Bristlecone Peak (Legend of the Golden Feather)

Rating:
Summary: Alone by the Window?? What was Dave Brown smoking??
Review: Back in September of 2000, I wrote a review for the Protectors, the 2nd book of what has now become a 5 book series. The first three books, Bristlecone Peak, The Protectors, and Home to Kentucky, have been reviewed with almost unanimous raves, including myself. What wonderful books these are, and we've all fallen in love with Jake and Wiley. These books are a must for any reader who likes gay fiction mixed with a Western theme. Book 4 was titled Pinkerton Partners, which Amazon did not carry. While I did not believe Pinkerton Partners was up to the level of the first three, forcing us to believe that the lovable, naïve Kentucky farm boy Jake could be a quick witted, sharp shooting Pinkerton, I looked forward with much anticipation to book 5, Alone by the Window. Well, I don't like writing a negative review because I know how hard it is to write a book. But all I can say is, "What was Dave Brown smoking when he wrote this??" This book comes across as a rambling, incoherent jumble of people, situations and places. If anyone who reads this can find a story line or plot, please Email me. If you liked the time travel fantasy of The Protectors, which I thought was so magically and wonderfully done, this book will make you want to grab that bag around Jake's neck and strangle him with it. Time travel in this book becomes as ordinary as going to the Mall...no pun intended for those who read the book. It becomes that boring and predictable. What the title had to do with anything in the book is still a mystery to me, other than a few pages in the book which it is referenced. The back jacket of the book tells of Jake falling into a roaring, rain-swollen current. Not to worry. That is only one paragraph in the book and Jake is just swimming. Sorry to be a spoiler, but better to hear it from me. Before I read the book, I put the two together and figured the book would have something to do with Wiley losing Jake, the trauma and grief and longing, then finding him again. But no. The rest of the book is filled with Jake desperately wanting sex with anyone he can find. No kidding. Which is sad if this is what he is reduced to. But maybe that's what Alone by the Window means, as far as Wiley is concerned. And if I hear about Soaring Raven cooking another Elk steak or apple pie and coming out of the kitchen, grunting, with heaps of food, I'll go crazy. I was so disappointed with this book, hoping each new page I turned would start build on the character of Jake and Wiley, of their love and devotion, of their different personalities that they each find so attractive in each other and what made the first three books truly outstanding. Then I became mad when I thought that Dave Brown would think that those of us, who have come to really enjoy the adventures of Jake and Wiley, and who look forward to each installment, and to their character development, would be satisfied with this rubbish. The promise that we saw in the first three books is yet to materialize. To the father of a gay son who wrote a review here, I say don't expect to gather around the fire and read this out loud unless you're into porn. Oh well, maybe book 6.

Rating:
Summary: This is a good book?
Review: I bought this book directly from the publisher based on the other reviews on this page and wonder what these other reviewers saw in it. I was quite disappointed in the book. It seems to have been written by a high school student. The author never describes a scene enough to pull you in, we only see the surface.
Too many of the events were improbable. It seemed everyone in the town -- except the preacher -- was gay! Jake gets away from his persuers due to some rather addled thinking.
The symbolism of the story, the guardian indian chief, is clunky and obvious.
And the ending -- oh, the ending! -- (spoiler alert!) is the worst case of Deus ex Machina I've encountered in a very long time! We never find out about Wiley's secret job for which he is well paid. Jake's persuers still persue him. None of the conflicts that drive the story are resolived. The guardian indian chief finally acts and the story ends. All the loose threads have to wait for book two or three.
I won't be buying the other books of the series. I suggest you save your money on this one.

