Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful story - best book I have read in years!
Review: I don't normally read this type of book, usually its mysteries, but I found it so absorbing and interesting. So much detail and the parallel stories keep your interest to the very end. A beautiful story. One of those books you don't ever want to end.
Rating:
Summary: A pleasant surprise
Review: After I slowed down and stopped trying to read it like a John Grisham lawyer tale, I found it to be some of the best prose since "The Remains of the Day". I didn't need to be told everything. He simply reminded me of what I already knew.
Rating: 
Summary: Boring!
Review: When I started this book on the beach, a man came up to me and said "This is the most boring book I've ever read, he's walking, she's learning about herself, he's walking, she's learning, he's walking, it was so awful I couldn't finish it" and I was like "Whatever buddy, I'm reading here". Meanwhile, 6 months later I thought to myself his guy was right on the money, he's walking, she's learning... BORING. I think maybe if the author hadn't drawn it on and on for so long, then I would have liked the book more. Also, the no quotes thing made it very hard to understand when someone was talking, which was very irritating.
Rating: 
Summary: A Well planned and executed first novel:
Review: I really enjoyed this novel. I liked the style, which is some what of a throw back (and perhaps a bit affected, esp. the use of a dash in place quotes). The imagery was exciting and at times poetic. The consistent use of themes was for me a joy (nature, fate, magic,etc). The stucture was effective, and I liked how the chapter featuring Stobrod's and Pangle's encounter with Teague became the intersection of the novel's two stories. The action well described and the side stories never distracting. The novel is very viceral: you felt the cold, smelt the meat, heard you stomach rumble with Inman, or felt your back break after a day in the field. I would recommend it to anyone. However, it is not a romance, nor is it a book of joy and happiness. It is about rough times and a rough life and how people survive through it.
Rating:
Summary: honest view of life
Review: Cold Mountain is an exhausting read because it is written with such passion but also with such honesty about themes of life: love, lost love, lost direction in life, what does the future hold and does it matter? It reminded me of Silent Bell by Gary Drake. His tale of a couple separated by the shootings at Kent State deals with similar themes although offering a little more hope in the end. A lot of readers have complained about Frazier's writing, but it's his story to tell and no matter what you think of the depth and width of his style, one has to admire his love for the story---and for the land.
Rating:
Summary: A monumental, great work of literature.
Review: Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain is one of the most powerful, grim, but realistic novels I've ever read. The unique style the author employed is ingenious and effective, the story dramatic and powerful. The natural and historic detail, how much of it even relates to the story, is astounding. It will be difficult to find a new book to take the place of Cold Mountain, a novel that belongs in the Harvard Classics collection, among some lesser works already part of that collection.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great American Novel?
Review: I must say I was both surprised and disappointed by this over-hyped epic. It seems many people see Cold Mountain mainly as a love story, whereas I think there's more to it - down-to-earth philosophy, Robinson Crusoe type survival and good old-fashioned adventures too. It's not bad. I like Frazier's attitude, which is somewhat melancholy but never tired. The only big fault is the emotional distance. This book never really captured me, never made me lose my sleep. Even the ending, in all its tragedy, only made me say to myself: "Didn't I guess this 50 pages beforehand?" Frazier drives his story to the point where the only possible outcomes are happy or sad; and considering the general atmosphere of his novel, the former is out of count. So, what we have is a well-written book with some good points about life but no spirit. For so huge a best seller, this is not bad. In its general style, Cold Mountain comes actually close to Steinbeck and other great American novelists. So I have nothing against the success of this book. It could have been lot worse. It could have been cyrup and sugar, you know.
Rating:
Summary: Boring!
Review: I thought I was missing something significant about this book until I read the other reviews. I'm with the people who gave this book one or two stars. Too descriptive and not enough action. This must be a novel for people of higher intellect.
Rating:
Summary: The best novel I have ever read.
