek absolution from the past? Is it even possible to build something safe on ground watered in blood?
The twist on the traditional stories of having the vampires be influenced physically by what they drink, forcing Good Stab to drink of his own people who he knew and loves, is one of the best parts of this book. It adds such an incredible layer to the eventual reveal (although it isn’t a surprise and is written to make the reader understand quite early that this is what’s happening) that he is the cause of the bodies left on the Montana plains.
His reasons for them - and that he does not use them in the way the reader assumes, lends all the more gravity to the crimes committed against his people. It is impossible to not be moved by this work. To not see him struggle with who he is and what he knows he must do - with his loneliness, his pain, his rage, his desire fore revenge… and not be left as changed by our reading as he was by his nature.
“With my face still lowered, I laughed to myself because, even though I wanted to be, I wasn’t a boy anymore.
“I was a child, but not my father’s. I was the Cat Man’s son now.
“Behind me was my friend’s mother, the marks of my teeth on her neck deep enough that they’d touched behind her windpipe. Her blood had woken my nose and my eyes and my ears. My arm was already unbreaking, making me want to itch it. The sword cut in my leg was already closed up, and my side where I’d been shot was pulling tight over itself.
I reached down before it could close all the way, pushed my greased-shooter out.
“I held it up between my fingers, against the sky.
‘“Are you going to kill them all?” my father asked, watching what I was doing.
“I had to be a shadow to him. “The ones killing the blackhorns?” I asked, still studying the shape of the greased-shooter.
‘“The napikowaks,” he said, holding his smoke in. The same way he still called your soldiers Long Knives, he still used the older words the right way.
‘“There’s too many,” I told him, settling the greased-shooter down on the mirror. “They’re like the blackhorns. There’s always another one.”
“My father looked over to me about this, said, “You think that? That the blackhorns can’t all die?”
“I looked down at the grass between my feet.
Of course the blackhorns would always be there for the Pikuni. They always had been. Even the napikwans couldn’t kill them all.
“I couldn’t push back against Wolf Calf, though. He was still my father.
‘“Tell me about Curly Hair Woman,” I said to him then, my mother. It was another thing I’d always asked for when I was boy.
‘“You’re not a child anymore, Good Stab,” my father told me back, quiet.
‘“I don’t know what I am,” I said, and he might not have even heard.
“He clapped his hand on my wrist like a hug and held it there, and I shook my head no, not to cry out Yellow-on-Top Woman’s last blood, but some of it slipped out anyway.
“No Pikuni had touched me like I was a person for
I licked the blood from my eyes back in. I hid my face and shook my head back and forth, and told my teeth to stay where they were, that this little taste of blood didn’t mean anything.”
I’m not normally a horror girlie, but I did enjoy this!
The writing style and the narrative choices were extremely unique, and I thought the overall structure was interesting. This was truly a story within a story within a story, and the way the layers all came together at the end was very compelling.
However, I did also feel like it got confusing at parts and it was kind of hard to follow along. I didn’t get sucked in as much as I was expecting because I found that I had to keep stopping and rereading sections to try and figure out what was happening.
Good Stab is a messy bitch who lives for drama, though, and I gotta respect a man who holds grudges for over a century to this extent.
The writing style and the narrative choices were extremely unique, and I thought the overall structure was interesting. This was truly a story within a story within a story, and the way the layers all came together at the end was very compelling.
However, I did also feel like it got confusing at parts and it was kind of hard to follow along. I didn’t get sucked in as much as I was expecting because I found that I had to keep stopping and rereading sections to try and figure out what was happening.
Good Stab is a messy bitch who lives for drama, though, and I gotta respect a man who holds grudges for over a century to this extent.
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is easily one of my top books of 2025. I wish I could properly convey how important this book is, and how deeply it touched my heart and soul.
There’s something to be said about a “horror” novel where the actual horror is derived from actual real life events rather than the supernatural itself. Obviously this book has vampires and gore, but the actual bone-chilling stuff is based in actual reality. I lost count of how many times I cried, all of the quotes I highlighted and tabbed from how profound I found them. This is the first book I’ve ever read where I felt the desire to immediately flip back to the beginning and re-read again.
This was also my first exploration into Stephen Graham Jones’ works—-and it certainly won’t be the last. This was an absolute masterpiece. I already wish I could experience it for the first time all over again.
There’s something to be said about a “horror” novel where the actual horror is derived from actual real life events rather than the supernatural itself. Obviously this book has vampires and gore, but the actual bone-chilling stuff is based in actual reality. I lost count of how many times I cried, all of the quotes I highlighted and tabbed from how profound I found them. This is the first book I’ve ever read where I felt the desire to immediately flip back to the beginning and re-read again.
This was also my first exploration into Stephen Graham Jones’ works—-and it certainly won’t be the last. This was an absolute masterpiece. I already wish I could experience it for the first time all over again.
I'm not educated in Native American history and frontier history even i love learning about it. This book with its deliberate slow pacing and somewhat repetitive passages did not have me pushing to continue 😑.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Blood
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I liked this book, but I wanted to love it. The story was cool and it expanded my vocabulary quite a bit but I found it hard to stick with
Didn’t give this a long chance honestly but I was too bored to continue. Will also say horror is not my usual genre so my feelings on this one might just be a me thing.
dark
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Genocide, Gore, Self harm, Blood, Murder
Moderate: Sexual assault