Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful Novel, But Some Things Are Amiss...
Review: If you ask me, I'd say blame Kaye Gibbons. Her blurb on the back jacket of Cold Mountain said it was the best CW novel since Killer Angels (a personal favorite of mine) and that the writing compares favorably to that of Shelby Foote. Well, that worked on me. I just had to read it then.Since then, I've read the novel twice. It's very good and its long residence on the bestseller list I thought warranted and it was nice to see a novel high in literary quality and originality garner a large readership. Despite its excellence, I thought that there were some things Frazier could and should have done differently. Bear in mind that my suggestions probably wouldn't have much if any effect on the overall story. My differences derive mainly from Inman's war service, while a minor thing, but it still bothers me. Inman's regiment is never identified and his skepticism of the leaders of the Army of Northern Virginia don't ring true. Also Frazier uses "withering fire" which in the words of Stephen Cushman in Bloody Promenade, is "one of the top five cliches in Civil War battle writing." But the thing that bothers me most is that Frazier never mentions is if Inman has a close friend. Being a veteran, I know that friends and comrades are what makes service life bearable and the idea of a man, a veritable loner, making it through three plus years of war without friends is stretching the limits of credibility. Also if Frazier had mentioned this friend being killed at Gettysburg or the Wilderness, I think Inman's disillusionment and his reasons for deserting would have been much more believeable. Again, it's a minor thing. All in all, I found myself enjoying Inman's physical journey as well as Ada's own internal journey to self discovery. I myself can't wait for Frazier's next offering.
Rating: 
Summary: slow and tedious
Review: Every bit of dialog uses "Inman said" or "she said" or "he said" to make it clear who is speaking. It's very annoying. Other than that, the book just drags on and on, and I didn't care what happened by the end. Maybe that was the point of the author describing every insignificant and minute detail of what Inman did... maybe we were supposed to feel like we were on his Odyssey, going nowhere, trudging on and on.
Rating:
Summary: Good Civil War novel... But slow at times
Review: I enjoyed Cold Mountain. It was a pretty good book. Cold Mountain is about a man named Inman. Sorely wounded and fatally disheartened in the fighting at Petersburg, Inman, a Confederate soldier, decides to walk back to his house by Cold Mountain, to be with Ada, the woman he loved three years earlier. At the same time, Ada is trying to revive her father's neglected farm and learn to survive in a world where the old certainties have been swept away. Many people say this book is like an American Odyssey.
Rating:
Summary: The book of frustration
Review: This tale is frustrating only because if you are unfamiliar with this auther at first its hard to adapt to how he expresses the talking whithin the characters. Other than that its a pretty easy read and has alot of sybolism and realism expressed within it. He stuffed lots of minor events that eventually builds up to the climax that effectively hooks the reader. However, he includes so many every day activities that sometimes create dull spots whithin the book. It is a well written book, but it seems to be more directed toward more of the romantic category.
Rating: 
Summary: Inman and Ada!
Review: I agree with Leesel that Cold Mountain is a book to be read again just for the sheer pleasure of reliving Inman and Ada's
stories. Nature is so much a part of this book, almost a main character. All I ask if you are curious about this book...just get past the Civil War camp, and you will find a treasure so wonderful that is will make you appreciate every bird, every tree, and every crisp morning you awake. Karen
Rating:
Summary: I will read this one again!!
Review: Like other reviewers, I was surprised at the negative reaction that this book evoked from some. I absolutely LOVED it. I could FEEL the land; the geography of Inman's journey. I savoured each detail of Ada's trials as she met Ruby and worked the land.
The controversy that the Civil War brought to families was well-illustrated by Frazier. The story was one of those that really dropped me into the time and place.
Maybe most books that we enjoy are like this one: They stir up strong positive or negative reactions in us.
Rating: 
Summary: I don't think so...
Review: I found the book readable but only because I kept thinking it would get better. Which is not to say the book was bad...exactly, but I do wonder why the author had the narrator use mountain idioms throughout--it gave one the feeling that everyone involved with the book (author, characters, narrator) was in cahoots to sound as backward as possible. After a while it started to sound as if it was a parody of that culture rather than a description. Also, I was irked that he had the characters use so, so many quaint similes and metaphors in describing anything that came to their mind. On the positive side, the book had charm and poignancy in it's descriptions of Inman's and Ada's struggles with their reality and I could feel, at times, the horror of the war, and the beauty of an isolated mountain meadow. I applaud the author's efforts at trying to put together this story of a particular time and place, but do not recommend it for the average reader.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding and beautiful
Review: I wasn't going to read Cold Mountain--I feared that it would be some nostalgic, racist claptrap like *Gone with the Wind.* But no! Frazier's novel is instead a beautiful tale celebrating life, not war. It is anti-racist, anti-war, and critical of the plantation class-relations helped to foment the Civil War. But mostly, Cold Mountain is a wonderful novel, wrought with beautiful words and an odyssey through a haunted Southern land. How happy I am to have put aside my prejudices and picked up this brilliant work.
Rating:
Summary: Three Stars
Review: Cold Mountain contains a LOT of detail (mostly about the environment) that was not needed and (sometimes painfully) made the story drag on. I often found myself skimming entire paragraphs to get to what mattered. However, the story was excellent and the characters interesting. Hence, I also found myself often eagerly anticipating my next reading session. Would have been four stars, but I found the ending lacking.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: I was astonished to see some of the derogatory reviews of this book - those people must be lacking in something. I would recommend, no urge anyone and everyone to read this outstanding, splendid, marvellous story.
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