Stephen Graham Jones’ latest novel delivers on the promise of the title with a historical, fantastical spray of blood.
Since I heard the concept of this novel last year, it’s been one of my most highly anticipated titles. For regular readers of Nerds, you may have noticed that some books I was excited about didn’t quite land the way I hoped—not so with The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. This fast-paced story within a story of an Indigenous vampire hunting the buffalo hunters was exactly the kind of gory read I wanted in these troubling times.
The basic idea of the book is mostly summed up in the title: Good Stab accidentally becomes a vampire and decides to hunt down white hunters as they eradicate the buffalo herds for profit. Jones delivers on the plot’s promise of revenge, but the novel isn’t so one-dimensional as that. First, the novel is a frame narrative. Nearly failed academic Etsy Beaucarne thinks she’s struck gold when she is able to transcribe, and hopefully publish, the journal of her distant relative Arthur Beaucarne. In his journal, Beaucarne has recorded the story of a Blackfeet man named Good Stab, where he explains how he became a vampire and hunted down the hunters. This frame narrative sets up not only the extractive nature of higher education when it comes to Indigenous topics but the idea of audience as Good Stab tells his story to a white man in order to achieve his goal. This idea of audience reaches beyond the novel, asking whom are these stories for?
While Jones has been recognized in and outside of the horror genre as a top-tier writer, this layered frame narrative really demonstrates his control of voice. His ability to shift between Beaucarne’s journal entries and Good Stab’s “oral” story never felt jumbled. Both characters were clearly delineated, their voices unique especially when in contrast to the other.
This emphasis on voice is particularly important to how Jones takes on the time-honored horror of the vampire. In the novel’s acknowledgements, Jones talks about starting this novel while wrapping up a graduate seminar course on “Writing the Vampire,” which is reflected in the way he picks and chooses what aspects of vampire lore to include, such as the quick healing abilities but not the lack of reflection. Good Stab keeps track of his reflection and the changes made by being a vampire because these new powers and restrictions make him unable to participate in the lifestyle that he sees as making him a Blackfeet. What makes one Indigenous is a throughline in this novel as Good Stab must come to terms with the changes his abilities bring as he is no longer able to go back to his home or his family and friends.
While this book is deeply character driven via Good Stab’s voice, it is also a violent tale of revenge against the American empire. As Good Stab says: “What I am is the Indian who can’t die. I am the worst dream America ever had.” The novel’s plot begins with a white man found skinned on the prairie. Good Stab comes to the Lutheran pastor Beaucarne to tell his tale as the reader slowly figures out why Beaucarne is his chosen audience. While described on the inside flap as “literary horror,” the more literary aspects of the prose and frame narrative never get in the way of the blood and gore, but rather make the moments of intense violence more poignant or shocking.
There’s so much more I could write about with this novel—the environmental commentary, the use of oral storytelling, the fun reinterpretation of the vampire—but this novel is my current top read of 2025. I’d rather leave you with a taste in hopes that you pick it up for yourself. Gabino Iglesias was right when he called this novel Jones’ “masterpiece” in his review for NPR. The prose, the characters, the plot, the commentary all come together seamlessly to create a book nearly impossible to put down. Good Stab’s voice will stay with me for a long time, and I know this is only the first of many rereads.
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Reference: Jones, Stephen Graham. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter [Saga Press, 2025].
POSTED BY: Phoebe Wagner is an author, editor, and academic writing and living at the intersection of speculative fiction and climate change.
