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044914836X
| 9780449148365
| 044914836X
| 3.93
| 61
| 1993
| Apr 24, 1993
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liked it
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Note: I read this roughly 90-page novella as part of the anthology A Century of Great Western Stories, which I've been reading intermittently, not in
Note: I read this roughly 90-page novella as part of the anthology A Century of Great Western Stories, which I've been reading intermittently, not in the original 1993 Fawcett paperback printing, which bulked it up with a second story by Gorman. Because of its length, and the fact that it has a distinctly different tone from most of the other stories in the anthology, I felt that it deserved a separate review. This was my introduction to Gorman's work, and I approached it cautiously, mindful of the fact that my wife (who's usually an avid Western fan, and who owns the copy of the collection that I'm reading --it was a Christmas gift to her from me back in 2010) intensely disliked it, and was turned off to the entire anthology for that reason. Reactions to it among Goodreaders vary, with some not even finishing it and some giving it five stars. My own rating of three stars (rounded up from two and 1/2) is more middle of the road, but I understand both extremes. Those extravagantly liking it are noir fans who recognize it as being essentially an expression of noir sensibility in Western garb, and appreciate its "gritty" and "raw" qualities for their own sake. It's tailor-made for those readers, but I'm not part of that target audience. Gorman divides his tale into 32 "Parts," with Parts 3-32 set in the early summer to late fall of 1898 in the mining town of Rock Ridge (presumably in Colorado, given a reference in one place to Denver). The prologue and first parts tell, first, how a wealthy (from nefarious dealings) sociopath named Schroeder obtained a captured wolf and trained it, by means of brutal beatings, to become a subservient killing machine; and second, how 18-year-old viewpoint character Robert Chase went along with his two older brothers in holding up the bank Schroeder was part owner of, with his connivance. Rather than splitting the loot, Schroeder had murdered the older boys for their share, and Robert was savaged by the wolf, survived, and spent eight years in prison. Paroled, he moves to Rock Ridge, where his former sweetheart and pen pal from his prison time, Gillian, now lives. But, as he knows, it's also the town where Schroeder now lives under the alias Reeves, and where he's found himself another bank to partner in. (And we also know from the prologue, though none of the characters do, that the wolf has been bitten by a rabid raccoon....) This is a very grim and dark tale, in which the adult characters tend to be morally gray (if they're not coal black); it's not a feel-good read by any means. Gorman's vision is actually not morally nihilistic; he understands the distinction between right and wrong, and his sympathies lie with the former. But he's depicting a villain whose sympathies are decidedly with the latter, and who has basically no scruples; and the author has a clear-eyed perception of the potential for vengefulness and greed to cloud human judgment, and to lead to disastrous and tragic consequences --for the undeserving as well as for the deserving. It's a page-turner, the characters are well-developed and complex (though in most cases not especially likeable), and the tale is emotionally evocative; but I'd be lying if I characterized it as really pleasurable to read in most places. For me, it pulls the overall rating of the anthology down rather than enhancing it. Whatever sexual situations exist in the story are few and not really handled in a problematic way. However, trigger warnings for cruelty to animals are sorely needed, the violent content is frequent and often pretty gory, and there's more profanity than necessary. We also have two uses of the f-word, which I believe are probably anachronistic in this setting, because of the way it's used. (As a verb, the word goes back to Anglo-Saxon times; but to my knowledge, its use as a curse or as an all-purpose adjective/adverb that simply vents the speaker's aggression isn't attested in contemporary sources until the 1940s, and probably would have originated in the Roaring 20s, or possibly among soldiers in World War I.) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 06, 2025
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Jun 11, 2025
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Jun 06, 2025
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Mass Market Paperback
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B0F25NTNXT
| 4.31
| 111
| unknown
| Oct 22, 2020
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it was amazing
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A. W. Hart, the nominal "author" of the Avenging Angels series of western adventures featuring a twin brother-sister pair of bounty hunters in the pos
A. W. Hart, the nominal "author" of the Avenging Angels series of western adventures featuring a twin brother-sister pair of bounty hunters in the post-Civil War West, is actually a house pen name; the books are all really written by different authors. (The writer here, Paul Ebbs, though working in a quintessentially American genre, is an Englishman, but a long-standing Western fan.) Barb and I were introduced to the series because the author of one of the books, Charles Gramlich, is one of my Goodreads friends. Before starting on this one, together we'd read and liked three of the books. But, because it's a long, episodic series (in which the books after the first one don't have to be read in order), and I was impatient to see whether one romantic connection and another possible one set up in the first book would really come to fruition, I suggested that we make this concluding volume our next read, and she agreed. (To avoid a spoiler, I won't say whether or not my hopes on that score were fulfilled.) No exact dates are given here; but since the first book began in 1865 (the next book would have to have been set in 1866) and judging from the number of intervening adventures, I'd guess the main storyline here to be set no earlier than 1870, making co-protagonists George Washington ("Reno") and Sara Bass in their early 20s at least. But the book opens with three short Prologue vignettes, the first dated "twelve months ago," from the viewpoint of an unnamed female pushed off of a bridge to a 40-foot drop into a raging river, followed by two more dated, respectively, three and two "months ago." None of these give us much information; but we are told that she survived, that her brother Robert Stirling-Hamer was a wealthy Arizona copper-mining magnate who has been murdered, and that his accused killer "Don" was in turn killed by bounty hunters (guess who?), but that Don's brother in New York has now gotten an anonymous letter claiming that his brother was innocent. Our main story opens with the Bass twins in a tight situation in West Texas, in danger from a psychotic fugitive who's already murdered his own parents and set fire to a schoolhouse full of kids. But they're soon to learn that there are now wanted posters out for them, claiming that their killing of Donald Callan eight months previously was an unauthorized murder. From there, the present narrative is periodically interspersed with flashbacks to "eight months ago," doling out strategic memories of the earlier events (which will finally come together with the present), and at times some short scenes from an omniscient third-person narrator describing present goings-on in Robert's town of Dry Mouth; but none of these fully explain what actually happened with Robert's murder. and may at times deepen the mystery. Ebbs writes very well, with a gift for apt and fresh (but not overdone) similes and vivid turns of phrase. He also brings the varied Southwestern landscape to well-realized life. The publisher and writers have always tried to make this series Christian-friendly; but where it's clear that some of the authors had only vague knowledge of Christian beliefs, Ebbs actually does explicitly refer to Christ's sacrificial death for sin in one place. A unique feature here (at least, compared to the other three installments we read) is that all of the chapter titles have biblical or hymnic cadences, and epigraphs that I'm guessing come from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Although the book is very violent (as usual for this series), bad language is scanty and not very rough, and there's no graphic sexual content and little reference to sex at all. (A Catholic priest is a sympathetic character, Reno's search for God's guidance here is a realistically-treated and important theme, and the Bible he inherited from his dad plays a big role.) Reno and Sara's character portrayals are in keeping with the earlier series books we've read (except that Sara's ruthless streak, at one point, cranks up a notch that even startles Reno). There are a few nits to pick here, mostly with a number of places where typos in the form of omitted words, negative statements inadvertently expressed as positives or vice versa, etc. change the meaning of sentences; but I could always tell what was meant. A statement early in the book seems to suggest that Sara has lost her faith, but Ebbs subsequently back-peddles from that. Reno's Bible at one point is described as a "Lutheran Bible," so while the author knew about the Christian gospel, he obviously wasn't much versed in church history. (Many U.S. Lutherans in the 19th century were still German-speaking, so would probably still have used Luther's 16th-century translation; but any that were English-speaking used the King James Version, like all other Anglophone Protestants.) But these are minor quibbles. Overall, I found this an outstanding entry in the series! However, Barb did not; she greatly/exclusively favors linear plots, so she was VERY put off by Ebbs' non-linear storytelling here (and also disliked the ending, though I didn't), to the extent of being soured on the rest of the series. So, we'll be abandoning it, at least for a while. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 23, 2025
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Jul 13, 2025
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May 23, 2025
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Paperback
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031286986X
| 9780312869861
| 031286986X
| 4.09
| 108
| Apr 22, 2000
| Apr 22, 2000
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it was amazing
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Popular American author John Jakes got his start writing short Western fiction, and never lost his interest in and affection for the genre. Looking ba
Popular American author John Jakes got his start writing short Western fiction, and never lost his interest in and affection for the genre. Looking back over the span of the 20th century at the dawn of the 21st, and at a time when the demise of general circulation magazines and other factors had drastically curtailed the market for Western short stories, he assembled this collection of 30 tales, by as many authors (including himself), as a celebration of the best fiction the tradition has to offer. (He was assisted in the selection by veteran anthologist Martin Greenberg and by fellow author John Helfers, so his assessment of the quality of the material isn't entirely idiosyncratic.) His two introductory pieces, the Introduction or "What Happened to the Western?" which both analyzes the current diminished state of the genre and speculates about the prospects for its enduring survival and future directions (drawing upon, for the latter, the thoughts of a number of current Western writers) and the much-shorter Preface, which briefly sketches the genre's roots in the 19th-century dime novels, are spoiler-free. At nearly 90 pages, one selection here, Wolf Moon by Ed Gorman, is really a short novel, and was originally published as one. (I've treated it by itself in a separate review.) The only story here I'd previously read is the lead one, Louis L'Amour's outstanding "The Gift of Cochise" (which I've commented on elsewhere). So virtually all of the material here was new to me; and more than half of the authors are ones whose work I hadn't previously read, and in a number of cases had never heard of before. (My review doesn't discuss all of the stories individually, but does comment on most of them.) This anthology mines territory similar to that of Jon Tuska's Shadow of the Lariat: A Treasury of the Frontier, though Jakes' chronological range is broader than the 1920-1961 one covered in that book. Seven authors --Zane Grey, Max Brand, Les Savage Jr., Ernest Haycox, Frank Bonham, Luke Short, and Dan Cushman-- are represented in both collections, but by different stories, so there's no overlap at all in content. Some defects of this collection, compared to Tuska's, are that the arrangement of the stories is not chronological (indeed, there doesn't really seem to be any principle guiding the arrangement), publication dates aren't usually given with the selections, though copyright dates for most of them are listed in the front matter, and the author introductions preceding each story are only single short paragraphs. More seriously, the Gorman novella and the Evans story (see below), for me, dragged down the overall average rating of the stories. But the excellent quality of the rest allowed for a five-star rating (rounded up) for the book. And on the plus side here, while Tuska's book doesn't include any female authors, Jakes included three. Both the writers and readers in this genre have historically been overwhelmingly male; 90% of those represented here are men, but I appreciated the effort to represent women's contribution to the genre. (Many of the stories here --and actually, in both anthologies-- present strong and admirable female characters who earn respect from readers and fellow characters alike.) To consider the distaff contributions first, Marcia Muller's "Sweet Cactus Wine" (1982), set in the Arizona desert country in the early 1900s, would have made a great selection for the anthology Just Desserts. (The same could also be said for "The Burial of Letty Strayhorn" by four-time Spur Award winner Elmer Kelton.) Like Peggy Simson Curry's 1959 story "Geranium House," it's a deeply thought-provoking story, which tests and challenges our understandings of right and wrong. IMO, neither tale "result[s] in a blatant subversion of morality", though another reviewer used that language; they simply present stories of human behavior that could realistically happen in an unusual (but far from impossible) situation, and invite us as the readers to bring our own moral judgment to bear on it. That sort of experiment in the moral imagination is inherently the stuff of serious literature. (I felt the same way about another selection criticized on the same grounds by that reviewer, Evan Hunter's "The Killing at Triple Tree," where our main character is a marshal whose young wife was brutally raped and murdered, and who's now obliged to lead the manhunt for the thug who did it. It's a harrowing practical exploration of the ethics of justice, but no spoilers here. Hunter is best known under his Ed McBain pen name, as an author of police procedurals, I've read none of his work in that vein, but read his novel Last Summer when it was published in 1968. That book is very different from "The Killing at Triple Tree;" but the two works share an intensely grim vision of human moral darkness, though not from a premise that applauds darkness.) My Goodreads friend Debbie Zapata is a fan of the Western writings of Bertha Muzzy Bower (1871-1940), so I recognized her name here. She's represented by "The Lamb of the Flying U," one of many works she wrote about everyday cowboy life on a fictional Montana ranch. (Having grown up on a real one, she was writing about what she knew.) This tale of attempted hazing of a new hand whom the older ones mistakenly assume to be effeminate and incompetent is humorous in intent, but for me somewhat marred by my basic contempt for the warped attitudes demonstrated by the smug in-group here. (If they'd been working for me, they'd have been looking for a new job.) Several stories are drawn from the earliest generation (except for the "dime novel" authors) of