Rating: 
Summary: Thoroughly Enjoyable
Review: Thorughly enjoyable.Hated to put the book down. The characters are interesting and well developed. Shows the reality of frontier life in Texas. Hope the author continues with many more books of this kind.
Rating: 
Summary: Too long and slow getting started and it still disappoints
Review: Having read several novels about the Texas Revolution, I can see the trend here hasn't changed. Take the thirteen day seige of the Alamo and stretch it out so that it seems like thirteen HUNDRED days. (I kept rooting for Santa Anna myself) Add a lot of exaggerated and one dimensional characters from both sides, male and female. (Why do all the Texians in these novels sound like "red-necks" when they talk when so many of them immigrated from New England and Europe?) Sprinkle in a smattering of historical detail of questionable accuracy and throw in lots of smoke, modern slang, bodily functions, blood and gore (and a little sex) and you have it. A book that ended up on the best seller list and no-one knows exactly why. (At least I didn't) Harrigan's book is no exception. It was too long and too slow getting started, and it sounds like there is no end in sight. DO us Texans a favor, FORGET THE ALAMO as a subject for another novel. It's been done to death.
Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly Enjoyable
Review: Thorughly enjoyable. Hated to put the book down. The characters are interesting and well developed. Shows the reality of frontier life in Texas. Hope the author continues with many more books of this kind.
Rating: 
Summary: Sometimes Slow, But a Good Read
Review: My sister fought for two years to get me to read this novel. I fought against reading it for a long time, primarily because of its length and subject matter that I've heard about a bit too much in my life (I've grown up within two hours of the Alamo). Anyway, I'm glad I finally read The Gates of the Alamo. The story is almost always engaging and is more historically accurate than the other retellings of the battle. That was refreshing to see some real characters with flaws and sometimes less-than-honorable motivations. This was a worthwile read. The strength and weakness of the novel come it its multitude of characters. The many characters give different points of view of the battle, and that's a real plus. You get to see the different motivations and emotions that the battle brings out. Mary Mott shows the mother's perspective, Joe gives the slave viewpoint, Terrell the young patriot's, and Blas and Telesforo tell the Mexicans' side of it. Edmund is my favorite character throughout because he takes on a little more substance than the others. The many characters is also a flaw, though, because some of the characters aren't developed as well as other, or their story isn't overly important. I liked the idea of telling the stories of the Mexican soldiers, but neither Blas nor Telesforo were really a success. Blas is likeable, but he isn't connected with any of the other characters, and his story's end is abrupt and inconclusive. Telesforo is probably the most unlikeable of the primary characters, and it's such a drag to come to a chapter about him and know that you have to wade through ten more pages about him. There are certainly strong reasons to read the novel. It is, at least largely, historically accurate, something hard to find with all of the myth surrounding the Alamo. The Texians weren't exactly the good guys as my Texas History class would have you believe, and Harrigan tells the truth of it. I think he also gets a sense of the battle pretty well. The little side stories are also pretty engaging (though he could have ended them a little sooner). Overall, The Gates of the Alamo is a fine read. History lovers, particularly Texas history lovers, will find a lot to like.
Rating:
Summary: Bad fiction, little history
Review: Rarely have I ever tossed a book into the trash after investing 500 pages in it. However, with Harrigan's "Gates of the Alamo" I did. Reading the comments about it I had been looking forward to a good and perhaps informative read. I doggedly plunged into the slowly, slowly developing plot. The absence of strong character development or attention to historical detail could not justify any further investment, no, waste of time. One particularly annoying feature of Harrigan's style was the repeated and seemingly gratuitous use of the phrase "f-----g" by his characters. I am no prude, but this usage sounded more like Enron energy traders talking about California grandmothers than Texians of 1836 expressing their frustrations over the complex and foreboding tensions they faced. I consider myself a fairly informed student of Texas history. When I read the author's self-congratulatory praise regarding his research, I found it laughable - unless his research was all packed into the last 200+ pages. Regardless, I wrote off my angry reaction as a possibly snobbish bias against historical fiction. Now, having just completed the first 100 pages of "The Court Martial of Robert E. Lee" by Douglas Savage, I am prompted to write this review. It isn't historical fiction I object to, it is B-A-D historical fiction. Harrigan's is. For an example of good Alamo fiction, Lon Tinkle's "13 Days of Glory" (1958) still reigns supreme, IMO, although it has been 40+ years since reading it. As for non-fiction, Walter Lord's "A Time to Stand" (1961) is still rated amongst the best. Regarding Alamo fiction in general, reading contemporary published history, still so rapidly changing, is close enough to fiction. I'd recommend it before "The Gates of the Alamo" anytime. The subject is so well known and vital one doesn't need character development to become engaged in the story. Overall, I'd recommend Savage's book - remember "Marse Robert", forget Harrigan's Alamo. Maybe someday a courts martial of Sam Houston will come along ... now that could be an interesting read!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent and haunting, a true novel and a good one.
Review: I saw some reviews of this book that made me laugh out loud. One of them literally started with something like "When I consider the glory that is the Lone Star State..." You might imagine this fella did not like this book. He was looking for larger than life legends and myths about fighting for freedom. It is ironic that the chief freedom they fought for at the Alamo was the freedom to own slaves. The Mexican constitution did not allow slavery and the future cotton barons knew they had to gain independence if they were to prosper. This is not dealt with in the novel at all. What is dealt with is the individual fight for freedom inside of the main characters. Those who cannot free themselves from their own inner chains perish tragically. The survivors live on with a new collection of scars and ultimately for those who last long enough the Alamo loses all relevance and becomes the icon of myth that we have still with us today. But before it is all over the reader gets the best account what actually happened at the Alamo that I have seen to date. This book has drawn greatly upon the discoveries and scholarly evidence concerning those fateful events in 1836 that led to Texas breaking away from Mexico. But more than that, it is a book that uses these events leading up to the famous siege as the setting of a truly human novel about the relationship between fictitious characters - characters whose desires and needs, virtues and foibles resonate far beyond their particular surroundings or time. Yes, we are introduced to all the famous characters we have all read about in the history books. They and their fictitious companions are presented with all the imperfections of real people. But they also reveal a down to earth courage that was required to survive on the frontier. And once we get to the Alamo itself the battle is very real and harrowing. When I read this book I had mixed feelings. I had mixed feelings about the fact so much of the story takes place outside of the historical events that made me buy the book. I had mixed feelings about the fact the main plot concerned a widow and her teenage son and the inapproachable naturalist who were all invented by the author. But by the end of the novel these people were as real to me as my own friends. And weeks later I was still thinking about them and haunted by what became of them. That is why I call it a true novel, as it affected me on many levels, some I was completely unaware of until after the experience was over. Years later I still feel that same way about the people that book brought to life. I would recommend this book for anyone who wants some idea of what it would have been like to live on the frontier in the 1830s and for anyone with an interest in what actually happened at the Alamo.
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