Review: Cold Mountain is the story of a confederate infantryman, Inman, and Aida, an unlikely farmer. These two initially incomplete people meet and fall in love just at the dawn of the American Civil War. Just the nation's adolescence is threatened, so is the budding passion of these two young lovers. The story opens with Inman waking up in a hospital room set up as a temporary infirmary for the "sure to die soon". Thought to be mortally wounded in the neck by a stray ball acquired during the battle of Fredericksburg, his wound is literally spitting out bits and pieces of battle shrapnel. Straddling a fence of survival and expiration, Inman watches as misery takes on new manifestations with a mirrored terminus. Death, or redeployment to the front lines. Now with his own survival becoming a viable notion, Inman decides that he has had enough of a war he no longer believes in and makes a remorseless decision to go home. Four years have passed since one of Inman's five senses has affirmed Aida's existence. With torturously vivid memories of battle shredding away at his disposition, he is worried that a cynicism has overcome his heart and he has lost the ability to be happy, and thereby offer happiness to the girl he loves and hopes is still home waiting for his return. Inman is a literate man who rations unambiguous words. From a vantage point that Dante himself could not have imagined, Inman's heart has turned non-partisan while remaining amazingly moral. The juxtaposition works well here and serves to strengthen Inman's appeal to the reader. After a quick, but well thought out day's preparation, Inman embarks on foot into the interiors of North Carolina, toward his home and life's well spring. Traveling through the wintering landscapes of mountain and plain pits Inman against obstacles both human and inhumane. His formable instincts for survival and his un-denying capacity to be compassionate are in constant state of conflict, knowing that like a hang man's noose dangling inches from his face, an act of kindness has the potential of turning into an irrevocable death sentence. Aida, our heroine begins her odyssey of survival and rebirth from an opposite station in life that has left her with a toddler's competence to deal with life's unforeseen turns. Following the advice of a physician, Aida and her father, Monroe moved from Charleston to Cold Mountain before the outbreak of war for the benefit of curtailing his advancing consumption. Monroe's thriving import business and steady flow of cash rendered the purchased farm as a mere amusement, having a resident couple do the work, while he and his daughter continue their life of comfort and culture. Brought up among the southern gentry of 19th century society, Aida is left unrehearsed in the skills of domestic life, let alone producing sustenance from the farm she now inadvertently occupies alone since her father's unexpected death. To make matters worse, Monroe's trade business has ceased its viability and the help that tended the farm has deserted her. With her father dead for four months, and the war raging for better than four years, we find Aida in the throws of starvation, having eaten through any stores of food that were around upon his death. Despondent and disparate, Aida enters into a pact of survival with a local mountain girl named Ruby. They agree to work the farm together and equally, share evenly in all that is produced, but by Ruby's own insistence, Aida will live in the main house, Ruby in the worker's dwelling. Even though Ruby makes it clear that she is no servant, she seems to revel in the irony of appearing as one. Over time, Aida grows to admire and love Ruby as a sister. From Ruby she acquires the skills of self-sufficiency and learns to draw a lasting satisfaction from her daily routine of physical labor. As the story progresses, Aida is transformed into a woman of self-sufficiency and independence. A rare female quality in that day. Ruby's hardened persona is gradually worn away by Aida's kind and accommodative nature, eventually learning to forgive her long delinquent father, Stobbard. The story shifts back and forth between Aida's relationship with Ruby as they work and master the Monroe's farm, and Inman's peregrination back to Aida, the beacon he has set his life's sextant on. By the time they come together both are far more complex than when they last saw each other. Their understanding of the world has become grayer, but more realistic, and their appreciation for matters of sharing ones life with another serves to increase and deepen the gravity that initially drew them together four years prior. This is the finest piece of literature I have ever read and I give it my highest recommendation.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT BOOK. INTERESTING REACTIONS FROM READERS.
Review: I logged on to read the reviews out of curiosity and am bewildered by what I find. Seems like it's either love or hate for the book. I'm in the "love it" camp, although I am only half-way through the story and haven't had the chance to experience the much discussed ending. I have, however, enjoyed EVERY PAGE so far. It seems very reasonable to me. The descriptions of the surroundings are so crisp that one feels as if one were truly present. Secondly, the stories are told in the best classical tradition that is as entertaining as a story by the campfire. Thirdly, the characters are interesting. To boot, there are many ideas in the book which I personally found to be thought-provoking. It's been a comfort to my spirit to read Inman and Ada's journeys. I am amazed at the negative comments some readers have. Too boring to finish? Too violent? Unnecessary vulgarity? I guess people really expect different things from a book.
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