Western writers. Published in 1908, Owen Wister's "Timberline" is the oldest of the stories that has a definite date. (The title is actually the nickname of the character of whom this tale is essentially a character study.) Wister does an excellent job here of evoking a sense of place in the Rocky Mountain high country, makes good use of the electrical phenomena of a high-altitude lightning storm. and shows his mastery of the surprise ending technique, done rightly. (His landmark Western novel The Virginian is on my to-read shelf.) One of the longest stories, "Tappan's Burro" by Zane Grey, about the bond between a prospector and his donkey, is also one of the most powerful and poignant. Jack London's "All Gold Canyon," which has one of the most sensuously beautiful descriptions of unspoiled nature that I've read in any genre, also has a prospector for its protagonist, and benefits from the author's detailed knowledge of mining and prospecting procedures --but before it's over, more will be going on than just prospecting. "The Weight of Obligation," by now little-known author Rex Beach, is set in the frozen North of Alaska during the Gold Rush days (like his contemporary London, Beach took part in the latter, though he would outlive him by over 30 years). Arguably, that setting isn't what most readers view as the true locale for a Western; but it's a gripping story of men vs. nature, as well as a serious psychological study. German writer Karl May (1842-1912) isn't well known to American readers, since few if any of his books have ever been translated into English. But his 40 Western novels featuring his iconic hero Old Shatterhand (also nicknamed Old Surehand and Old Firehand) and the latter's Indian sidekick Winnetou were, and still are, highly popular with readers in German and other European languages. (I'd heard of him and his series character from reading a secondary account of him some years ago, though I don't remember where, but haven't read anything by him.) He's not directly represented in this collection. But Jakes' "Manitow and Ironhand," set in the "Stony Mountains" (as May sometimes designated the Rockies) in 1833, and featuring title characters who are fur trappers, is "Dedicated to the memory of Karl May," and its heroes are inspired by May's own, though it's more of a homage than an actual pastiche. (Jakes' two-page Afterword gives more info on May, and on the similarities and differences of this story and the May corpus.) One of the longer tales in this anthology, this was definitely one of my favorites, despite the fact that the principal villain is a sanctimonious hypocrite who pretends to be a Christian. Unlike at least one reviewer, I didn't view Jakes' purpose here as slurring Christianity itself, though I might be mistaken. (Another of my favorite selections here, Savage's 1951 story "King of the Buckskin Breed," is also set in the milieu of 1830s Rocky Mountain fur trapping.) Other stories also feature interactions between Anglos and Native Americans, but the authors develop that theme in very different ways. Haycox's "Stage to Lordsburg" (which was later adapted in the classic film Stagecoach) is the most traditional, following a disparate group of men and women in a two-day horsedrawn journey over mostly empty land being scoured by Apache war parties. In "Sergeant Houck," Jack Schaefer (best known as the author of the landmark 1949 Western novel Shane) explores the challenges faced by a returning married woman who's been for three years a captive among the Indians --and who's bringing with her the son she bore to a brave who bought her from her original captors as a slave. Glendon Swarthout is best known for his Western novel The Shootist (1975), for which he won the Spur Award. His "The Attack on the Mountain" is set in Arizona in the 1880s, against the background of the warfare between the Army and the Apaches, and is also one of my favorites here. Finally, "The Shaming of Broken Horn" (1960) by Bill Gulick, set in the days of wagon-train travel, has a brave and resourceful female protagonist and packs a feminist message at a time when the gene wasn't known for that. (The portrayal of Native Americans in all of these tales is realistic rather than racist, but none of the authors subscribe to "noble savage" mythology.) Though they're very different stories, "The Tin Star" by John M. Cunningham and "Killers' Country!" by Dan Cushman both represent the violent action-centered tradition of the mid-century pulps (the titular "country" of the latter is both geographical and metaphorical). But both are also serious stories about what matters in life and emotionally evocative in powerful ways. The selection here by Max Brand (whose real name was Frederick Faust) is "Wine on the Desert." It features a totally despicable protagonist, guilty of murder and on the run ahead of a posse, who's quite confident that he's got a fool-proof plan for a clean get away (but has he?). Luke Short's title character in "Top Hand" is a "kid" perhaps in his late teens (older than 17, by his own statement), and older folks in the town he's just ridden into are skeptical of his "top hand" claim ...but a chance to prove himself might come sooner than expected. In "The Trouble Man," Eugene Manlove Rhodes makes brilliant use of the surprise ending technique, in a story set in New Mexico against the background of strife between cowboys and sheepherders. A more modern story by Bill Pronzini (who is married to Muller, though Jakes doesn't mention that fact, and like her writes in both the mystery and Western genres), "Fear" (1995) is serious and evocative, and takes its premise in an unexpected direction. "Hell on the Draw" (1989) by Loren D. Estleman is arguably out of place in this anthology, since its supernatural and SF premises place it more in the "Weird West" subgenre (and it's more than a little dubious theologically!); but it holds interest, and makes very good use of the surprise ending device. The only outstandingly bad selection here is "Candles in the Bottom of the Pool" by Max Evans. I started to just skim the latter after only a few pages, because I found all the characters unlikable and wasn't enjoying it, but it didn't take long to make me quite glad that I didn't actually read it. This one, set somewhere in the Southwest in the author's 1973 present, isn't a Western by any definition other than the ridiculous one of "any work set west of the Mississippi, in any time period." (By that yardstick, for example, both The Maltese Falcon and Twilight are "Westerns;" any "definition" that broad is obviously useless for serious purposes.) But that's far from being the biggest problem with that selection. It's a genuinely repulsive, ugly and morally sick story, which makes Jakes' extravagant praise for the author incomprehensible. (Whether the protagonist's "visions" of supposed scenes from regional history are meant to be understood as supernatural or as a madman's hallucinations is unclear, but I frankly didn't care.) But despite this turkey, my overall assessment of this collection is very positive, and I recommend it to genre fans. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jun 27, 2025
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Apr 08, 2025
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Hardcover
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1641196521
| 9781641196529
| 1641196521
| 4.40
| 530
| unknown
| Oct 01, 2019
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liked it
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Published in 2019, this is the opening volume of Wolfpack Publishing's Avenging Angels series. Barb and I had previously read the seventh and second i
Published in 2019, this is the opening volume of Wolfpack Publishing's Avenging Angels series. Barb and I had previously read the seventh and second installments out of order (long story!); and having really liked those, we recently decided to commit to reading the series. This one takes us to the very beginning of the titular "avenging angels'" adventures. The Bass twins, George Washington (nicknamed "Reno") and Sara, were 16 in the fall of 1865, just after the Civil War, when they returned home from school and found their western Kansas homestead burned and their parents and three older siblings dead or dying, murdered by a band of vengeful renegade ex-Confederates. (Their sister had also been gang raped.) Before he died, their father charged them to avenge that slaughter. This book is the story of that quest and its outcome (hence the title). "A. W. Hart" is a house pen name; all of the books of the series have different actual authors. Here, the writer was Peter Brandvold, who grew up as a Western fan in the 60s and 70s and went on to write over 100 Western novels, under his own name or his "Frank Leslie" pen name. (Neither Barb nor I had any prior experience with his work.) There are a couple of significant continuity issues between this volume and the later ones, though these aren't Brandvold's fault. Starting in the second book, our hero's and heroine's promise to their father is said to have explicitly included a charge to continue to hunt down and rid the earth of other evil-doers, even after justice was served on the original villains. That's not at all clear and explicit here. At the end of this book, their resolution to make their quest a continuing one is said to be their own decision, a response to an emotional need of their own. And in the seventh book (and possibly others earlier), the late John Bass is described as having been a Lutheran pastor. In this book, while he's said to have been a God-fearing person who raised his kids to be familiar with the Bible, there's no hint that he was a clergyman of any kind. IMO, on both points, the portrayal here is more plausible and realistic. However, there are definite flaws in Brandvold's craftsmanship here, starting with chronology. John Bass served in the Mexican War, after which he married and settled in Kansas. The Bass family graveyard on the homestead is said to hold the remains of an infant sibling who died over 20 years before 1865 --in other words, before 1845, and the Bass twins would have been born ca. 1849. But the Mexican War was fought from 1846-1848. There isn't time between Feb. 1848 and the end of 1849 to fit in John Bass' post-war activity, subsequent courtship and marriage, the couple's move to Kansas, and four pregnancies prior to Reno and Sara. (And Kansas was not even opened for settlement until 1854.) If his general knowledge of U.S. history didn't furnish red flags here, very basic research would have precluded these kinds of mistakes. Editing and proofreading here is poor. Brandvold loses the thread of which character is speaking in one key conversation; he can't make up his mind whether two or three antagonists are positioned in one spot during a gun fight, and near the end, a character's last name unaccountably changes from Hill to Stock in the space of two pages. The third-person narrative is consistently from Reno's viewpoint, but in the earlier chapters it incorporates gunslinger's slang (thankfully abandoned later) that a peaceful teenage farm boy would be unlikely to be acquainted with. Near the end, conduct by two of the villains is inconsistent with their group's overall plan. There are other logistical and editorial quibbles that could be made as well. Both Sara and another important female character, Isabelle Mando, act out of character, or unrealistically for the situation, in one place (though not in the same place). Sara's character, in particular, comes across as less winsome here than it does in the two later books we read. Of the two twins, she's always been the more enduringly angry and vindictive over her family's tragedy, the more aloof and self-contained, and the more ruthless and readily inured to violence. Here, though, she has a readiness to execute even disabled and helpless adversaries that alarms Reno, and at the same time a willingness to ignore a rape attempt on someone else as none of her business. (Thankfully for the victim, Reno didn't share that indifference.) At one point, Reno was feeling a genuine concern for the state of Sara's soul, and a resolution to try to influence her for the better. But later, he's surprised and puzzled when Sara expresses a concern about her own spiritual state; and that theme is never developed any further, just forgotten and left hanging. Brandvold is undeniably a prolific writer; but he comes across to me as a careless and hasty one who sacrifices quality to quantity. While the main characters here are Christians, and there's a definite theme of good vs. evil, with the idea that God sides with the former and against the latter, none of the series writers are necessarily Christians themselves as far as I know. Bible verses serve as epigraph and postscript, and are quoted at times in the text; but there's no real presentation of the gospel of grace and mercy, and not much wrestling with the Christian ethics of lethal force in a fallen world. Despite the teen protagonists, this is not really YA fiction either; it's a very violent book, with a high body count. (It is, however, free of sexual content, beyond some references to scantily-clad chorus girls in a frontier music hall, and has very little bad language.) There's a chaste romance which some readers will see as marred by an insta-love factor; but in the cultural context, I wasn't bothered by the latter, and for me it's a plus that it's inter-racial. (Positive portrayal of half-Lakota characters and a black character do Brandvold credit.) While I didn't rate this book as highly as the two later ones, Barb and I still plan to continue with the series. It won't disappoint genre fans who like a heavy dose of gun-fighting action. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 31, 2024
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May 27, 2024
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Mar 31, 2024
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Paperback
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1641196513
| 9781641196512
| B07YNYQG6P
| 4.38
| 379
| unknown
| Oct 22, 2019
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really liked it
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Note, May 31, 2024: I've just made some factual corrections to this review, based on my just-completed read of the series opener (I'd described some a
