I’m sharing another instalment of my Mini Review Mondays, the most recent of which was last week. In case you haven’t seen any of my previous posts, I do ‘mini’ reviews of books that I’ve previously read and am now ready to share my full thoughts about.
First up, I’d like to talk about The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. Thank you to Titan Books for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Etsy Beaucarne is an academic, who needs to get published. So when a journal, written in 1912 by a Arthur Beaucarne, a Lutheran pastor and her grandfather, is discovered within a wall during renovations, she sees her chance. She can uncover the lost secrets of her family, and get tenure.
As she researches, she comes to learn of her grandfather, and a Blackfeet called Good Stab, who came to Arthur to share the story of his extraordinary life. She discovers the journals detail a slow massacre, a chain of events charting the history of Montana state as it formed. A cycle of violence that leads all the way back to 217 Blackfeet murdered in the snow.
Publication Date: 18th March
CW: gore, violence, murder, death, colonialism, mass murder, massacre, racism, white supremacy, genocide, rape, graphic violence
My Thoughts:
With The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones delivers his unique spin on the vampire genre in this often raw and bloody epistolary novel that is infued with the monstrosity humanity is often capable of.
Stephen Graham Jones has long been a favourite of mine in the horror genre and this latest offering cements his status as an all-time great. It is up to its elbows in blood and guts with this creeping tale of vengeance. You feel hypontised, unable to pull yourself away from the pages. It is eerie and slithers under your skin with the build-up and the explosive acts of violence. I loved the wraparound and the way it tied into the timelines at play here. This is ultimately the tale of the cycle of colonial violence and the reprecutions this has through history, into the present day. There are unimaginable acts of horror that still are not accounted for – violence that goes unanswered. This book is unflinching and brutal in its depiction, highlighting these atrocities. It is bloody and raw and horrible.
It is important to note that Good Stab’s story is being narrated through the voice of the coloniser – it is through his writings that it is preserved and brought to a new generation. Even now, he is not allowed the liberty of his story to be presented wholly by himself. We get these fragmented snippets of the story through confession-like excerpts of Good Stab approaching the priest, though not all is as it seems. There is a mastery of narrative form at play here with plenty of layers to unpick and rich imagery to unpack. Stephen Graham Jones has a brilliance of phrasing, making you pour over a sentence time and time again even as it makes your stomach churn. The use of the epistolary form here evokes classics of the genre, but subverts expectations and offers a unique insight into certain matters. It is a brilliant move, how it all culminates.
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter at once pays homage to the greats of the genre and offers something entirely new, soaked in the blood and violence of colonialism and the genocides that stain the soil of our world still.
Next up, I’d like to talk about Bad Blood by Sarah Hornsley. Thank you to Hodder & Stoughton for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Justine Stone left her small, claustrophobic hometown in Essex eighteen years ago, turning her back on her family and what happened that terrible night.
But when her childhood sweetheart, Jake, is accused of a horrific double murder, Justine’s world begins to crumble. And when her brother disappears in the wake of the deaths, Justine is forced to open the door to the past again – a door that she’s kept shut for years.
What has her mother been hiding all this time? Why does nobody ever talk about the death of her father? And what did her brother know about the couple Jake is accused of killing?
Publication Date: 27th March
CW: death, murder, violence, blackmail, abusive relationship, physical violence, gun violence, sexual assault, traumatic flashbacks
My Thoughts:
Bad Blood was packed full of excellent twists, dark secrets and compelling characters, zipping along at breakneck speed. Hornsley is definitely one to watch.
This is an impressively strong debut. It is packed full of secrets and lies and you never quite orientate yourself properly. Hornsley pulls you between two timelines and a multitude of POVs, all of which work to form the pieces to this jigsaw puzzle. It is so well-constructed and constantly shifts, keeping you on your toes. The whole time I was reading I never fully felt like I could trust what anyone was saying. There is just so much going on and you can’t believe everything that is being presented to you. It is oppressive and feels like the tension is bearing down on you – making for a compulsive and intense read. Hornsley packs some incredible twists in here. I would recommend going in knowing as little as you can and just enjoying the wild ride you have in store.
