The Buffalo Hunter Hunter Book Review

The opening is deliberately slow, but I loved the initial hook of the journal and learning what might be inside. I knew very little about the book before going into this, except that it was a Goodreads Choice contender and that it was about Native American vampires, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. The period language of the journal was something of a hurdle, but once you get to grips with it, it started to become more and more intriguing, especially when you get to the initial meeting with Good Stab and his confessions.

Good Stab’s confession is where the novel comes alive. His voice, shaped by a distinct linguistic and cultural logic, moves between sounding lyrical and being opaque. Terms such as Blackhorn and He-Who-Wags-His-Tail are sometimes glossed over, or else left completely unexplained for the reader to think over, forcing them into a position of interpretation and translation. The gap between the story and the reader, becomes one of the novel’s strengths and goes a long way to making the unsettling sense of dread grow to new heights.

The concepts at the heart of the book are intriguing, the vampire mythos is reconstructed with Native American concepts and inspirations woven in. It’s still a figure most people will recognise, but it’s unique enough to make it interesting, and it expands the genre rather than subverting it. In doing so, I think it opens debates about survival and inheritence and who feeds or preys on whom throughout the novel.

At it’s best, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is deeply unsettling. The horror is visceral and slow-building, and the murders of the victims initially draws the reader in. But it is Good Stab’s story, his account of loss, vengeance, and transformation, that truly hooks you in. Once the narrative settles into this confession, it’s hard to put down, even though it is a long book. The weakness comes more with the return to contemporary America. It makes sense, drawing back to the present to point out the never-ending cycle of violence, but it’s hard when you’ve been fully immersed in the historical voice and atmosphere, and the POV of this section is very jarring. I am assuming this is intentional, but it breaks the spell the novel has woven and I felt like this section was the first time I wanted to put the book down.

Still, the thematic weight of the novel is undeniable. The novel confronts the moral rot left in the wake of colonisation, the devastation of both the Native peoples, and of the wildlife, and the violence normalised by imperial expansion. Retribution is at the heart of the text, haunting everything, and forcing readers to consider how such atrocities are often left unacknowledged.

It’s a heavy book, and it doesn’t shy away from that heaviness. I’d advise checking the content warnings before starting. But for readers willing to engage with its demands, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter offers a powerful, unsettling and deeply contribution to both historical horror and vampire fiction.