Note, May 31, 2024: I've just made some factual corrections to this review, based on my just-completed read of the series opener (I'd described some aspects of the background incorrectly). “A. W. Hart,” the nominal author of the Avenging Angels series, is actually a house pen name used by Wolfpack Publishing for the multiple authors of this and one or two of their other series. Where books are marketed or shelved by the author's name, this device allows a series to be kept together. It also makes it possible for the same main character(s) to be featured in a number of adventures, without being limited to the imagination or time constraints of a single author. If one dogmatically maintains that worthwhile creative art, by definition, can be created only by individual genius operating in total independence of any collaboration, then this won't be viewed as worthwhile creative art. (Neither will the music of Gilbert and Sullivan, the art of Currier and Ives, or the novels of Nordhoff and Hall, to cite only a few examples.) This is more of a collaborative effort, building on a common foundation. While it requires, and gives scope for, individual creativity, it also sets the challenge to that creativity of operating in fidelity to the foundation, rather than creating contradictions to it. In the two Avenging Angels books I've read, I felt the challenge was met; in both books, the main characters are consistent. Barb and I encountered this series before only in its seventh installment, Avenging Angels: The Wine of Violence, because the actual author of that one is my Goodreads friend Charles Allen Gramlich. We'd intended to read that one as a stand-alone (both of these books, and presumably the others, can be read that way, since the reader is filled in quickly and simply on the basic set-up and premise of the series in each one and each adventure is self-contained and episodic). By a happy serendipity, however, things worked out for me to purchase this second installment, and we took a chance on it. (It didn't disappoint!) As series fans, or readers of my previous review, already know, our main characters and titular “Avenging Angels” here are twins George Washington “Reno” and Sara Bass, still in their later teens, the God-fearing son and daughter of a Kansas homesteader. They were 16 in 1865, just after the Civil War, when while they were absent, their parents and siblings were massacred by a band of renegade ex-Confederates. The first book (which I haven't read) describes that incident, how they promised their dying father that they would take on the mission of avenging the slaughter and ridding the world of other lowlifes who prey on the innocent, and how they served justice on the murderers. This book mentions that before doing that, they spent some time under the tutelage of their father's friend Ty Mandell, learning and honing their formidable gun skills; it's now summer again, so I'd say we're into 1866, and they're about 17. (It's also mentioned that George got his nickname “Reno” from his dad, after an officer the older Bass had served with in the Mexican War and admired; the author doesn't state this explicitly, but that would be Jesse L. Reno, who later became a Union general in the Civil War, and was killed in battle in 1862.) In the early part of this book, we're shown how circumstances shaped their decision to become bounty hunters, as a way of supporting themselves while fulfilling their ongoing vow. That decision will soon have them heading to the town of Hatchet, Nebraska to collect their first bounties, along with rather mysterious, 30-something Brenda Walon, who's on her way to the same place, where an old friend has died and Brenda is named in her will. But Hatchet doesn't prove to be a welcoming place; mystery and danger await, and this volume will deliver Western action aplenty. For this book, the real author is Wayne D. Dundee (he's credited on the back page), a seasoned author of Westerns, mysteries and other genre fiction. His prose is more clunky and plodding than Gramlich's, with a tendency to frequently explain the obvious. However, the novel is well-plotted (the resolution in the last part, IMO, was quite brilliant –it came as a surprise, but ultimately struck me as perfect) and the characterizations are skillful. Dundee handles action scenes believably and capably, with a high body count but no unnecessary “pornography of violence.” There are no particularly deep themes here, but there are some good messages. Bad language of the h- and d-word sort and religious profanity is more common here than in the installment I read earlier, but still a bit restrained; there's no explicit sex, though there are references to illicit sex, including the brothel that formerly operated in the town. Wolfpack Publishing is a secular press, but with two morally earnest Christians as main characters, the publisher and authors do attempt to make the series at least somewhat Christian-friendly. Hence, one character reflects, “But the laws of God were the ones [he] felt his closest kinship with. Believing them, living them, and spreading to others word of the salvation that could come from doing the same.” Speaking over a grave, Reno comments, “God welcomes all kind-hearted souls into Heaven, and even if their lives on earth had shortcomings, soothes them with the promise of a better hereafter and the comfort of His presence.” The problem is that this is a non-Christian writer's honestly ignorant attempt to reproduce what he thinks that Christians believe, not what a Christian would actually think or say. Christianity IS a faith with a strong ethical dimension, and a profound belief in the grace of God; but the central Christian conviction is that eternal salvation comes to humans, not through keeping God's laws or through His general merciful disposition if they're kind-hearted, but rather through the death of Christ on the cross to bear the penalty of their sins. That's not a concept any Christian would omit from consideration. But in fairness, Christian readers should probably view this novel, theologically, as a glass that's half full, in that it does engage the reader with thoughts about spiritual issues, taken seriously. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 19, 2023
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Jun 04, 2023
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Mar 19, 2023
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Kindle Edition
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1335418768
| 9781335418760
| 1335418768
| 4.23
| 240
| unknown
| Apr 26, 2022
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it was amazing
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Evangelical Christian author Linda Goodnight is a new writer to my wife Barb and I, but not new to the craft; she's an established Goodreads author wi
Evangelical Christian author Linda Goodnight is a new writer to my wife Barb and I, but not new to the craft; she's an established Goodreads author with 160 distinct works listed on her profile, at least some of them best sellers. This particular novel was newly published early this year; I hardly ever buy new releases, but this was an impulse purchase, picked as a belated (long story!) Christmas present for Barb, on the strength of the cover and a recommendation blurb from a favorite author of ours, Mary Connealy. After reading a ways into it, Barb suggested we read it together, having guessed that it's the sort of book we both like. That guess proved to be right on the mark; we loved it! Our setting here is Oklahoma Territory in 1890. (At that time, the latter territory occupied the western part of the present-day state; the eastern part was the even more scantily-settled and lawless Indian Territory.) The author lives in Oklahoma (so writes about the setting with assurance); according to an online interview with her, this book was inspired by a photograph in the Territorial Museum at Guthrie, showing a lone pioneer woman toting a rifle in front of a tent as she stood guard over her claim in the 1889 Land Rush. Her spirit imbues Willa Malone, our heroine here. 30 years old, Willa sees herself as an "old maid." She's the eldest of three half-sisters, daughters of peripatetic ne'er-do-well Finn Malone, who outlived two wives (and was deserted by a third) in the course of his wanderings, which in 1889 led him to a homestead in the small community of Sweet Clover. Like many of the townsfolk, he was heavily in debt to conniving banker Theodore Pierce, and used his land as collateral. But he's now recently dead, murdered after he took off on his latest quest for gold. At the moment, the farm isn't productive; without him, the sisters won't be able to repay the loan, and they'll lose their home within months. His killer, though, has been identified as notorious outlaw Charlie Bangs, rumored to be hiding out in Indian Territory, and there's a $1,000.00 price on his head. When Willa, early on, conceives the idea of tracking him down and claiming the bounty, nobody can talk her out of it. The idea's not as hare-brained as some folks think. Tough and practical, "tomboy" Willa's a good shot with a rifle whose hunting skills keep her family supplied with meat; she can ride, and she's got guts. As even she recognizes, though, the enterprise she's contemplating is a deadly dangerous one. At the very least, she'll need the services of an experienced trail guide. Enter one Gideon Hartley. Gideon's about 35; he's fairly new in town, but the reputation that precedes him confirms that he's highly competent as a trail guide in rough terrain --when he's sober. But his reputation also suggests (correctly) that he drinks a lot. In fact, his alcohol abuse problem is longstanding and deep-seated. He and Willa meet in Chapter 1. Surprisingly (or maybe not, depending on how familiar readers are with "romance" genre conventions; this was published under the "Love Inspired" imprint, though I approached it as a Western, and it works on those terms) there's some chemistry between them; but neither is looking for that sort of thing, nor inclined to nurture it. More to the point, Willa's not thrilled with the idea of a "drunk" for a guide; and Gideon (who hasn't done any guiding for about a year) is pretty well convinced that he's not up to the job and that Willa would be embarking on a suicide mission anyway. But before long, it becomes clear to her that he's the only prospective guide she's going to get, and to him that she's going whether he goes with her or not. Goodnight gives serious attention to developing her characters (including the secondary ones, along with our H/h) and bringing the community to life, and she takes the time needed to do that in depth. We don't get started on our actual quest until a bit more than 200 pages in (and the book has 363 pages). Some readers, who expect the adventure of the trail to be the main warp and woof of the tale, won't like this aspect. Barb and I, however, fully appreciated the textured, in-depth approach. Both main characters (who alternate as viewpoint characters, though third-person narration is used throughout) are fully round and three-dimensional. Gideon in particular has a lot of psychological baggage, which is believable, and gradually disclosed. Western-style action, once it kicks in, isn't stinted; there are plenty of jeopardies on the trail, and the climactic confrontation will test our leading couple's mettle on more than one level. The author writes very well; her plotting is excellent, and her re-creation of the time and place masterful. (It features a cameo appearance by real-life person Bass Reeves, the first African-American deputy U.S. marshall.) In keeping with the standards of the ECPA, this book poses no content issues for bad language, sexual content (we do have reference to prostitution, and to the ugly trade of sex trafficking, which is a very contemporary reality, but which goes back a lot longer than that), or ultra-gory violence. Christian faith (which both main characters were raised with, though Gideon's faith has been long neglected) plays a positive role here, though the book isn't "preachy" and delivers its spiritual messages by example. I'd recommend this to fans of Westerns, Western romance, and clean (especially Christian) romance in general, as well as to fans of strong heroines. The story arc here is complete, and the book isn't said to be part of a series (though I suspect that both of Willa's sisters might eventually get her own sequel). Although some characters, such as Belle Holbrook, obviously have very intriguing backstories, I couldn't find any indication that they were in prior books by the author. (But if they were, or if they eventually get prequels, I'd be interested in reading those books!) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 18, 2022
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Jul 07, 2022
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Feb 07, 2022
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Paperback
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088394099X
| 9780883940990
| 088394099X
| 4.22
| 9
| Oct 18, 1995
| Mar 18, 2006
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it was amazing
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Debuting in 1925, Lariat Story Magazine wasn't the first of the pulp magazines devoted to Western fiction that graced newsstands in the era between an
Debuting in 1925, Lariat Story Magazine wasn't the first of the pulp magazines devoted to Western fiction that graced newsstands in the era between and just after the World Wars (in one or the other of which many of the authors represented here served). That honor belongs to its rival Western Story Magazine, first published in 1919. But it was apparently one of the most successful and long running, continuing until 1950. During those 25 years, most of the leading writers in the genre had work published in its pages. Contrary to the Goodreads description, not all of the 22 stories, by as many authors, collected in this anthology were first published in the Lariat, though a number of them were. But the others are by authors who contributed to it frequently, or, in the case of the three selections written after its demise, by authors who write very much in the tradition of quality and style that the Lariat exemplified. Editor Jon Tuska (1942-2016) was, among other things, an avid reader/viewer of and well-known authority on Western fiction and films, as well as the literary agent, from 1991 on, for many leading Western-genre writers. He wrote or edited more than 30 books, many of them collections or discussions of Western fiction, or treatments of aspects of the history of the Old West. Here, besides selecting the chronologically arranged stories (just one slightly out of order), he contributed a roughly page-long bio-critical write-up about each of the represented authors, preceding their stories and including a bit of basic information about the selected story itself, such as original publication date and venue. (All of these are as informative and well worth reading.) Also, he provided a 14-page Introduction to the collection as a whole. Most of this is a very detailed summary of the origins of the Western pulp magazine tradition and especially the history of Lariat Western Stories magazine in particular, along with lengthy discussions of the careers of a number of Lariat regular contributors. (Many of the authors and stories referred to are ones I never heard of.) The level of detail here was ultimately eye-glazing; I skipped over a good deal of it, and I think it would mainly be of interest only to very serious genre buffs and academic literature scholars (if any) who don't despise Westerns on principle. But the last couple of pages provide a substantive and insightful discussion of the literary significance of the Western (which Tuska argues is America's only unique contribution to the world's literature), and the reasons for its continuing relevance and appeal. Generally, an anthology this size will contain some stories that don't resonate with me personally. However, every single one of those here were highly rewarding to read (sometimes in different ways). I was struck by the degree of literary quality, emotional impact, concern with genuine moral struggles, and other artistic positives on display here. Character-driven storytelling and realistic, nuanced characterization is the rule. We also have some major characters or even protagonists who are morally gray, and who wrestle with ethical decisions; this adds a significant depth to the reading experience. All the protagonists are male; but strong, capable female major characters with plenty of agency abound. In a number of stories, the plotting includes a strand of clean romance (often quick-developing, but believably so in the contexts presented), and these are always presented in a way that enhances the story. In three cases, the romance is cross-racial/cultural, and this isn't presented as something that's in any way odd or embarrassing; I give the writers high marks for that. The length of the selections varies; several are just 10-12 pages long, while others are at the long end of the "short fiction" continuum. Surprisingly, Louis L'Amour isn't represented here; but otherwise, the included authors seem to be pretty much a roll-call of leading Western writers from ca. 1920-60. (The last story, and one other one, were first published in 1961.) Because I'm not nearly as well read in this genre as in some others, every story here is new to me; and though I recognize a number of the names (being a librarian helps there!), I've only previously read work by four of them. (I'd gladly read more work by all of those represented!) As is often the case with short stories, a number of selections in this collection are hard to comment on in much detail without spoilers. But all the selections are top-notch examples of their type, and reflect well on the genre. The comments below don't touch on all of the stories, but mention some of the ones which stood out the most to me. I did my first actual read of the work of Zane Grey only this past summer, rating his The U.P. Trail at four stars. That work exhibits commendable sympathy with Native Americans in places. He's represented here by the wonderful story "The Great Slave" (1920), set in the world of the Crow and Cree Indians of Western Canada in the late 1700s or early 1800s. His main characters are treated positively, he shows First Nations people to have the same range of moral possibilities as whites, and he depicts their