Hi there and welcome to the first official segment of Ariel’s Reads! As I branch away from Arcs reviews and review other books that had a high impact on my life, Ariel’s Reads is here to provide some more detailed thoughts beyond my blurbs on social media or Goodreads.
A highly anticipated read of mine, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones is a story of revenge, erasure, and generational trauma. It’s a rough read, but extremely powerful.
Some Content Notes to be aware of: Animal death, Gore, Violence, Racism, Genocide
Let’s dive in!
A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.
A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.
Review of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
Setting
Our story takes place in multiple layers of years: we first have Etsy in 2013 who discovers her ancestor’s private book: a Lutheran Pastor’s diary of confessionals. We then have the aforementioned Lutheran Pastor in 1912 detailing the confessions of a Blackfeet named Good Stab, and we have Good Stab’s recounting of his life as a vampire. I listened to the audiobook, and with the full cast, I found this setting to be highly immersive with the layers of perspectives expertly blended.
The majority of the book takes place in what we now know as Montana by the Rocky mountains, and under this beautiful landscape, bloody horrors and genocide reign. There’s historical significance of the genocide and erasure of the Indigenous peoples by European settlers, and the mass slaughter of the buffalo, who were a consistent way of life to the local communities until the colonizers came along. I’ve had the honor of going to a wildlife reserve in Montana years ago which detailed the history and showed the pictures and horrors of the killing of the buffalo to their near extinction, and the preservation of the wild bison population today. Through this historical lens, the vampire revenge story takes place.
Characters
The Lutheran pastor is a contemporary of his time– racist, guilt-ridden, and trying to atone for past misdeeds. His points of view are through an unreliable lens, but this helped bring depth to the ultimate conclusion to his story and his connection with his ancestors.
Good Stab is a Blackfeet who has turned into an immortal vampire, so he has the heartwrenching experience of witnessing the generations-long effects of colonization and genocide– the loss of his people, the loss of way of life with the eradication of the buffalo, and the loss of his own identity as he fights his nature as a monster and wants to keep his identity as a Blackfeet. His search for revenge against the hide hunters who uselessly slaughter the buffalo, and I found myself cheering him on as his revenge plot became clear, all the way to the unforgettable ending.
Ultimately, I found this book to be extremely powerful and poignant. In a world that often tries to forget the inconvenient truth of the foundations of the US, this book brings these truths to the forefront and directly ties them to today’s world. Stephan Graham Jones is a master at writing horror that does more than scare on the surface; he leaves an existential impact that will linger long after the last page.
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