Rating: 
Summary: Cold Mountain fully deserves The National Book Award.
Review: More than any recent novel I have read, Cold Mountain evokes a total feeling of time and place. From page one, the reader is accompanying the hero on his journey home. We feel with him the compelling urge to press on. We feel also for Ada who is advancing in a personal journey of growth and development. "Love stories" crowd the shelves at the bookstore, but rarely do we find one that is really about love. This one is about genuine love in its finest sense, love that motivates and sustains. Historical elements are accurate and strong. Cold Mountain will make you think and that is all too rare in a bestseller these days.
Rating:
Summary: Truly a novel, not just a book
Review: A rich treasure of a novel. Every sentence is carefully crafted. The structure is episodic and rigorously symmetrical - the hero and heroine each making their slow painful progress towards each other, he physically, she emotionally. Played out against a tapestry of fabulous secondary characters and lyrical evocations of a landscape and a time. Reading this was comparable to reading the work of a great 19th century novelist. How did you get to be a master in your first novel, Charles Frazier? After a few weeks, it's still fresh in my mind. I will re-read this many times. Loved it.
Rating: 
Summary: The flip side of Gone With The Wind....
Review: I really couldnt put this book down from the moment I started reading it. GWTW is my favorite book of all time and the civil war a real fascinataion of mine and to see a new author tackle the subject so wonderfully is really great to see. The reader will really becokme attatched to the characters in the book as it progresses and almost feel as if they are there in the snow covered fields with Inman, Ruby and Ada. The ending kind of annoyed me but I guess that was the author's decision to make it that way. I encourage anyone who can read to read this book!
Rating: 
Summary: Mostly credible, some gross errors
Review: The descriptions of places and customs of the time are mostly very accurate and convincing. Bears do not, however, jump over cliffs.... The best part of the book is found in the small incidents along the way and in the relationship of Ada and Ruby.
Rating:
Summary: A lyrical account of two journeys-of the body and the spirit
Review: Charles Fraziers tale is painted with every color of the spectrum, the browns of the road, the reds of violence,the greys of hunger and disallusionement. The reader feels his every footfall on the lonely road and shares his drive to return to his home and the woman he falls more in love with as each mile passes. The characters he encounters are raw and strange yet real. This is no storybook journey, but a telling as true as life is.
Rating:
Summary: I enjoyed this book more than anything I've read in years.
Review: Ok. Circumstances may have helped. I live in California but most of my family is from the Blue Ridge foothills. I picked this book up in the Airport on my way to Asheville, NC to visit my mother. I'd never heard of it and just needed something to fill the time. I read most of it sitting on her balcony looking out over the Western North Carolina mountains. I read it slowly, savoring the words and the feeling as much as the story. Usually I send books on to my brother and sister but in this case I told them about it and said they'd have to get their own. I plan to read my copy again soon. Maybe late at night this winter by the fireplace.
Rating:
Summary: You had better enjoy nature.
Review: I'm not sure what to make of this work. I certainly appreciate portions of it, but I didn't particularly like it. Its heavy with long descriptions of natural landscape, animals, and squalor, but rather short on society, history, and manners. One should take note of the title: Cold Mountain. This book is about the land, and the struggle of those little men and women who live on it. The main character, however, is always the land. Frazier's writing is interesting, though some of his metaphors seem a bit strained. I found the author's obsession with squalor, insalubrity, and poverty to be oppressive. The image he paints for us is damn ugly and, though obviously intended to approach realism, a bit exaggerated. The story is raw. The salon life of ante-bellum Richmond is nowhere to be found here. Read this book for the richness of it's natural description, not for social or historical insight.
Rating: 
Summary: Cold Mountain left me cold, indeed.
Review: I found this to be the most metronomic book I ever read. Every other chapter was the returning soldier's attempt to get back home; the alternate chapters were the waiting lady's activities.
Rating: 
Summary: The WORST Novel EVER Written
Review: I wish I could give a rating lower than one star, because just one star is much, much too high for this terrible novel. First of all, Inman is portrayed as an invincible superman who somehow escapes all the predicaments put in front of him. This gets old very quick, and I found myself morbidly tired of him after about the 3rd chapter. Secondly, none of the characters were likeable. Ada, particularly, is lazy and I couldn't generate any sympathy for her whatsoever. Rosie is just plain uninteresting and Inman's preacher companion (I forget his name, sorry) is simply a piece of trash. I found it hard to care about the story when I couldn't care any less about the characters. I just wanted them all to curl up and die so the book would be over. And finally, the constant interludes by unimportant characters that take pages and pages out of the novel that have absolutely no apparent impact on the main plot probably take up about 20% of the book by my estimation and I found myself skipping them because they were unimportant and uninteresting. I cannot believe that this horrid novel won the National Book Award, and I felt like my time had been wasted.
Rating:
Summary: A good, simple tale
Review: I think you'll like it if you've ever had to walk a long distance in the wilderness, or are a fan of the civil war period. I can really relate to Inman's trekking experience of seemingly walking forever under adverse conditions, getting lost, and the feeling he describes as he nears home. Ada's story was of less interest to me, however, and it was somewhat annoying when the author kept switching between the two. I thought the author's description of life without tv, cars, etc. to be very accurate and pleasingly intertwined with the story. This, combined with the simple plot (guy heads for home to girl) makes it a nice, simple tale in today's world.
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