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A review by acogna
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
dark
slow-paced
4.75
"What I am is an Indian who can't die," confesses Good Stab to Pastor Beaucarne, "I'm the worst dream America ever had."
I used to pray for horror like this, the kind that understands what the genre demands of it and then goes above and beyond to deliver on the full potential of its premise. Like, it's got a frame narrative and uses it precisely the way the frame narrative is meant to be used—to disassociate and obfuscate point-of-view and lack of narrative integrity; I genuinely can't remember the last time a frame narrative was used this well for a horror novel (the only example I can count among those ranks is the legendary Frankenstein, just to keep things in perspective).
For a story about hauntings and ghosts, none make quite the perfect fit as the vampire, and no vampire is quite as vengeful as Good Stab, with the added disfiguring and depersonalisation element ofthe blood he drinks literally transforming his appearance into what he eats in his vampirism! (Did I say this book was insanely good? This book was insanely good!) There's a unique gravity in his bloodlust that can only ever come from the violence and hatred that massacred the Blackfeet that snowy morning on January the 23rd, and it makes for probably one of the most memorable literature vampires to me. There's quite a few million versions of Dracula hanging around after all, but only one Good Stab.
Like any good horror, Hunter explores just how deep a wound from the past can go, and then keeps going and going, until the worst thing about the wound, was that not only does it follow us into the present, but that it leaves the book entirely, and you can actually see it if you look out into the Montana snow. That the worst thing about the wound, is that it is real.
I used to pray for horror like this, the kind that understands what the genre demands of it and then goes above and beyond to deliver on the full potential of its premise. Like, it's got a frame narrative and uses it precisely the way the frame narrative is meant to be used—to disassociate and obfuscate point-of-view and lack of narrative integrity; I genuinely can't remember the last time a frame narrative was used this well for a horror novel (the only example I can count among those ranks is the legendary Frankenstein, just to keep things in perspective).
For a story about hauntings and ghosts, none make quite the perfect fit as the vampire, and no vampire is quite as vengeful as Good Stab, with the added disfiguring and depersonalisation element of
Like any good horror, Hunter explores just how deep a wound from the past can go, and then keeps going and going, until the worst thing about the wound, was that not only does it follow us into the present, but that it leaves the book entirely, and you can actually see it if you look out into the Montana snow. That the worst thing about the wound, is that it is real.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Gore
Moderate: Rape