The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

//spoilers

I loved the way this was written in diary entries, and really enjoyed learning about native culture. started looking up the terms used, but realized later that they are explained, just not right when the words are first brought up. felt like was learning along with Arthur, which was definitely intentional. and a lot of it, you just kinda guess with context.

I found out very early on that Jones loves to write meandering sentences with like a dozen commas...and kind of loved it. I think the writing style might not be for everyone, as it was a bit drawn out, but love the way the whole thing read like an oral story, it felt like was being sat down by these two men for storytime.

I kinda loved the added vampire lore of turning into show more whatever you feed from the most, definitely contributes to identity theme (like if you feed from too many white people, you also turn into one...spooky).

This is also the first book in idek how long that actually read the acknowledgements too. really interesting to see Jones' perspective and how this story came to be :) will definitely read more from him.

I will say, the story started out pretty slow and didn't get super hooked until at least 30% of the way through, maybe more. so, I think the book could've been a little bit shorter. show less

Look, there's nothing I can write here about the plot that's going to tell you anything you won't find in other reviews.

I'll just say that this is *writing*. It's stunning, heartbreaking, amazingly skilled writing in all the best ways. Anyone who thinks genre fiction can't be capital-L Literature needs to pick up this book and get their world rocked. It's enough to make me wish I were still teaching college English Lit because this would be on my syllabus immediately. I'm pressuring my kids, my friends, and random people in line at the grocery store to read it. I know it's only February, but I'm putting this on my "best of the year" shelf.

Note: I read this mostly in dead-tree format - my favorite for books that make me think and feel a show more lot. But I also bought the audio book and it's as excellent as this novel deserves it to be. I haven't listened to the whole thing - just used it to revisit sections already read when real life insisted I get up and do work - but the voice actors are top-notch and the production values are excellent. If audio books are your thing, you can't miss this one. It's won awards for good reason. show less

Wow...

Remind me never to wrong Stephen Graham Jones, because if this is the revenge he imagined for a book, I am terrified to learn what he's capable of.

This book was stunning! Well written, engaging, well paced, and suspenseful. A paranormal horror written from 3 points of view : Etsy- the professor in our modern era, Arthur - the Lutherian pastor writing in his diary, and Good Stab - the Blackfoot confessing to Arthur. Or toying with Arthur. That's for you to judge.

At its heart, this is a story of revenge for the unforgivable evils committed to innocent people. Morals are not held in high regard when vengeance is on the menu. The most shocking part of this book wasn't that the horror of the paranormal but the evils common men are show more willing to commit without remorse. show less

Stephen Graham Jones' latest novel, THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER, may have vampires and sensationalize certain elements. Make no mistake, however. THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER is a revenge story. It is the fictionalized revenge of Native Americans against white men, particularly buffalo hunters and anyone responsible for the end of their way of life. It is also the revenge of one man against another for reasons you uncover as the book progresses. The story is unpleasant, gory, brutal in violence and hatred, and not for the faint of heart. And it is a novel that will haunt me for years to come.

After reading several of Mr. Jones' novels, I have come to realize how skilled he is at building imagery and immersing you into the worlds of his show more stories. The line between fiction and real life blurs when you read his words. In the case of THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER, this is especially true simply because, other than the vampire part of the story, there is nothing imaginary about it. Good Stab may be fictional, but he represents the entirety of his people as they struggle to adjust to the many changes wrought by white men. The places exist, and the massacre happened. And Mr. Jones puts you right next to Good Stab for all the action. In doing so, Mr. Jones forces you to watch the decimation of the Pikuni and the other tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy. You can only sit by and watch white people behave abominably towards any Native American, enraged at their actions and embarrassed by what white people collectively did.

THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER is a challenge to read. This is not only because of what you see unfold, the hows, and the whys. It is also because of the language Mr. Jones deliberately uses in telling Good Stab's story. Good Stab doesn't pretend to be anything he is not, and so he uses English as someone who is struggling to learn it.. His use of literal English translations for his native tongue makes it difficult to understand what he is talking about. He never attempts to explain his descriptions but assumes that you know what he means when he talks about a Dirty Face or Long Legs.

In THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER, Mr. Jones forces you to look through the eyes of a Native American, see what they saw, experience what they experienced. He also makes you understand the language barrier that existed between Native Americans and the colonizers, feel the frustration and confusion of the Native speaker, and experience the ramifications of the miscommunication issues. It is as intimate and immersive an experience as you will get while reading.

Mr. Jones' THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER is unpleasant in so many ways, the least of which is that you experience the evils of colonization from the Native American perspective. It is damn uncomfortable to sit there and know that while your ancestors may not have directly been involved in the decimation of Native American tribes, your skin color makes you inherently culpable.

That is the genius of the novel, though. The same things that make THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER a difficult reading experience - the gore, the point of view, the immersive nature of the prose - make it a brilliant one as well. Rarely has a novel affected me so much or forced me to rethink my biases. The fact that the story contains forms of magic and supernatural beings matters not as they prove to be Mr. Jones' means to the end. Simply, THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER is a tour de force, and you should read it immediately. show less

An elderly pastor for a small congregation of German Lutherans in Montana in 1912 notices a new congregant, a Native man wearing dark glasses. Over the coming weeks, after the service, the man tells the pastor his story and the pastor sets it down in his diary, along with his own fears and actions.

This novel begins with the usual framing device. The pastor's diary is discovered in a wall in 2012. The woman who works at deciphering the diary is hoping for tenure, and while the story quickly moves from her to the two men in 1912, she is more than a convenient scaffolding for their story.

The man in the dark glasses is Good Stab, a Blackfeet Indian with an extraordinary story to tell, and the author of this impressive book is Stephen show more Graham Jones, so the main thing you'll know going in is that the story will be a gore-fest. But to say that this is simply a vampire novel set in olden times is to do it a disservice. This is a historical novel, a novel about the fate of the native people in the Western US, a meditation on guilt and atonement, a literary novel and a horror novel. There's a lot going on and Jones gives himself a lot of space and pages to tell the story the way he wants. Partway through this novel, I wondered who the audience for this literary, historically-grounded gorefest is exactly, and found out further on that I was certainly one. I'm not great with gore, but Jones has managed to hook me for five books now despite his enjoyment of severed limbs and eviscerations. There's so much going on here, in ways that demand that attention be paid. And, whatever you do, don't skip out on reading the acknowledgments. show less

I was so sad to have finished this book I FUCKING LOVED IT. It is so dark, so cruel, so clever, and it’s overall a masterpiece of a story. Seriously it is fantastic. And that cover design? Makes me jealous I wish I had designed it.
Not gonna lie, I was worried after buying it and discovering I had read The Only Good Indians and apparently hated it. Now I’m thinking I should maybe go back and read it again?
Anyway, this is the story of Good Stab’s confession to Arthur, a Lutheran priest, in 1912. Good Stab is a vampire who hunts people that kill bison and Native Americans, so mainly white settlers and soldiers who came to steal and plunder their territories. It slowly and skill fully takes us to the reason Good Stab chose Arthur as show more his confessor, and goddamn that ending is pure gold.
It’s on my fave bookshelf now. Well done, Mr. Graham Jones. I take my hat off. show less

Creepy, wildly gory, atmospheric, and with a stack of framing devices hardly seen since Wuthering Heights. A tale of the horrors of experiencing the colonization of the Americas as an indigenous person, stacked inside a story of vampires, revenge, and religious horror, stacked inside a kind of horror version of A.S. Byatt's Possession. The very ending section kind of took me out of everything a bit—the tone got a little too wacky and ended up being way more funny than scary, for me (your mileage may vary—for a time my mother kept a prairie dog as a pet, which may be a factor).