You fly through the pages, needing to find the truth. It helps that these characters are complicated, three-dimensional people going against one another with various factors coming into play. They are not necessarily likeable as such but you can come to understand their motivations and how their circumstances have brought them here. It would translate really well to the screen. Around the time of writing, I (like many people) am currently watching Adolescence and that tight, taut storytelling marries well with books like this. Stories like this depend on great characterisation as well as the dramatic beats of the overall story.
Bad Blood is a thriller you will not be able to get out of your head anytime soon after reading. It is layered and complex, full of the messiness of people.
Finally, I’d like to delve into Gifted & Talented by Olivie Blake. Thank you to Olivia-Savannah Roach at Tor UK for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
The children of Thayer Wren have been remarkable since the day they were born. Unsurprisingly, since Thayer was the brilliant CEO of Wrenfare Magitech and so-called father of modern technology. Telepathically and telekinetically gifted, his offspring – Meredith, Arthur and Eilidh Wren – are publicly admired and privately capable of extraordinary feats. Any of the Wren prodigies would be a plausible inheritor to the Wrenfare throne. Or at least, so they like to think.
On the day of Thayer Wren’s unexpected demise, the lives of the three Wren siblings are in various states of chaos and disrepair. Meredith, now CEO of her own profitable company, is knee-deep in a dystopian capitalist nightmare, haunted by the ghost of a childhood friend. She’s also facing imminent exposure for corporate malfeasance by a journalist ex-boyfriend. Congressman Arthur Wren is wrestling with his disgruntled constituency and a strange, magical malady that can only be called the yips. Eilidh, former prima ballerina whose spinal injury ended her career, now finds herself triggering accidental, uncontrolled apocalypse events.
In the wake of Thayer’s loss, the Wrens return to their childhood home. Here they will face their contentious relationships with their father, and each other. On the journey of gifted kid to clinical depression, nobody wins — but which Wren will rise to the top? Can one of them seize the prize of their father’s crown?
Publication Date: 3rd April
CW: death, grief, violence, manipulation, infidelity, accident, natural disaster, suicidal ideation
My Thoughts:
Gifted & Talented is another smash hit from a powerhouse in the genre.
I remember seeing the lofty pitch of Succession with magic and I was sold. This book lives up to its pitch with complex familial relationships and an examination of legacy, power and privilege with some majorly flawed people.
This is a book with teeth – satirical and sharp, making precise cuts at the topics it’s grappling with. Ultimately these are extremely privileged people who will not loose that much in the long run. Their status and power simply will not allow it. Yet, you get caught up in their neuorses and their grief and their shameless power plays. They are fairly despicable people and you love to hate them. I loved that we got to grapple with each of their headspaces (ish) and unpick a little of what makes each of them tick. They have been through a pressure cooker of a childhood and always felt the need for greatness and often achieved it, though with the immense support and resources they have at hand. Blake is not shy of showing this contrast on page, adding to that cathartic skewering. In particular, there is a narrative device Blake uses that made a smile break out on my face because of how twisted and appropriate it was. Without giving anything away, it very much suits the story and the tone that Blake is spinning.
I really enjoy Blake’s particular brand of fairly grounded speculative fantasy that heavily focuses on our characters but is interspersed with these fascinating details of the wider world. Here we get a good sense of magitech and its potential, but also the way it has become so normalised and commercialised. It is thought-provoking and interesting, but somewhat acts as the backdrop for this focused family drama. Of course it is the legacy they’re all fighting over and for and I enjoyed the smaller details Blake includes that hint at much larger politics surrounding this. These people are making moves that could reshape the world but they’re focused on their interpersonal dramas instead of thinking of the wider scale. Everything has always come easily to them and will continue to long after the final page of this book.
Gifted & Talented is a salacious, sensational and severely messed up story about people with the world at their fingertips as they grapple with unimaginable power.
A Short Book Lover 
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