culture (and spirituality) both sympathetically and with accurate detail. Two other stories both by new-to-me authors, "Payroll of the Dead" by Steve Frazee and "The Silent Outcast' by Lauren Paine, focus on situations of whites vs. Native American conflict. Neither writer subscribes to "noble savage" mythology (and both have white viewpoint characters); but both treat their American Indian characters with respect and understanding, rather than demonizing or patronizing them. Interestingly, in introducing Les Savage, Jr., Tuska doesn't mention his corpus of stories about his iconic series character Elgera Douglas (a.k.a. "Senorita Scorpion"). But his story here, "The Beast in Canada Diablo," is likewise set in the Texas-Mexico border country and features Anglo-Hispanic intercultural interaction. It also similarly exhibits his liking for exotic, outre' plot elements (and here, the possibly supernatural --but no spoilers from me!). Emotionally evocative, violent and bloody, but ultimately beautiful, it's gripping from start to finish --a masterpiece! I'd previously read and liked "The Patriarch of Gunsight Flat" by three-time Spur Award winner Wayne D. Overholser. He's represented here by "Stage to Death" (1944), set in Oregon and revolving around a plot to rob a stagecoach. The other writer I'd previously encountered was Lewis B. Patten. My only prior experience with his work was reading his novel Vow of Vengeance, which was underwhelming, getting only two stars from me. But his story here, "Gun This Man Down" (1954), was a definite winner! This and the Overholser story are very different and distinct works; but they both (especially the latter, which has a particularly good use of physical evidence!) incorporate an element of mystery along with six-gun action. Most readers who have any acquaintance with American pulp literature of the period will recognize the name Max Brand. That was the best-known (but far from the only!) pen name used by prolific pulp author Frederick Faust, who would ultimately write some 500 adventure-oriented books, 300 of them Westerns, plus voluminous short fiction. (Given the size of his literary output, it's an anomaly that I'd never read any of his work before; but that's indicative of my relative unfamiliarity with the Western genre.) In 1921, he had been diagnosed with a treatable but incurable heart problem which could have suddenly killed him at any time. Readers will discover that this isn't just a random factoid; it's a central factor in his experience, which will have a big influence on the plot of the selection which represents him here, "Lawman's Heart." (The title has a particularly meaningful punning quality.) All three main characters here are highly nuanced, which adds greatly to the story's impact. I'd also previously heard of Ernest Haycox, and "Stage Station" (which was twice adapted as a film, though neither time under that title) was a great introduction to his work. It stands out particularly for its sympathetically depicted female Hispanic protagonist; and it proved to be an entirely different (in a good way!) type of story than I had expected it to be. "Lawman's Debt" (1934), by Alan Le Maye, is written from the perspective of a callow young bank robber. The story depicts the pursuit of the latter by a renowned but aging sheriff. But the whole situation, and the expectations of both men, is going to be greatly impacted by the sudden breaking of a dam under the pressure of a storm-swollen river; and how events will play out may be surprising. My only quibbles here were with the sheriff's name, "Bat Masters," and the protagonist's impossible feat, which he's looking back on when the story opens, of surprising two bank clerks and single-handedly tying them up. IMO, the lawman's name was too similar to the real-life Bat Masterson's; it had me constantly wondering if we're supposed to see this character as the real-life one (or, perhaps, a facsimile of him), and I think it would have been better to just come up with a more original moniker. And our robber here would have to use both hands to tie knots in a rope, requiring him to set down his gun; but I can't see two other men passively waiting to be tied up if they're not at gunpoint. But these are relatively minor points, which didn't at all keep me from really liking the story. Walt Coburn was actually raised on a working ranch in Montana, where "Riders of the Purple" is set; in describing the rigors of low-tech ranch life, he was writing about a world he knew intimately. Here, he spins a tale of the bonds of friendship and the violent dangers of a largely lawless land, set against the backdrop of the real-life disastrous blizzard-ridden winter of 1886-87 (which I knew about from other sources) and the equally lethal peril of flooding from the melting snows. Born and raised in Texas, Eugene Cunningham was fascinated with and often wrote about the Texas Rangers. His series character Ware (sometimes referred to as "Ware's kid") is a Ranger, and figures here in "The House of Whispering Shadows," set in the southwestern part of the state near the Mexican border, where Anglo and Hispanic cultures interact. Though T. T. Flynn is an author previously unknown to me, I can definitely say that "The Pie River" sets up one of the most emotionally evocative (and wrenching!) premises that I've encountered in fiction, and all three of the main characters are profoundly nuanced. (Note: the titular Pie River plays no role in the tale, save that it takes place in "the Pie River Country;" and as far as I know, the river itself may be a fictional one. It doesn't show up on Google.) Although “The Clown” is the original title that Verne Athenas gave the selection of his work that's included here, it's a misleading one, since the story actually doesn't feature a circus clown, nor really any sort of actual clownish behavior. (The editors at the Saturday Evening Post, when it was published there in 1961, gave it the title “Boy with a Gun,” which is much more accurately descriptive.) Set, judging by its details, probably in the 30s or 40s, it's also not actually a conventional Western as such, more a general fiction, coming-of-age story set in the wilds of the American West. But it's an extremely powerful, even wrenching, story with a very, very good message, and is guaranteed to remain in the reader's consciousness for a long time. Frank Bonham tended to draw his protagonists and plots from other milieus than the typical world of lawmen and ranchers/cowboys, preferring to focus on, for instance, railroad men, lumberjacks, or –as in the story here, “Furnace Flat”-- the borax miners of Death Valley. Peter Dawson's trademark humor is illustrated here by “Colt Cure for Woolly Fever.” (His real name was Jonathan Hurff Glidden, he and Frederick Dilley Glidden, who wrote under the pen name of Luke Short and is represented here by “Brand of Justice,” were brothers.) To comment very briefly about just two other stories, “Stagecoach Pass” by Giff Cheshire is an excellent “humans against nature” yarn. And despite its title, Barry Cord's “The Ghost of Miguel” is not a supernatural ghost story; but it is a great read! :-) These tales are all solid examples of excellent, serious, high-quality storytelling. Given that fact, it's worth noting that editor Tuska frequently, though not always, deliberately chose lesser-known stories here, which had not been included in previous anthologies. That suggests something of the overall quality of the genre itself in the decades from which these examples are drawn! I'd highly recommend this book, both to all Western fans and to short fiction readers in general. ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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not set
not set
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Aug 19, 2023
not set
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Sep 07, 2021
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Hardcover
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1602601429
| 9781602601420
| 1602601429
| 4.28
| 3,005
| Jul 01, 2009
| Jul 01, 2009
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really liked it
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While this book is set in the Rocky Mountains of Montana Territory in 1875-6, and I've shelved it as a Western (mainly to keep it together with the ot
While this book is set in the Rocky Mountains of Montana Territory in 1875-6, and I've shelved it as a Western (mainly to keep it together with the other books of the series), prospective readers would be better advised to think of it instead as historical fiction that looks at farm and community life and marriages in the late 19th-century American West, rather than as an action-oriented Western in the L'Amour or Zane Grey mold. The lead male character's spread could be called a "ranch," and he does run some cattle on it, but their care isn't central to the book; and there's no gun-play, combat, or major physical challenges from the environment, beyond the general ones of low-tech life in a rugged climate and terrain. (This is the first book I've read by the author that didn't land a spot on my "action heroines" shelf.) Our story opens with 18-year-old Cassie Griffin a pregnant, brand-new widow in Divide, Montana, a typical small frontier settlement of that day. Born and raised back East, her parents had serious money; but she was orphaned at 12, and left to the dubious guardianship of her late mother's unwisely-trusted business manager, Lester "Griff" Griffin. He married Cassie when she was 15, to cover and further enable his appropriation of her money for his use (the laws of that time pretty much handed over married women's property to their husbands). A physically, verbally and emotionally abusive tyrant, he brainwashed Cassie to see herself as stupid, worthless and needing his male "discipline" and tutelage to mold her into what she be "should" be (i.e., sort of a 19th-century version of a Stepford wife). Coming West was his idea, and he sunk all of her inheritance into a large ranch and huge house, complete with opulent life style, that he was too lazy and incompetent to maintain; and his death left her saddled with a mountain of debt. (We learn much of this information only gradually, but it's helpful and not really a spoiler to be aware of it now.) Young small-scale rancher and lay preacher Red Dawson (his real name is Fitzgerald O'Neill Dawson, but even his mom called him "Red") supplements his income with numerous odd jobs in Divide, including gravedigging --we meet him early on as he's preparing Griff's resting place. He's always admired the attractive Cassie from afar, and felt guilty about it because of her married status. But her status now is single --and women are scarce in Divide, and single women scarcer. Most of the community's single males are prepared to demand that she choose one of them as a second husband as soon as the earth is tamped on the first one's grave; and the one most likely to be able to enforce his demand by brute force is powerful widowed rancher kingpin Mort Sawyer (though what he really wants is the water rights on Griff's claim). While I realize the strong pressures that existed for young widows in the West to remarry, I do think that the kind of scene Connealy depicts after Griff's burial is unrealistically exaggerated, and probably would not have happened in real life. But it does set a stage for Red to feel justified in offering himself to Cassie as a better alternative, and for her to feel justified in accepting. (Forced marital rape is NOT part of this scenario; he has no intention of demanding conjugal rights!) The main body of the novel is the story of the first several months of this couple's marriage, the growth and development of their relationship, the birth of their child (okay, the baby doesn't have Red's genes, but that doesn't mean that he can't truly be the dad!) and most importantly Cassie's psychological journey from the awful starting place Griff put her in to a state of confident and responsible personhood, as an adult member of the human race with rights and value equal to anyone else's. That's also partly a spiritual journey. Red had misgivings about marrying Cassie because he assumed she was a nonbeliever, since the Griffins didn't attend church. That was Griff's decision, not Cassie's; she was raised as a Christian and has a Christian-influenced view of the world, but not a vital personal trust in God. Learning to rely on a loving and forgiving God who values her for who she is helps to enable her personal growth, as does a developing love relationship with a spouse whose view of marriage is considerably more equalitarian than she's used to, and who wants an equal partner who speaks her mind, not a slave who takes orders. This book, of course, is marketed as a "romance," and can fairly be called one. I often say I'm not a "romance" fan; but what I'm not a fan of is excessive, navel-gazing and daisy-petal-pulling romantic angst, explicit sex, the "Her bones melted at his touch!" school of over-blown and overheated prose, and plots in which romance swallows up every other element of the story. This book, in my estimation, doesn't have any of that; it's descriptive historical fiction in which a healthy and loving relationship can be a wholesome and rewarding part of life (and of a book), just as it can be in the real world, and I approached and appreciated it that way. Connealy develops her characters very vividly and roundly, so that we get to know them deeply and care about them; she writes very well, and tells an involving story; she creates a realistic (in the main) picture of the time and place which transports us to it, and she leavens the work with her characteristic humor, even though the tale and the author's messages are serious. More so than in her other books that I've read, a Christian message is prominent here. As noted above, Red's a preacher; faith is important to him, and comes to be to Cassie, and she's not the only character here who's on a spiritual journey. I'd say the book is probably intended primarily to appeal to Christian readers. But it has nothing to offend readers of other faiths, or no faith; readers of that description, except for those actively hostile to religion and believers, who like clean romances and/or historical fiction, IMO, could appreciate and enjoy it as well (and might find it an interesting window into the Christian faith, just as, for example, non-Jewish readers find Chaim Potok's The Chosen a window into the world of Judaism). Although this is the opening book of the Montana Marriages trilogy, it was the third volume that I read; Barb and I read the series in reverse order (long story!), and had also encountered some of the characters in our reading of another trilogy by the author set a few years later. This had both pluses and minuses; and the author certainly intended the books to be read in order, to allow character arcs to be appreciated and to prevent significant plot spoilers. But I'm not as concerned about the latter point as many readers are; and to me it was much like reading a prequel. Barb commented that she was glad we read the books out of order, because one character we liked in the other two would have been much harder to warm to if we'd first met the person here. I had to agree; and I'd also say that the way one subplot is left here would be very unsatisfying and even depressing without a knowledge of events in the second book. But that's just the personal reaction of a couple of readers! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 25, 2020
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Jan 17, 2021
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Jul 25, 2020
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Paperback
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B0DM25BHHM
| 4.60
| 144
| unknown
| Feb 26, 2020
|
it was amazing
|
Like "Franklin W. Dixon" and "Carolyn Keene," "A. W. Hart" is the house pen name assigned by the publisher to all the various authors of individual bo
