This one came as a surprise to me, as I had just found out it won both the Bram Stoker Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 2025. I read a quick summary and was immediately sold on it. The last good novel I read that involved creepy vampires and the like was The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. It was a chilling novel, and there were a scene or two that gave me the creeps. Personally, I have never been creeped out by horror novels that deal with the supernatural, like ghosts and similar themes. I rarely choose to read those novels, as I know that movies usually work better for me. What I discovered, however, is that vampires are the exception. I was excited to see if The Buffalo Hunter Hunter could give me the same type of chills I experienced in The Historian.

At its heart, this novel is best described as a revenge story set in the latter half of the 19th century. Horribly mutilated bodies are discovered in the fields of a small frontier town in the West, and soon after, a mysterious man appears at the local church to make his confession to the pastor. Before long, we learn the tragic story of a Native American man named Good Stab and how he came to lose everything due to the encroachment of ranchers and trappers among the early American settlers.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is a beautiful novel, but it can sometimes test a reader’s patience. When Good Stab is telling his story, there are many terms used that may not immediately make sense at first, and it is up to the reader to decipher them. The good news is that if readers stick with the story long enough, most things will eventually make sense. In particular, many of the animals that Good Stab describes are referred to with terms such as prairie-runners, big-mouths, and long-legs. The story alternates between long sections of Good Stab’s confession to the pastor and smaller sections of the pastor’s own thoughts, both of which are recorded in his journal.

So how goes the overall story? I think it’s a worthy read. And yes, I can say that there were definitely some creepy scenes here and there that confirmed why I believe reading vampire novels can give me the chills like no other ghost stories can. In particular, the very last chapter regarding Etsy, although a bit long, should definitely be read at night and in the dark for maximum effect. However, I also believed that the last chapter with Etsy taking over was also the worst part of the story. Her yammering on and on about things kind of got on my nerves at times. I think if the novel had dedicated more chapters towards her side of the story I may have gotten irritated to the point of just speed reading her parts.

The only real confusion I encountered had to do with the genealogy portion. I am personally terrible at keeping track of it, and when nicknames are included, it throws me off even more. Not to mention, the way this important piece of information is told by Etsy, a rather unreliable narrator, makes it even more confusing. Perhaps a simple family tree would work better than having to rely solely on Etsy’s narration. Nonetheless, I think fans of horror fiction should definitely give this a try. Obviously, the vampire element may lose its impact after a while, but other creepy aspects emerge from time to time to make it worthwhile.