PUBLICATION DATE: March 18

I will have to admit that when I first started reading this I was thrown off because it was NOTHING like the Indian Lake Trilogy. But that didn’t last long as I next found myself admiring the way Jones could easily do both. Well.

Yes, in a lot of ways it’s a slow build, but the violence inherent in the westward colonizing of 19^th Century America comes through right away, and if one has even a sliver of heart, then you will feel more sympathy for the Blackfeet vampire Good Stab than the for self-indulgent Lutheran Pastor, Arthur Beaucarne (Beaucarne, haha, good one, laughing emoji).

And the wraparound story of this tresayle’s (hint: it’s French) great, great-something granddaughter really adds to the story, in my opinion. She may be a bit pathetic at times (it runs in the family) but she turns out to be a lot stronger than she realizes.

The horror of vampires + the horror of what the white man inflicted on the indigenous people who were here waaaaay before we were here makes for a wonderful revenge/horror story.

And, I should add, what a unique take on vampires! Having written one vampire novel and working on a second, I always enjoy seeing vampires reimagined.

Stephen Graham Jones

GoodReads says:

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.