Like "Franklin W. Dixon" and "Carolyn Keene," "A. W. Hart" is the house pen name assigned by the publisher to all the various authors of individual books in the series of which this novel is the seventh installment. In this case, though, A. W. is actually my Goodreads friend Charles Gramlich (that's no secret; he's credited in the "About the Author" note at the book's end). Although I'd read and liked a couple of his short e-stories previously, I'd never tried any of his long fiction. So, when I saw this novel mentioned in one of his blog posts last year, I was intrigued enough to buy a copy. (Barb and I read it together, since she's an avid Western fan, and I knew this would be right up her alley.) In choosing to read this installment by itself, I guessed correctly that it can be treated as a standalone. The series premise is explained in passing near the beginning, without needing any burdensome long exposition. Just after the end of the Civil War, then 16-year-old twins George Washington (nicknamed "Reno") and Sara Bass were orphaned when a band of renegade ex-Confederate soldiers raided the family's Kansas farm and brutally slaughtered their parents and siblings. The twins' father, a Lutheran pastor as well as a homesteader, had brought the two up as Christians familiar with the Bible, and also trained them both to handle firearms very capably. He lived long enough after the attack to charge his two surviving kids (they'd been out on the prairie when the raiders struck) to avenge the outrage, and to rid the world of murdering evildoers. After serving justice on their family's killers in the series opener, they went on to become successful bounty hunters, despite their youth, with their ensuing adventures in the subsequent books each apparently episodic and self-contained (so the series doesn't have to be read in order). We're not given an exact date for the events of this installment, but I'd guess it to be roughly 1867, and the twins' age by now to be about 18. Our setting here is western Missouri and the Arkansas Ozarks, a region genre fans might not associate with Westerns; but in fact, in real life, this area was as much a frontier as the contiguous Kansas and Indian Territory countryside, there was a lot of movement and economic interchange across the state lines, and lifestyles and attitudes didn't differ much on either the western or eastern sides. The tale begins in medias res, with our Avenging Angels stealthily closing in on the camp of a band of train robbers. Early on, one of these outlaws will drop the name of Rev. Eli Cable. He's an apparently mesmerizing and charismatic preacher who's building his own settlement, New Kingdom, in the Ozarks --and who may or may not be the mastermind behind this train robbery. It's up to our hero/heroine to find out the truth about that; and naturally, it won't be a simple matter of just riding up to his door and asking him. This is a well-plotted, ably written novel, with a fast pace and a lot of action. (There's no "pornography of violence," but the body count is high, and gun/knife fight scenes, etc. are described simply and straightforwardly.) Some factors give the book a bit more depth than run-of-the-mill Westerns. Eli Cable is a highly complex character; the author looks realistically at the hatreds and grievances left on both sides in the aftermath of America's bloodiest war, in an area where the fighting was often up-close and personal guerilla war, without justifying hatred or demonizing all ex-Confederates; and the faith of some of the main characters gives a spiritual dimension to the story. (Gramlich himself isn't necessarily a Christian now, but he was raised as a Roman Catholic and treats faith sympathetically; the book, and evidently the series as a whole, is Christian-friendly.) What we would today call post-traumatic stress disorder also gets some scrutiny. Besides the Western elements, elements of the mystery genre are also deftly incorporated. Bad language is very minimal; and though there's mention of rape and prostitution, there's no sex as such. (Reno's faithfully given his heart to a young lady back home in Kansas.) My impression of series written by multiple authors is that the main characters can tend to be drawn quite blandly, with a minimal profile that's not expanded on, so as not to confuse new-to-the-series writers. (After well over 100 books, for instance, all we really know about the Hardy boys is that Frank's blonde and Joe's dark-haired. :-) ) Here, though, both the Bass siblings come across as three-dimensional characters whom we do get to know as persons, not as stock roles; and while they're twins, they're not clones of each other. In this particular episode, the demands of the plot give Reno more "screen time" in the middle chapters that make up the longest part of the book; he'd have to be described as the main character. But Sara's role isn't negligible; she's a full (and lethal) participant in the many fight scenes, recognized by Reno as smarter and deadlier than he is, and I'd also judge her to be faster and more adept with a pistol than he is (though she admits he's better at handling a long gun). Both are likable, but she comes across as the more reserved of the two, and also as the one who still has the most anger over the tragic fate of their family. This would be a quick read if you had a normal amount of time for reading (with our "car books," of course, Barb and I don't, hence the long time it took us!), and I think most genre fans would find it enough of a page-turner to make their reading sessions as long as possible. I'm not looking to get drawn into another long series right now, and investigated this volume only because I know the author (electronically); but it made enough of a favorable impression that, if I had handy access to other books in the series, I'd definitely check them out too! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 04, 2021
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Mar 13, 2022
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Mar 21, 2020
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||||
1602601437
| 9781602601437
| 1602601437
| 4.34
| 2,203
| Jan 01, 2010
| Jan 01, 2010
|
really liked it
|
The started and finished dates on this second installment of the author's Montana Marriages series are misleading; Barb and I read it as a "car book,"
The started and finished dates on this second installment of the author's Montana Marriages series are misleading; Barb and I read it as a "car book," one which I read aloud to her when we were in the car, and the circumstances this year with the pandemic greatly cut down our car travel. Like all of Connealy's books, this has a strong narrative drive and quick-flowing prose; the average reader would finish it in days, not months! As the series title suggests, the principal setting here is Montana: the harsh, unforgiving wilderness of the Rocky Mountains in 1876. Our story opens with protagonist Belle, newly widowed for the third time, and her four daughters --the oldest a teen, the youngest still nursing-- gathered at the titular "Husband Tree," the tree around which the graves of her husbands are sited, for the unceremonious and not particularly grief-stricken burial of the latest. Belle's a cattle rancher --not a "rancher's wife," but a rancher in her own right, because her husbands have been a worthless lot, and the considerable success of the ranch has been due to her smarts and hard work. None of her marriages have really been love matches, though when she married William at 15 (she's in her early 30s now), she thought she was in love; the unions have mostly been dictated by the economic necessities of life for women in that time and place, a constrained environment that Connealy explains very well. But she's resolved not to marry again; a succession of lazy, incompetent, abusive and/or drunken louts have given her a jaundiced view of the institution, and a hefty strain of misandry in her outlook, which she's passed to her older girls. (The husbands all died in genuine accidents, however --a circumstance not as unusual then as it would be now, because the conditions of ranch life were highly dangerous for anybody, and more so for the stupid and/or intoxicated.) Now, though, she soon finds that unforeseen but believable circumstances are forcing her into a late-season drive of much of her stock over a very rough stretch of mountainous terrain to market in Helena. Her three older daughters can acquit themselves as well as drovers as any boys their age could, and better; but she's still facing the unwelcome necessity of hiring some male help. Early on, we take a quick side tour into New Mexico Territory, a bit before husband #3's demise, to meet Silas Harden, a cowboy about Belle's age, who has some emotional baggage of his own, some of which we learn about only gradually. (Though it won't hurt to disclose that he was raised in a brothel, where his mother worked.) By application of hard work and good character, he's acquired a small spread of his own, and hopes to make a success of it; but there are some scheming brains in his locality that have other plans. Despite the geographic distance involved, readers will instantly suspect (so it's no spoiler to disclose!) that circumstances will quickly bring him to Montana. Barb and I read the third book of the trilogy before this one (long story!), and had in fact already encountered some of the characters here in reading another later trilogy by the author, so we knew where the plot was going. When I mentioned that fact in a conversation with my oldest daughter, she replied that she hadn't read the later books, but also knew where it was going. :-) It's true that, as a romance, this has some predictability. But the psychological realism of the appealing characters, and the issues they have to work through, make the tale worthwhile anyway. (In some romances, communication problems have a strained quality, but they're credible here, IMO.) While the main plot here is pretty linear, a subplot is also present (though it doesn't occupy a very big proportion of the book) involving local rancher's son Wade Sawyer and Glowing Sun, a young white woman raised by the Salish ("Flathead") Indians, who will take center stage in the next book, Wildflower Bride. The handling of this plot, though, actually helped to drag the rating down by a star, because I felt it to be inconsistent with the characterizations in the later book. There's an insta-love vibe here that's not present in the third book; Glowing Sun's English skills are much better (and were said to be better to start with, even before she met Wade) there than here, and her character is just better developed, more appealing and more believable in the third book. (Ironically, I might have rated this book higher if I'd read the books in order!) Although I shelved this book on my Action Heroines shelf and counted it for a challenge in the Action Heroine Fans group, it has to be said that the actual action content here is relatively scanty. Belle wears a Colt and knows how to use it, just as any male rancher would. She and her daughters do have to meet back-breaking and dangerous physical challenges on a grueling cattle drive, dealing with longhorn cattle that can't really be described as "tame;" they're tough females bred in a tough land, and able to face it on its own terms, and the two older girls can handle long guns. But the only time any of the females here have to shoot is close to the end, when there's a winter-time confrontation with a hungry wolf pack. That's an exciting passage, but not a large part of the text. (To avoid spoilers, I won't share the respective score cards for Cowgirls vs. Wolves; but as I said, I did encounter some characters here in later books. :-) ). It also has to be said that Connealy could use a gift copy of Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf: The Amazing True Story of Life Among Arctic Wolves. She obviously honestly believes it's credible that non-rabid wolves would attack human beings without provocation, but I don't personally believe that it is. (Attacking cattle or horses, of course, would be a different story.) Finally, we have more than one romance here (well, more than two, if we count the subplot), and it raises issues. The "insta-love" charge some readers might bring actually isn't as damning as it seems just going by the time factor, because some circumstances can bring people together, and reveal their mettle, very deeply even in a relatively short time. What might disturb some readers more is that a romance between two teens (a male aged 16 and a 15-year-old female very close to 16) results in marriage. (Pregnancy is not involved.) Under present-day cultural conditions, I would oppose underage marriage, and support legal bans on it. However, the cultural conditions of the 1876 frontier were significantly different, and my personal assessments of the character's actions and their appropriateness differs with it. These teens are substantially more like adults than most modern teens (and than many modern adults!); they're socialized to be more aware of and settled in what they want from life than their modern contemporaries would be, and postponing family formation for secondary and higher education isn't a feasible option in their world, nor something they're interested in. Personally, I wished them well in their life together. A Christian believer herself, Connealy depicts characters who are sincerely Christian, though not necessarily wearing their faith on their sleeve; she's sympathetic to the role it plays in their lives, but doesn't expound on it at length. The novel is free from bad language or graphic sexual content, and is an absorbing tale leavened with the author's trademark wry humor. I'd recommend it to fans (both Christians and non-Christians) of clean romance and relatively non-violent Westerns. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 2020
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Jul 25, 2020
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Jan 12, 2020
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Paperback
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1602601445
| 9781602601444
| 1602601445
| 4.13
| 1,459
| May 01, 2010
| May 01, 2010
|
it was amazing
|
Barb and I discovered evangelical Christian author Mary Connealy through her Sophie's Daughters trilogy, partially set in Montana in the years from 18
Barb and I discovered evangelical Christian author Mary Connealy through her Sophie's Daughters trilogy, partially set in Montana in the years from 1878 to 1884. Several characters who figure in her earlier Montana Marriages trilogy, of which this novel is the third, also play important roles in the later one. So we were interested in their back stories; and when I found this book in a thrift store, it was a natural purchase! (We've also just started reading the second installment; long story!) This means we're reading the trilogy in reverse order; so we started with much more knowledge of the characters' future than the original readers would have (the read was more like a visit with old friends). However, I'll avoid spoilers in this review. (Obviously, though, it might contain "spoilers" for the earlier Montana Marriages novels.) This tale opens in late spring/early summer, 1877, as young Wade Sawyer is awakened by gunfire as he's sleeping in his small cabin high in the Montana Rockies. The shots come from the nearby small Indian village, which is being massacred by four masked whites. Arriving too late to prevent the deaths of most of the inhabitants, Wade manages to wound one of the fleeing murderers, and finds Glowing Sun, a young woman raised for the past dozen years by the Salish (called Flathead by the whites), ever since they found her alone at about the age of eight after disease killed her white family, still alive. (One of the killers had tried to abduct her, but she slashed his face with her knife and escaped.) Her white name, as she recalls, is Abby, and she and Wade have met previously (as recounted, apparently, earlier in the trilogy), last fall --and were in fact attracted to each other; but she had an Indian fiance at the time, through an arranged engagement. He's now dead; and when she's cast out by a surviving matriarch who never liked her (and who blames her for attracting the massacre, assuming that the attackers' motive was rape), she's left alone in the world again. Soon after, Wade's summoned to the bedside of his estranged rancher father, injured and maybe dying; and since he won't desert Abby, and she believes responding to the summons is his duty, she comes along with him. Like all Connealy novels, this is a clean "romance" (in the modern-day book trade sense); but it has more going for it than romance (otherwise, I wouldn't have read and liked it!). For one thing, it's a perceptive exploration of cross-cultural romance, of the specific clashing cultures of whites and Indians in the late 19th-century West, and an ethically-aware indictment of the former's treatment of the latter. (Abby doesn't have much use for the attitudes and practices of a white culture she's mostly long abandoned, though she hasn't forgotten the language, and a lot of her criticisms strike home.) It's also a hard look at the dynamics of a dysfunctional, abusive family --because Wade's estranged from his dad for good reason!