Rating:
Summary: Simply Jake!
Review: I never imagined I would find someday something like this - a gay western romance! All the fantasies about gay cowboys and their life within the raw nature :-) I thought no one would ever write a book about it. But someone did - and he did such a wonderful job!
"Bristlecone Peak" and its two sequels "The protectors" and "Home to Kentucky" center around two equally amazing protagonists, the life-experienced Wiley Deluce and the innocent, friendly Jake Brady, the latter fresh from Kentucky and in danger either to get killed or get married, in this case two comparable destinies ;-)
These two strong, handsome men meet and within an hour it is clear to Wiley, Jake and the reader, of course, that they are meant for each other and have to stay together for life.
And with this the adventure begins, including many dangers they have to face, many friendship they share with other wonderful characters they get to know and many quiet, loving moments they spend only in each others company.
All this is so amazingly written, so exciting to read, the humour so enjoyable I am sure every reader will love them as much as I do after reading this first book in the authors "Legend of the golden feather" series. It ends with quiet a cliffhanger so you have to buy all three books but don't worry: it is worth every little penny :-))
So buy it and then help me pestering the author to write more such smashing books!

Rating:
Summary: The father of a gay son.
Review: It took my wife and I by surprise when Andrew told us he was gay. It took me a few years longer than Lisa to accept it. I became very scrutinizing of the things my son read. I couldn't help it, I'd scour his room for porn. Then, one evening I found a book on the coffee table. It had two cowboys sort of embracing. Why did Andrew leave this book here? He usually hid his gay books.
I was determined to read it! Andrew was being corrupted by gay literature! I forced myself to read Bristlecone Peak. I know now why Andrew left it on the coffee table. If Andrew turns out like Jake or Wiley, I have nothing to worry about. This book is a breath of fresh air in a hateful world.
One thing I have to say about Bristlecone Peak (and Dave Brown)is that this book is written in a very simple, easy to read style. I don't need the dictionary. And, Dave Brown doesn't put on "airs" about writing style,language or even description. While reading this book, I used my imagination for the first time since college. That's something to say for a "sitcom addict."
I know why Andrew liked this book. He asked me for it back while I was in the middle of it, then Lisa came downstairs that night and asked me if I was coming to bed. I looked up from Bristlecone Peak and mumbled, "In a minute. I have to finish this chapter."
I loved the way the book ended. Like a mini-series "to be continued" type of thing. The end made me teary eyed, but I knew more was to come. I asked Andrew if he had the next book. He grinned, searched his room, then handed me his copy of The Protectors. I laughed and kissed his forehead. We both laughed.
I've since met some of Andrew's best gay friends. I love them all.
Andrew's friends, and Lisa and me, gather some nights and read out loud selected parts of Dave Brown's books. Since they are fantisy, we relate which of the characters we feel we are like. Lisa takes to Rachel Harrington. I like to be Jimmy Ratchett. Andrew, with his muscles, likes to think of himself as Frank. No one has ever thought they were either Jake or Wiley. Those characters seem to be role models for all of us.
Enough said.

Rating:
Summary: Those Thrilling Days of Yesteryear!
Review: What a ride! The "Legend of the Golden Feather" series, of which Bristlecone Peak is Book One (a fourth episode is in the works) is a well-written, gripping, homespun adventure right out of the old movie serials, or TV's Lone Ranger, Bonanza, Have Gun, Will Travel --- chock full of authentic Western history, locations and characterizations, but with one added twist. The heroes are gay!

The Greeks have their myths, the Romans their commentaries, the medieval monks their hourbooks, the Japanese their tales of the shoguns, the Egyptians their books of the dead...and the Americans have the Wild West, a time and place of vigor, greed, virtue, vice, valor, deceit, and adventure. In other words, a microcosm of all human history.

Until now an important aspect of that predominantly male society has been ignored, except for scholarly treatises buried in university libraries. The Old West was truly a place where men were men, where Puritan prudishness and prejudice (except towards the Indian) were often left on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River as men seeking a better life wandered westward. Yup, there were cowboys and wranglers and hostlers and miners and homesteaders and cattlemen who, if only for lack of female society, found spiritual -and physical- refuge in the arms of another man.

