Picked up this title a month ago and finished it in a few days. Hand on my heart, I can say this is one of the more unique horror concepts I've read in years. It even managed to reinvent the oppressed people become vampires genre (much better than Sinners, anyway).
The plot revolves around a Native American who watches his tribe, and the ecology they depend on to survive, destroyed by White men in the late 19th century. And a Lutheran pastor with a shady past. By a twist of fate, he becomes a vampires, though the word vampire isn't used anywhere in the book.
I love that most of the book is written as the journal of the Lutheran pastor. And the man uses words like seasoning. I never used my Kindle's vocabulary builder before this book. Now, I find myself opening the title from time to time just to brush up on the meanings of ineluctable, ineffable, vouchsafe, lambent and imprecation. I had to suppress autocorrect as I wrote those words because it keeps flagging them.
The book walks a fine line between horror and historical fiction. The suffering of the Native Americans, while central to the novel, is not presented as commentary or sorrow porn.
I feel that the second half could have been edited to move it faster. And the horror becomes a bit comic in it's surrealism at that point.
Otherwise, a solid read for horror fans looking for something off the beaten track.
by quiescent_haymaker