-- at co-dependency and how insidious it can be, and what does (or doesn't) contribute to familial healing. There's also a decided helping of Western-style mystery, because there's intrigue afoot on the Sawyer ranch. Who's behind the outbreak of cattle rustling in the area? And who were the attackers of Abby's village, and what was their real motive? Connealy's a Christian author, whose world-view influences her writing. Christian characters are common in her novels (Red Dawson, a supporting character here, is a lay preacher as well as a rancher). Wade has a sincere Christian faith, as does Abby, fostered in her case by the missionary activity of real-life Jesuit Pierre-Jean De Smet (1801-1873) and his colleagues, who really did have considerable success in their work among the Salish, and whose treatment here is very positive. (The author's approach to Christian faith is --commendably, IMO-- nondenominational, though sectarian rivalries and animosities weren't nonexistent in the real 19th-century West.) It's seen here as a genuine source of moral reformation, courage in adversity, and guidance and help in daily life; but though it's referred to more here than in the later trilogy, I wouldn't describe this one as "preachy." Christian ethics, with its basis in the love commands, also raises a serious issue for reflection, when it needs to be lived out in a violent environment, among people some of whom are perfectly willing to kill you, and others, to get things they want. Wade wrestles with this some, as does Abby --in fact, more so, since while Wade wears a gun and can use it, she's considerably more combat capable than he is. (She's also a stronger-willed personality than he is, and the more dominant partner in the relationship --okay, that word's not a spoiler, any reader knows these two are destined for each other!-- and Wade's willing to recognize that there's nothing wrong with that.) While she's not into guns (though if she slugs you in the head with one, you won't get up for awhile), she's handy with her knife, and it doesn't leave her person --unless she needs to throw it. Her personality could best be described as hot-tempered and fierce. The conclusion she comes to is that forcibly defending yourself and others IS morally right, but relishing the damage done isn't; and she's honest enough to admit that she needs to work on her attitude in that area. So when the chips are down here, the main question may not be, will our hero rescue the damsel in distress? Given their respective skill sets, it might be, will our tough damsel rescue her guy in distress? :-) ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Nov 05, 2019
not set
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Feb 2020
not set
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Sep 05, 2019
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
160260147X
| 9781602601475
| 160260147X
| 4.29
| 1,821
| Sep 10, 2010
| Oct 01, 2010
|
it was amazing
|
This novel is the second one in Connealy's Sophie's Daughters trilogy, focusing on the McClellan family's third daughter Sally, who was only 15 when t
This novel is the second one in Connealy's Sophie's Daughters trilogy, focusing on the McClellan family's third daughter Sally, who was only 15 when the previous book, Doctor in Petticoats, began. At the beginning of this one, in 1882, she's 18, and has traveled to Montana territory, along with a party headed up by a cavalry colonel (introduced in the first book) who's a friend of the family, to visit her married sister Mandy, who's now pregnant with her third child, and close to delivery. Except for the fact that this book is entirely set in Montana, most of the general comments I made in my review of the first one (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ) about the author's style and literary vision would apply here as well; and here too, as in the first one, Mandy and her situation shares the spotlight, that narrative thread alternating with Sally's. A comment I could also have added about the first one, but forgot to, is that Connealy's style includes a vein of dry and sometimes sardonic humor, which gives the tale a pleasant leavening and can sometimes relieve tensions. There's also somewhat more Western action here than in the first book, starting with a bloody gun battle just a few pages in. Sally's the toughest tomboy of her cattle-ranching family, a persona she developed early, in a futile attempt to get the love of her birth father, who wanted a son and only had daughters. Her stepfather, the man the girls think of as "Pa," never had that attitude; but Sally's behavior pattern, and visceral concern about not being loved if she fell short as a tough cowhand, was already set. Unlike her sisters, she carries it to the point of hiding and being somewhat ashamed of her femininity --she likes wearing a pink ribbon, for instance, but she wears it under her cowboy attire. :-) To Connealy's credit, she embeds some serious thought and life lessons in her story (as a natural part of the narrative, not blocs of sermonizing) about the value of being true to who you are as a person, and a recognition that female strength and can-do capability is a good thing, but that it doesn't at all preclude femininity. She also bends and challenges gender role stereotypes, not only through Sally as a character, but through city-bred artist Logan McKenzie, who's far from most Westerner's idea of "proper" masculinity. It won't be too much of a spoiler to observe that this novel also provides an example of a romantic attraction of opposites, who have in many ways different personalities and attitudes, but who can forge a mutually rewarding love relationship rooted in mutual respect and appreciation for who each of them are. Bottom line, this was an excellent continuation of the trilogy. Barb and I both gave it high marks! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 04, 2019
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Sep 28, 2019
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Feb 14, 2019
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
1602601461
| 9781602601468
| 1602601461
| 4.28
| 2,479
| 2010
| Jul 01, 2010
|
it was amazing
|
Note: I don't recommend reading the Goodreads description for this book, because it gives away far too much information that the average reader would
Note: I don't recommend reading the Goodreads description for this book, because it gives away far too much information that the average reader would prefer to encounter sequentially on his/her own (and is written in such a way as to create a somewhat false impression on one point). Although I'm a Goodreads librarian, I can't edit it (even to correct a typo), because Connealy is a Goodreads author. Last year, the third book of this trilogy, dealing with three young women making their way in the late 19th-century American West, was a thrift-store discovery as a gift for my wife; I'd assumed that since each of the three novels focused on a different sister, they'd be readable as stand-alones. But when we started it, we quickly discovered that it presupposes considerable entwined back-story from the earlier books; the siblings' lives intersected as part of a close-knit family, and we decided we really needed to read the trilogy as a whole, in order. (As it turns out, the young ladies' mother, Sophie McClellan, is the heroine of Petticoat Ranch, the opener of an earlier series by Connealy; and some characters from a book in still another of her series, The Husband Tree, also play a role here. We didn't deem it necessary to read those first; but we definitely do want to do so eventually!) This series opener is set in West Texas, New Mexico, and Montana in 1878-1880 (the date on the first page says 1879, but the reference to "two years" near the end suggests that 1878 was meant). It opens with heroine Beth McClellan traveling by stagecoach back to her parent's ranch, hoping to arrive in time for her older sister's wedding. Gifted with an interest in and knack for healing, she's now finished her nursing studies in Boston. (Despite the book's title, she's not a physician as such; but she is trained as what we would today call a nurse practitioner. She and the doctor who trained her knew she'd be the only health care professional in her community, and she's equipped with a skill set appropriate to that situation, having even performed surgeries on occasion.) Not far into the book, the stagecoach winds up in serious jeopardy; but luckily, Beth's no shrinking violet. Though she'd rather heal injuries than have to inflict them, she packs a Colt and knows how to use it (she can handle a rifle as well); she's strong, athletic, courageous and tough-minded, good with horses --having been raised on a ranch-- and knows how to throw a punch when she needs to. These are qualities her mother and her two oldest sisters fully share. ("I like to include tough women in my books, in case you haven't noticed," Connealy comments in her dedication. "I like to think I've raised four tough women.") Evangelical author Connealy hasn't written a preachy book, but she depicts characters who have a strong Christian faith, who pray for strength and help in time of trouble, and who have a moral compass informed by Christian ethics. She creates very believable, well-drawn round characters who come fully alive for the reader and evoke strong liking or strong detestation, as appropriate; but even the unsympathetic characters are mostly drawn with a certain complexity, not just as cartoon villains. In keeping with this, she's aware that what makes a person heroic is more than what he or she can do physically --that it has more to do with the qualities of inner character. Clean romance forms a key part of the plot here, and the circumstances are unusual, but not impossible. But romance doesn't swallow up the entire book (and there's very little in the way of what romance-phobic readers might call "mushy" parts). Two interlocking plot strands, Beth's and older sister Mandy's, both character-driven, are woven skillfully together. Action elements don't dominate the book, but they're there. There are also some serious themes and issues brought out here, that continue to be relevant today. (The omnibus edition of the trilogy which Barb and I are reading includes 11 discussion questions for use by reading groups, which I think would be a helpful feature, though I didn't consider them in detail.) There are a few nits that can be picked here. At one point, hero Alex has to remove a bullet from a wound --even though there's an exit wound. We have a couple of references to "President Arthur," but when this book is set, Rutherford B. Hayes was President. I'm not sure how solid Connealy's grasp is of the history of specific Indian vs. cavalry battles she refers to; and her prose sometimes can be repetitious, using words or names several times close together. But those are relatively trivial points. This was a first-class read for both Barb and I, and Connealy is an author whom I expect will become a favorite. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 2019
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Aug 2019
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Jan 22, 2019
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
1602601488
| 9781602601482
| 1602601488
| 4.31
| 1,658
| Jan 01, 2011
| Jan 01, 2011
|
it was amazing
|
With this novel, set in Montana like the preceding one, Connealy brings her saga of the fortunes of the three oldest McClellan daughters to a satisfyi
With this novel, set in Montana like the preceding one, Connealy brings her saga of the fortunes of the three oldest McClellan daughters to a satisfying close. This time, the focus will be solidly on the eldest, Mandy McClellan Gray, whose story has also been a major strand in the two novels featuring her sisters. This review won't contain any spoilers for the plot here, but readers should be warned that it presupposes a knowledge of the previous two books, and will give away some plot details of those. (The trilogy is definitely best read in order, and I'm assuming that most readers interested in this review will have already read the other books, if they're going to.) Our story here opens in August, 1884, about two years after the events of Wrangler in Petticoats. We find that significant changes have taken place in the interval; and since the author brings us into the action en media res, it takes awhile to get up to speed. To summarize, though, Mandy's worthless husband Sidney --okay, financially he was worth quite a bit, since a gold strike had made him wealthy, but he was pretty worthless as a husband and a person-- has been murdered some time ago by the outlaw Cooter brothers, Cord and Fergus, whom we met in the second book. A Cooter was killed in the fighting with Sidney's guards, and the two brothers have enlisted a number of the shadier members of their clan to join them in a blood feud with the surviving Grays: Mandy and her three small kids. She's pretty much besieged in Gray Tower, her late husband's isolated mountain mansion; but since the place is an inaccessible natural fortress and she has the protection of the local Shoshone Indians, they haven't tried frontal assault. They'd like to get their hands on Sidney's gold mine (and so would Mandy!), but he never divulged where it was, and the enigmatic directions he left are tied to a seasonal celestial star pattern. Mandy's cut herself totally off from her close-knit family and friends to prevent them from being hurt or killed. But now, bachelor rancher Tom Linscott, who's carried a torch for Mandy ever since they met in the first book, is climbing a cliff face to invade her fortress (remember, "inaccessible" :-) ), resolved to insist she come home with him to his protection, and not about to take "no" for an answer. Tom's definitely an "alpha male" type (his sister describes him with the adjectives "stubborn, know-it-all"), and he has the common 19th-century cultural idea that the male should be the head of the house; but he's also in love with an alpha female, who's actually even more combat-capable than he is, and he has enough decency and common sense to recognize and accept this, and to realize that he can't expect to boss her around like a dictator. He's prepared to insist on his own way in rare extreme cases where it's in Mandy's best interests for him to insist --but even there, he knows he'll only get compliance if she basically wants to comply; and in practice he's willing to be more of a partner than a boss. For her part, Mandy has a challenge to grow enough to realize that it's not weakness to let someone who loves you share your danger and fight beside you to protect you. She also comes to realize that it's easier to accept leadership (which she also theoretically believes belongs to the husband; she grew up in the same culture Tom did) from someone when you respect him --but that respect has to be earned, and it can't be earned by somebody who, like Sidney, expects you to suppress your own identity and needs just to fit his wants. These kinds of attitudes tend to be modeled in most of the marriage relationships in this novel, and in the trilogy generally; the wives aren't doormats and not blindly "inclined toward obedience" for its own sake, and (like Tom) they'll insist on their own way when they know that it's best in the situation, and that deep down their husbands know it is too. Whether they (and Connealy) formally incorporate it in their theology or not, they embody the practice of equalitarian "mutual subjection" in marriage; and that's a good message for a novel by an evangelical author. Questions about the use of defensive violence and lethal force in a very flawed and dangerous world are also a significant theme here more than in the other two novels (though it came up in the second one --which has more actual violence than this one does). All of the adult McClellans are proficient with guns, and use them for hunting and dealing with wolves that prey on livestock, as well as occasionally for defense against other people. But Mandy's always been the fastest and most accurate shot with a rifle of any of the siblings in the family, with a skill that's almost preternatural; and she has a calm, icy cold collectedness in a crisis that stands her in good stead, but which scares her. Raised as a (more than nominal) Christian, like all of her family, she's well read in the KIng James Bible (in the 19th-century, virtually the only Bible Protestants had), and its dictum "Thou shalt not kill" tortures her with guilt, since she actually did kill a Cooter in self-defense on one occasion after Sidney's death. ("Thou shalt not murder" is a more accurate translation; but like most Western women, Mandy isn't a Hebrew scholar.) The book inherently raises the question of whether that angst is justified, and if it isn't, how far can legitimate self-defense be carried (even to taking the tactical offensive?). Connealy doesn't really resolve this neatly. (All three of these novels have discussion questions at the end for book clubs who might read the books, or perhaps just for lone readers who might want to reflect; the ones here don't address these issues directly, but they could come up in responding to a couple of them.) All of the stylistic characteristics of the first two novels are in evidence here, and Connealy's story-telling skills are again well demonstrated. The characterizations are vivid, rounded, and (except for the Cooters) appealing. (Several of them are cross-overs from other Connealy works, her Montana Marriages and Lassoed in Texas trilogies.) Barb and I really liked all three of the books, and this author's well on her way to becoming a favorite! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 28, 2019