Until Bristlecone Peak by Dave Brown, the West has been cheated of an undeniable part of its history, i.e. men with men, and in a way more intimate than just cowpokin'! But the book is no dry and serious study of old diaries or suppressed confessions, but rather a work of fiction based on the author's intensive studies, a rip-roarin' adventure sure to satisfy the modern adult grown cynical with age, tired of impersonal technology and its attendant social isolation. We live at a time that yearns after the innocence and carefree joy in life which seems to have vanished with adolescence. Dave Brown offers any reader the opportunity to escape the rat race and find the wonder of youth once more, but mixed with the passions and experience of a grown-up to offer a more stimulating involvement.

The book's heroes, Jake Brady and Wiley Deluce, find one another in the Colorado mining town of Alma some 20 years after the Civil War. Their reasons for being there are quite different, as are their personalities. Jake is a 24-year-old Kentucky farm boy, full of youthful exuberance and wide-eyed wonder for the whole world and all that is in it. Wiley hails from Vermont. college educated in Boston, last residing in Philadelphia before his trip West, a man who has already at age 25 reached some cynicism in life, and who carries with him a shady past. Around the two protagonists author Brown weaves a tale of burgeoning friendship and love set against obstacles of trumped-up revenge, cattle-rustling, crooked lawyers, the fabled woman wronged, the injustices committed against Native Americans, all the while avoiding the Hollywood clichés. Brown writes in a clear and direct English that matches the comparable simplicity of the era he portrays. In other words, Eastern sophistication melts before manly straightforwardness!

Whenever an author can create characters which remain in the reader's memory as though they had been real people, actual experiences, then such a writer has proved the rare talent of intimate communication only a book can yield. Those addicted to computer games or home video are missing a very human component in their diversions, and education. Brown's Jake and Wiley are so real that when one finishes reading the series, he sorely misses their almost palpable presence, the vicarious friendship mediated by the books. In fact, no gay man can help but fall for country boy Jake, his aw-shucks innocence coupled to common sense observation of life; his confident rejection of hetero tyranny supported by his very private dependence on a country-style sentiment of religion, or better, his personal, spiritual friendship with Jesus, as one would expect from such a man of simple farm upbringing and 3rd grade education. The reader cannot help but laugh at, and envy, Jake's heartwarming, youthful exuberance. But for all that, Jake is not simple-minded, not a cornpone country bumpkin, but rather an endearing, naturally wise young man unencumbered by the veneer of feminized East Coast civilization. His innate spirituality, his private friendship with a man Jesus rather than a cold, churchly icon, go hand-in-hand with Jake's sense of otherness in his lack of "normal" desires for women and consequent rejection by his father. These traits allow Jake to grasp better the sentiments, the betrayals and ostracism at the hands of white society endured by the Indians he encounters; and that portion which is Indian and different in Wiley, contributing on a subliminal level to their love. More importantly, this innate and natural spirituality which is the core of Jake's character allows him to better understand the pantheism of the Native American; and Wiley's part Iroquois heritage lends more underscore to the role Indian mysticism plays in the novels.

Incredibly, the Golden Feather series takes the reader on a journey that not only brings the Old West back to life, but also manages to tie it to directly as a plot device to the present day, a device this review will not spoil for the new reader! Suffice to say that the adventures which begin with Bristlecone Peak and run through the Legend series revolve around a fixed point: the friendship, the love, shared by Jake and Wiley through changing landscapes of mystery and danger, even of time. That is the adventure they selflessly share with every reader, reviving in him memories from adolescence of similar if less exotic loves and adventures. This is not to imply that the books are juvenile in the Tom Swift vein, but rather a portal back to the sensations of joy and anticipation before adulthood and a cold technological age robbed life of its sense of wonder. The beauty of a sunrise, the dignity of human struggle, the value of friendships, the virtue of tolerance, all are forgotten in front of a TV or computer CRT. That which is of lasting value, the human part in all of us, finds resuscitation in these beautiful books from the heart and soul of Dave Brown. Book Two of the Legend Series is entitled The Protectors; Book Three, Home to Kentucky. Book Four is in the pipeline scheduled for 2001.