Goodreads blurb: A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.

My review: I’ll be completely upfront with you here – Stephen Graham Jones’s novels are transcendent experiences for me that tend to leave me speechless, so writing this review isn’t going to be easy. I would love to cut right to the chase and just flail my arms excitedly while gushing that this newest release of his is wonderful and everyone should read it, but I’m guessing that if you clicked on this review, you’re expecting a little more in-depth critique than that. So I will try to restrain myself and come up with coherent things to say.

This is a vampire novel that somehow manages to avoid the word vampire and the most recognizable tropes of the genre while remaining, undoubtedly, a vampire novel. Jones has revamped, if you’ll pardon the pun, the accepted rules of vampire lore, added his own touches of Indigenous mythology, and stripped away the glitz and glamour for a more grounded view of what the life of a bloodsucking immortal being might look like. There are no shades of Twilight or even Dracula here, and very few of Interview with the Vampire either, though the interview format can be taken as an homage. This vampire hasn’t been living the high life or seducing buxom women, nor does he wax particularly philosophical about the nature of immortality, and he is only mildly inconvenienced by the things that the aforementioned vampires greatly fear. This vampire is simply on a mission, and if the reader of his story possesses so much as half a beating heart, they shouldn’t be surprised to find they are cheering him along on his gory journey to vengeance.

Ah, the gore… SGJ certainly knows how to bring a violent scene to life in excruciating detail, and the kills in this one get, well, meaty. If you know anything about the history of North America’s Old West, those days of casual massacres and brutal fur traders and small pox blankets, you might be able to guess the nature of the horrors depicted within these pages. Jones spares no detail, neither from the perspective of the perpetrators nor from that of the victims. However, as we’ve come to expect from this author, this isn’t horror for the sake of cheap thrills and chills; this novel has something profound to say about the way Indigenous peoples and overexploited animals like the buffalo have been treated by colonizing societies. It’s not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach, but I encourage you to read it if you can and really empathize with its message.

Finally, I have to mention the masterful way Jones captures three very distinct voices of three very different narrators. He usually writes in a unique style that blends stream-of-consciousness with traditional Indigenous oral storytelling, and that style works well for Good Stab’s narrative chapters; but he then switches to a flowery, Victorian-esque style for the diary of the Lutheran pastor that feels completely different from anything else I’ve read from him yet at the same time completely natural in its flow. And he switches style again to a much lighter, more casual, and even downright comic tone for the frame narrative that begins and ends the story. This is the part where I want to start flailing and making incoherent noises of glee, because not many authors can pull this off with such ease, and when someone can, it makes me so happyyyyyyy!!

Ahem, uh, where was I? Yes, so, this is a wonderful book. Go read it!

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