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Nov 03, 2019
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Dec 26, 2018
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
0553804529
| 9780553804522
| 0553804529
| 4.32
| 647
| Oct 07, 2008
| Oct 25, 2005
|
it was amazing
|
Note, Dec. 31, 2018: In keeping with my usual practice with short story collections that I read in bits and pieces, intermittently between other books
Note, Dec. 31, 2018: In keeping with my usual practice with short story collections that I read in bits and pieces, intermittently between other books, I started this review some time ago, after my first stint in reading these stories (in which I read the first ten of the 28, plus "A Gun for Kilkenny"). However, I forgot to date that first installment. I also failed to add an installment after the second stint (long story!). I've now finished the book; so I've decided to rework the part of the review I'd written earlier, and just make this a unified review of the whole thing. (Aapologies to any readers who "liked" the review earlier --hopefully, the changes won't prompt anyone to "unlike" it!) This is the third and final volume of L'Amour's collected Western short stories (I'm treating the collection as a single, three-volume book, though Goodreads doesn't have a unified entry for it). L'Amour's prose style and literary quality are highly consistent, and the basic characteristics of the stories here are much the same as in the preceding volumes; so many of the general comments made in my reviews of those would also apply here. Hostile critics, in order to find an accusation against L'Amour, would be most apt to charge him with "predictability." To a degree, the general outlines of his plots do tend to be predictable, in the sense that good will triumph, reflecting a way of looking at the universe that's morally optimistic. (Nonetheless, he can pull some genuine surprises out of the hat in places, in the details of his plotting, though they fit into the story organically without being dragged in.) To my mind, this isn't necessarily a literary fault, and moral pessimism isn't a plus. (In a very real way, despite the frequent violence in the stories and the way they recognize and depict the great depths of callous evil that humans are capable of, these tales can qualify as comfort reads.) But L'Amour's characterizations of people are nuanced, not always drawn in stark shades of black and white. For instance, reflecting the historical realities of late 19th-century Western life, he's well aware that "outlaws" aren't necessarily incarnations of evil --and may in fact be principled men (he doesn't depict any female outlaws) with a certain moral code, and capable of selfless behavior in some situations. That adds a dimension of literary quality to the tales that I find appealing. And while these aren't mysteries as such (L'Amour did some writing in that genre, however, such as the stories collected in The Hills of Homicide), these tales often involve mysterious secrets that take detecting to ferret out, adding to their complexity and suspense. The stories featuring Texas Ranger Chick Bowdrie were apparently all grouped in Volume 2; none of those here is an overt Bowdrie story, though from the description of the unnamed Ranger just referred to as "Sonora" in "The Guns Talk Loud," he could be Bowdrie. Besides the story I named in the first paragraph, though, some other selections also feature the restless gunfighter Kilkenny, who emerges as another L'Amour series character here. (Besides the works here, the author wrote three Kilkenny novels, and now I'm interested in reading them!) Because of their similar quality, it's hard to pick just one or two favorites among the tales. "In Victorio's Country" would probably rank as one of the most thought-provoking, however. I'd say that my favorite among the heroines here is probably Clarabel Jornal in "Pardner from the Rio" --but they're all admirable, and so are the heroes. In all, I think my appreciation of this volume, and of the whole three-volume book, would have been even better if I'd read it continuously, one volume after the other, without other books interspersed, and without long intervals between the volumes that stretched the read out over three years. (This was particularly true here, where I had to leave the novella-length Monument Rock in the middle last summer, and ultimately reread it from the beginning because I wasn't sure where I'd left off.). But even with the disjointed reading, this was an outstanding read! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Dec 29, 2018
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Oct 20, 2017
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Hardcover
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1602607958
| 9781602607958
| 1602607958
| 4.25
| 374
| unknown
| Jun 01, 2010
|
it was amazing
|
Barb and I finished our reading of Davis' Ladies Shooting Club trilogy with this book, having started it with the third book (long story!). I'd recomm
Barb and I finished our reading of Davis' Ladies Shooting Club trilogy with this book, having started it with the third book (long story!). I'd recommend reading the books in order, so as to learn some plot developments in the sequence that the author intended; but having read the third book out of order didn't really impair our enjoyment, and actually gave us an at times enjoyable "inside" perspective. :-) Davis brings her imaginary small frontier community of Fergus, Idaho to very realistic, vivid life; by the time we've followed a couple of years of their lives through all three books, we've gotten to know a number of the townspeople, most of whom we like and care about, so that the read is, as Barb said, "like spending time with old friends." (The main characters in this novel are also characters in the other two, and vice versa, and a number of other townsfolk play roles or are referred to in all three books as well.) This effect is one I haven't often experienced in books; it requires the extended immersion that can only be achieved with a series, but it also requires a deft hand at winsome characterization and skillful, involving storytelling on the author's part. (And Davis delivers.) Most of my general comments about the other books would apply to this one as well; the author's style is very consistent. There is perhaps more traditional Western-style gun-play here than in the other two novels, but it clusters in small parts of the text overall, and the main stress of the book is on the exploration of human relationships --not necessarily romantic ones, but family relationships and both male and female friendship as well-- the unraveling of a mystery to which we're introduced in the first chapter, but which involves secrets that will take quite awhile to bring fully to light, and the everyday life of the community. (For instance, the rifle-shooting contest at the box social is worth the price of admission --and yes, some of the members of the Ladies Shooting Club will be competing.) Although I've classified this as a Western series, I'll repeat my comment from another review, to the effect that this is more like realistic historical fiction set in 1880s Idaho than it is like the typical "Western" paperbacks marketed as such by the book trade. For instance, it's less violent --though the body count is higher here than in the first and third books-- and we're not usually hanging out in venues like saloons, jails, or cattle drives. As usual for this series, the Christian content of the book is simple, relatively low-key, and mainly grows naturally out of the faith of the Christian characters. (There's a discussion of Christian conversion between a saloon owner and the preacher's wife, with a quotation of a couple of Bible verses; it occupies two pages of a 317-page book.) Nonreligious readers who don't have a violent animus against religious belief and believers, IMO, could read the book (and the series) without feeling stigmatized or preached at. "Romance" is a marketing label that I could see being applied to all three books; and it's a fact that this book will feature two weddings (I'm not going to tell you whose!) and shows us at least one couple discovering feelings for each other. But this isn't the be-all and end-all of everything and doesn't swallow the plot completely; it's treated as just one natural and wholesome part of life. Davis also depicts this aspect with restraint; some hugs and kisses might be exchanged, but the reader can feel the sweetness of the attraction between the couples without it becoming cloying and nauseating. Women readers will enjoy the book (my wife did); but, with main characters of both genders, I think it could also appeal just as much to males. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 08, 2018
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Jun 08, 2018
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Oct 11, 2017
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
1602605629
| 9781602605626
| 1602605629
| 4.14
| 862
| Dec 01, 2009
| Dec 01, 2009
|
it was amazing
|
Having started our acquaintance with the Ladies Shooting Club trilogy last year with the third book, The Blacksmith's Bravery (long story), Barb and I
Having started our acquaintance with the Ladies Shooting Club trilogy last year with the third book, The Blacksmith's Bravery (long story), Barb and I are now reading the other two volumes in order. Neither of us were disappointed in this one! My including it on my Action Heroines shelf was a happy surprise; although all the books' covers feature gun-toting women, and a basic plot current of the trilogy is women learning to take responsibility for defending themselves and others, the heroine of the third book wasn't actually called on to engage in any gun-fighting action, so I assumed the same would be the case here. But (at the risk of a mild "spoiler" --though for some fans, this may add interest rather than spoil it :-) ), in this series opener, our heroine does need to step up to the plate with a Winchester. (Contrary to many fictional and movie depictions, rifles were used more for serious shooting in the Old West than six-guns). Despite that difference, though, both books have a lot of similarity in tone, content and style (though this one doesn't have any editorial issues). Since I gave the concluding volume five stars (that review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ) that's a good thing! In 1885 small-town Idaho, young Gert Dooley keeps house for her widowed brother, the town's gunsmith. One thing she can do to help him is test fire the guns he repairs; and she's gotten to be a crack shot over the years of doing this. When the town's longtime sheriff is murdered in his office (the titular sheriff is his replacement), the usually quiet community is spooked; and a widowed storekeeper friend asks Gert to teach her how to use her late husband's Colt, in case she needs it to protect herself or her business. There's initially no thought of creating a club as such; but as other crimes follow and other women join in the lessons, the Ladies Shooting Club takes shape. Reactions among the community's menfolk aren't uniformly supportive --but not uniformly hostile either; stereotypical role expectations of female helplessness weren't so ingrained in the late 19th-century West as they'd become later. Despite the historical setting, the issue the novel poses is very contemporary, and hotly debated even today. Male chauvinists tend to see any use of weapons by females as transgressive of patriarchal norms. And while all self-described "feminists" claim to believe in "empowerment" for women in some sense, many of them either feel that pacifism is ideologically essential to feminism, or that the State and its agents have an absolute monopoly on legitimate use of lethal force, which renders citizen use of a gun for self-defense as morally equivalent to using it to attack an innocent. But another strand of feminism rejects that thinking, and views responsible and educated gun ownership as a legitimate tool of women's empowerment. It's not hard to deduce from this book what view of that matter Davis takes (and that's the view with which this reviewer also agrees). There's nothing tract-like about this novel, however, any messages emerge naturally from the story itself. Christian faith plays a role in the lives of Gert and other characters, and of the town --the coming of a preacher and his wife to form a nondenominational community church is an important event, as it really was in many Western communities, where organized religion came more slowly than it did in the more easily-settled Eastern states-- but the author isn't "preachy" in her handling of this. The club is also a vehicle for creating female camaraderie and friendship that crosses social divides set by class, religion, and Victorian attitudes (it'll eventually include both the preacher's wife and a saloon owner and her girls), and some characters will have lessons to learn in that area. But the main focus is on the question of what's behind the sudden rash of arson and violence in the community; I've classified this as a Western (and there's horses, guns, a posse, and gun-play at the end), but it embodies very real characteristics of the mystery genre as well. (I guessed the identity of the villain early on, but I'm not sure many readers would --and you might have fun testing your own wits!) And in the background, we have regard and respect growing into love between a worthy man and woman. Since we read this as the second book, in our experience, of the series, it was, as Barb said, "like visiting old friends." I'd recommend to new readers, though, that they read the books in order. And for us, it's now on to our third book (which should be the second), The Gunsmith's Gallantry! ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Dec 27, 2017
not set
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Apr 06, 2018
not set
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Oct 10, 2017
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
1602607966
| 9781602607965
| 1602607966
| 4.22
| 387
| unknown
| Nov 01, 2010
|
it was amazing
|
Normally, I like to read series books in order; but I've made exceptions, and this is one of them. I picked up a copy of this book four years ago at a
Normally, I like to read series books in order; but I've made exceptions, and this is one of them. I picked up a copy of this book four years ago at a thrift store as a present for my wife, since I knew it would be right up her alley. (She's since read it twice, once to herself and once as an "organically-powered audio book" that I read to her. :-) ) My original intention was to get the first two books of the series and give her those first; but I then discovered that (at the time) they were out of print. So we approached this one as a stand-alone, and it works well that way. (The lead characters here are apparently minor characters in the first two books, and the major characters of the latter are secondary characters here; the relationships and any essential back story is introduced here effortlessly in passing, with no info-dumps, though it's probably helpful to have read the book descriptions for the previous volumes, in order to understand how and why the Ladies' Shooting Club was formed.) But in an interesting development, I've just learned that paperback copies of the first two books are again available, so they're going on my to-read shelf! Our setting here is the fictional small town of Fergus, in the Idaho Territory (probably southern Idaho, going by the geographical proximity of Boise and Nampa) in the late 1880s. While I've classified this as a Western --and it is, since a gang of outlaws robbing the local stagecoach lines plays a major role in the plot-- Western "shoot-'em-up" action, while present, isn't a heavy part of the mix here, and much of it happens, as it were, off-stage. The focus is on the interactions of the characters as they live realistic life in a very well-evoked frontier community of that day (the Western genre is really a branch of the historical fiction genre that grew into a tree trunk of its own, and this is solidly-researched historical fiction.) Davis obviously knows the craft of blacksmithing inside and out, though (unlike some authors) she doesn't try to shoehorn in every bit of data that she knows; and the same can be said for driving four and six-animal stagecoach teams. (Personally, in my total ignorance, I had no clue that this required as much physical skill and dexterity in handling the different reins as it does; this book was a eye-opener in that respect.) While the book isn't heavily "preachy," as a Christian writer, the author brings out in a positive way the role of the town's church in the community life, and of a Christian faith taken seriously in the lives of the principal characters. There's no bad language and no sex scenes. Some might classify the book as a "romance," since a clean romantic attraction grows and blossoms between a hero and a heroine who respect each other and appreciate each other for other qualities besides good looks (though they're not immune to appreciating those, either!); but if it is, it's the kind of "romance' that reminds us that the term doesn't have to be an epithet. :-) There's not much heart fluttering and daisy petal-pulling going on in the book, and plenty of more substantial and interesting things to flesh out the plot. Rightly or wrongly, some readers have the impression that Christian fiction tends to reinforce male chauvinism and patriarchal gender role stereotypes, and to ignore ugly social realities (and to be sure, there are certainly Christians who confuse cultural stereotypes with mandates of their faith, and who don't want to be disturbed by the sinful world around them). That's not a charge that can stick well to this book, however. Vashti Edwards is a strong, independent woman who expects and wants to pull her own weight in life, and who knows what she wants and has the guts and discipline to train for it and to make it happen, even if it's doing well in a traditionally male job. Griffin Bane is the kind of male who can see the worth of that, and who wants an equal partner, not a serf. And Davis is the kind of writer who, without being unnecessarily graphic, can take a hard look at the evils of child sexual abuse and teen prostitution (and the prejudiced stereotyping and gender double standards that we subject the victims of it to). A fair rating of this book would probably be four and a half stars, if I could split stars, and I suppose I do give out too many five-star ratings. Readers who demand a lot of action in a book might find this a bit slow-paced in places, and Davis could have used better editing. We learn early on that Griffin's newly-widowed sister lives in Cincinnati (which, obviously, is in Ohio), but when she fobs her teenage oldest son off on Griffin, a subsequent chapter puts his former stamping grounds in Pennsylvania, and that unexplained relocation is maintained through the rest of the book. And at one point, Vashti "stuck the holster [which she doesn't have] back in her belt." (The author obviously meant that our heroine stuck her Colt back in her belt, since she doesn't have a holster and usually packs her gun in her overnight bag, but had "holster' on the brain and wrote that instead.) That reflects poorly on Barbour Publishing, as does the fact that the binding on the book came loose and let the text block fall apart while I was reading it (though, granted, I didn't buy it new). But as a measure of my sheer enjoyment in reading it, I had to round up! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 30, 2017
|
Oct 07, 2017
|
Aug 30, 2017
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
3.50
| 2
| Nov 01, 1902
| 2002
|
liked it
|
Normally, I don't read much while I'm visiting family on a vacation (so as to spend my time with them, not with my nose in a book), and I also usually
Normally, I don't read much while I'm visiting family on a vacation (so as to spend my time with them, not with my nose in a book), and I also usually don't read the second book of a series before the first. So this book was an odd case on both counts. Ten years ago, on my previous visit to Australia, I'd noticed the striking cover of the book (the one peculiar to this edition, not the more generic art of the one that Goodreads treats as the main edition!) while my oldest daughter and her husband were showing me their local public library. I thought my wife, being a fan of both action heroines and Westerns --especially when the two go together!-- might be interested in it; but I didn't have pen and paper at the time to note the author and title, and had forgotten both by the time I got home. (Also, I had no idea it was part of a series.) But I knew I'd have no trouble recognizing the cover if I saw it; so when I returned to Australia last month, I made a point of visiting the library, with pen and paper this time. To my surprise, my son-in-law was intrigued enough with it to check it out on his card so we could both at least skim it a bit. After doing that, I was interested enough to read it through, here and there at odd moments during the visit when other people in the household weren't awake yet, or otherwise occupied. (At 172 pages, it's a relatively short read, and doesn't require a lot of thought.) This time when I picked up the book, I recognized the author's name (though I hadn't previously read any of his work). He's the son of acclaimed Western author Wayne Overholser (whose 1950 short story "The Patriarch of Gunsight Flat" I read some years ago, and liked), who's followed in his father's footsteps as a writer of Westerns; both father and son have been Spur Award winners. The younger Overholser created the character of Molly Owens as the protagonist of one of his early novels, Molly And The Confidence Man (1975), and went on to write five more novels featuring her. Orphaned young, Molly and her now-deceased brother survived a rough childhood on their own; after he came West, she answered an ad and went to work for the Fenton Detective Agency, which is fictional, but modeled on the real-life Pinkerton Agency --which actually did employ women detectives, Kate Warne becoming the first in 1856 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Warne ). Overholser set much of his work in his native Colorado; Molly's based in Denver, and his tale is set in the real-life Colorado mining boom town of Cripple Creek in ca. 1893. That setting is actually drawn with considerable accuracy, and the depiction of the community's history and labor troubles in that period reflects actual realities, with some license and changing of names. (I'll give Overholser credit for doing serious research.) While I wouldn't describe the author's characterizations as sharp, Molly comes across as a kind person who cares about justice, as well as both brave and capable. She approaches her detective work with good observation skills and intuition (and isn't above picking a lock or two if that's what it takes to hunt for evidence). While Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone, debuting in 1982 in A Is for Alibi, is usually considered literature's first gun-packing female detective who could handle rough stuff if the baddies wanted to throw it at her, Molly preceded her by seven years and is no shrinking violet where combat is concerned, either with her double-action Colt or with her fists and feet (and she can deliver a pretty nasty head-butt as well); she just was never noticed by mystery-genre critics because her venue is in a different genre. Here, her assignment calls for her to get to the bottom of a pregnant prostitute's bogus paternity suit against a newly-rich prospector; but the case soon morphs into an unauthorized murder investigation, in the context of a labor dispute between mine owners and mine workers that threatens to become a blood bath. (Some on both sides are up for illegal violence, but the mine owners and their thugs are the more dangerously violent.) As is true of some other works in this genre that I've read, the author's prose style is mediocre, adequate but uninspired, workmanlike pulp that does the job in an undistinguished way; he tells the story and allows you to picture the action and settings, but this isn't a novel you'd read for scintillating dialogue, vivid turns of phrase, telling details, or description that soars and sings. His plotting is on a similar level; towards the end, a couple of characters make some decisions that serve the storyline, but struck me as dubiously likely to have been made had this been a real-life narrative in the same situation. The mystery element isn't very deeply mysterious in the long run. And while the bad language, of the d-word/h-word sort, is minimal and Molly herself pretty clean in her own speech --I wouldn't guarantee that she never lets a cuss word slip under stress (I don't have the book in front of me to check, obviously) but she certainly doesn't make it a noticeable habit-- there are three explicit sex scenes. (They can be skipped over with no loss of anything.) However, this isn't a romance as such, nor is it a trashy "adult Western;" and I wouldn't describe Molly's character as sexually predatory or deliberately exploitative. Her attitude is actually probably characteristic of many single, career-oriented young secular women in the 70s and 80s when the books were written (and subsequently) --neither marriage-oriented nor obsessed with sex, but open to it in cases where they have a strong attraction to a guy that's more than physical. Whether that's very realistic for the 1890s, before the Pill and when legally-binding marriage still existed as a reality that both genders looked to for security and stability (and when employers like the Fenton Agency were concerned with social "respectability") would be another question. Despite its flaws,though, I basically liked the book as passing light entertainment, and liked and admired the heroine for her genuine good qualities. Personally, I wouldn't bother seeking out the rest of the series; but if you're a Western fan who doesn't demand much from your books and read for recreation, you could certainly pick a lot worse books, with a lot worse messages. :-) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 19, 2017
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Jun 30, 2017
|
Jul 12, 2017
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||||||
0553803972
| 9780553803976
| 0553803972
| 4.25
| 798
| Oct 26, 2004
| Oct 26, 2004
|
it was amazing
|
Note, Dec. 8, 2020: When I read short story collections intermittently over a long period of time, my reactions are similarly written piecemeal, while
Note, Dec. 8, 2020: When I read short story collections intermittently over a long period of time, my reactions are similarly written piecemeal, while they're fresh in my mind. That gives the reviews a choppy, and often repetitive, quality. Recently, I had to condense and rearrange one of these into a unified whole because of Goodreads' length limit; and I was so pleased with the result that I decided to give every one of these a similar edit! Accordingly, I've now edited this one. I consider the three volumes of the Frontier Stories to be a single large work., and have read all three. This volume contains 29 stories, and is very similar in style and outlook, and in the consistently high quality of the storytelling, to the first volume; most of my general comments in my review of that one (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ) would be applicable here as well. It can also be said that a number of these stories involve hidden culprits, with plots that make use of very real mystery genre elements (L'Amour also wrote some mystery fiction, such as The Hills of Homicide, although his Westerns are the best-known part of his corpus); so the hero's task often may be much more cerebral than simply to out-draw and out-aim his opponents in a gun fight. Of the 29 stories here, 18 feature one of L'Amour's series characters, the straight-shooting Texas Ranger Chick Bowdrie; these include Bowdrie's origin story, "McNelly Knows a Ranger." So we get to know Bowdrie pretty well here. An appealing feature of many of the stories are that the author's characters on the wrong side of the law may be nuanced figures --they're not necessarily one-dimensional incarnations of evil. Another element of the appeal is the note of clean, low-key romance there often is in many of these yarns, as in Vol. 1 (though not in the Bowdrie stories; Chick considers his occupation a disqualifier for marriage and family life, although he sometimes regards the fairer sex wistfully), with worthy men and women sizing up each other's mettle quietly and unobtrusively, and then following up straightforwardly. L'Amour handles action scenes effectively, but action is subordinate to the human element in the tales, as it should be; and he writes at times with a note of dry humor that doesn't take over the book, but leavens it a bit. As usual, it wasn't easy to pick a favorite here; the stories are too uniform in quality for that. But mine would probably be the lead story of the volume, "Law of the Desert Born." That was also one that had one of the most unpredictable denouements; and "Horse Heaven" was another tale that went in a direction I didn't anticipate. "Strawhouse Trail" is perhaps the Bowdrie story that's most effective in surprising the reader. My reaction to this volume was just as positive and enthusiastic as it was to the first one; these are excellent tales, crafted by a master! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
|
Aug 02, 2017
|
Aug 26, 2016
|
Hardcover
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
3.93
|
liked it
|
Jun 11, 2025
|
Jun 06, 2025
|
||||||
4.31
|
it was amazing
|
Jul 13, 2025
|
May 23, 2025
|
||||||
4.09
|
it was amazing
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Jun 27, 2025
|
Apr 08, 2025
|
||||||
4.40
|
liked it
|
May 27, 2024
|
Mar 31, 2024
|
||||||
4.38
|
really liked it
|
Jun 04, 2023
|
Mar 19, 2023
|
||||||
4.23
|
it was amazing
|
Jul 07, 2022
|
Feb 07, 2022
|
||||||
4.22
|
it was amazing
|
Aug 19, 2023
not set
|
Sep 07, 2021
|
||||||
4.28
|
really liked it
|
Jan 17, 2021
|
Jul 25, 2020
|
||||||
4.60
|
it was amazing
|
Mar 13, 2022
|
Mar 21, 2020
|
||||||
4.34
|
really liked it
|
Jul 25, 2020
|
Jan 12, 2020
|
||||||
4.13
|
it was amazing
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Feb 2020
not set
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Sep 05, 2019
|
||||||
4.29
|
it was amazing
|
Sep 28, 2019
|
Feb 14, 2019
|
||||||
4.28
|
it was amazing
|
Aug 2019
|
Jan 22, 2019
|
||||||
4.31
|
it was amazing
|
Nov 03, 2019
|
Dec 26, 2018
|
||||||
4.32
|
it was amazing
|
Dec 29, 2018
|
Oct 20, 2017
|
||||||
4.25
|
it was amazing
|
Jun 08, 2018
|
Oct 11, 2017
|
||||||
4.14
|
it was amazing
|
Apr 06, 2018
not set
|
Oct 10, 2017
|
||||||
4.22
|
it was amazing
|
Oct 07, 2017
|
Aug 30, 2017
|
||||||
3.50
|
liked it
|
Jun 30, 2017
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Jul 12, 2017
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||||||
4.25
|
it was amazing
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Aug 02, 2017
|
Aug 26, 2016
|