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Summary: Young Gus and Call on Western Adventure
Review: In McMurty's prequel to Lonesome Dove, we see the young Gus McCrea and Woodrow Call at the beginning of their Rangering days. It is interesting because both characters are clearly the men they will become in Lonesome Dove, yet without the assurance and confidence that carried them so easily through that book's trials. The author does a good job of portraying them as believable youths rather than as copies of their later selves in younger bodies. This is a roaming tale. There are three trips which encompass the book. The first is a brief and futile foray against the fearsome Comanche Buffalo Hump. The second, a long and futile expedition to capture Spanish Gold in New Mexico that is thwarted by the elements and a Mexican army. The third, a march in captivity through a desolate country that will prove to be a more ruthless enemy than the Indian or the sons of the conquistadors. I will warn the reader, the ending is a little bizarre and seems out of place with the rest of the book (and the preceding two) -- it really lost the Western feel for me. This journey is much less purposeful and more fantastic than that portrayed in LD or Streets of Laredo. This tale feels at times a bit forced, with something exciting fitted neatly into every chapter. On the whole however, it is a good yarn that captures a flavorful frontier West before the Civil War. McMurty remains a gifted storey teller who is able to drive the reader through his pages with gifted dialogue and excellent descriptions. I'm already digging into McMurty's last book of the Lonesome Dove series, Comanche Moon.
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Summary: Great book! I loved it!
Review: It was really gory, and I love gory books. There was also a main theme. A lot of people say "It just wasn't realistic." How would they know? I would be worrying about the Indians not the desert, because the stuff they do to people they catch, is a lot worse than being thirsty, or dieing of starvation. Woodrow Call's character in this book was outstanding. I find Call and Gus a lot easier to understand in Dead Man's Walk, because they are younger.
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Summary: Gus and Call without the humor
Review: Larry McMurtry's Dead Man's Walk, the original perquel to Lonesome Dove, features that book's main characters when they were just youngsters and had first joined the Texas Rangers. Like Lonesome Dove, it is a big book with a lot of characters and a lot of action, but it differs significantly in that there is very little humor and the character's stories don't mesh into any coherent plot line or ultimate resolution. It is in essence a picaresque novel that kind of wanders around - as do the characters in the story. While Call and Gus are shown to have the beginnings of the personalities that would endear them to Lonesome Dove readers, they are also shown as having little depth and no experience. They really are clueless. And pitted against the merciless indians they face it is a miracle that they survive. Of course they have to for the sake of the story but it isn't any talent or savvy on their own part that makes survival possible. Despite its limitations, this is still a very interesting book. The action is quite satisfying even if the characters are not.
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Summary: Larry McMurtry meets Herman Hesse
Review: Larry McMurtry, true to form, mows down some of his most interesting characters with the most gruesome fates while keeping his central characters alive--often by sheer luck rather than by any skill or virtue of their own. He is far less attached to his characters than his readers (that would be you and I) do. His ill-fated Ranger expeditions teach Woodrow Call the value of planning and training, but Call and McRae both owe their survival ultimately to the drawing of a white bean in a high stakes lottery and the (rather miraculous) vocal skill of a leprous British widow. That lottery may be a summation of the author's view of life. Skill aids; circumstrance rules. Everyone loves Gus, but Call is the one who truly understands. Very entertaining--but a bit disapointing in its rather mystical final chapters. I don't mind the premise, but I would have liked the two rangers to have been less miraculously saved. I was also put off a little by Danny Deck's disappearance at the end of "All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers"--same type of thing here.
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Summary: Not what I had hoped for
Review: Like many others, I read Dead Man's Walk after I read Lonesome Dove. I picked up Dead Man's Walk to read about Gus & Call as young men. The story itself was interesting, but the character development was definitely lacking. I was disappointed that they were so one dimensional, Gus is always scheming for a poke and Call never lets his hair down. If this were my introduction to the series, I would not have read the next book - Comanche Moon.
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Summary: Read this book before Lonesome Dove
Review: Lonesome Dove got all the attention and won the Pulitzer Prize - deservedly so - but then McMurtry wrote two prequels and one sequel. Each book could be read and enjoyed separately or out of sequence, but for anyone new to this fine series, why not read them in the proper order? In Lonesome Dove, the two main characters, Gus and Call, are experienced and mature, and their circumstances and the time they live in are relatively safe (from Indians). The two prequels, Dead Man's Walk and Comanche Moon, are nitty-gritty adventure stories that respect the Indians and the Mexicans. The Texas Rangers are realistically portrayed in all their inexperience and naivete, fear, courage, sense of determination and adventure. Nothing is held back, and while the violence might be too gruesome for some, it is never gratuitous. I admit that the ending to Dead Man's Walk is almost too fantastic, but I defy anyone not to enjoy it. I disagree with other reviewers; McMurtry had his heart in all four of the books in this series. For a special treat, I would recommend listening to the audio version of these stories.
Rating: 
Summary: Not even close...
Review: McMurtry didn't even try very hard to show us the young Rangers. The characters are flat, and some of the dialogue is witless. Save your money.
Rating:
Summary: Not even close...
Review: McMurtry didn't even try very hard to show us the young Rangers. The characters are flat, and some of the dialogue is witless. Save your money.
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Summary: A Most Intriguing "Western"
Review: Shattering many of the old stereotypes recalling the "glory" of the Old West, McMurtry has actually created many new stereotypes of his own. Here, in this new tale, are the grotesques we have come to expect of him, the suddenly violent eruptions, the sense of utter despair. And yet the tale resonates, with its feeling of hopelessness, with all the aimless wandering and low-down betrayals and the angry, incomprehensible bloodiness of the Indians who understand the land better than the whites and yet are doomed to lose it to the ever swelling numbers of them as they trek west to encroach on the Indian lands. Neither side understands the other and so are brought together in nothing less than a bloody war of attrition. The harshness of the terrain in which they all travel imposes its bloody, dehumanizing regimen on these people. This tale is, finally, one of pointless wandering by men who seem to have nothing better to do. And, indeed, perhaps they haven't. Even more, it is a tale of the savage interplay between the peoples of this land as Indians brutalize whites and Texans brutalize Mexicans who, in turn, brutalize the Texans, each yielding to the baser impulses which the land elicits from them. There is not much plot here either, just the love of adventure of two young frontier boys on the way to becoming men which draws them into one foolhardy campaign after another, leading them to participate in, and witness, some of the meanest conditions living can offer, and some of the ugliest means of dying. It doesn't quite make men of them, to be sure, but it hardens them and teaches a bit about living in the harsh world in which they find themselves -- a world which, through good luck and some basically sound personal traits, they manage to survive in long enough to embrace. I am reluctant to invoke LONSEOME DOVE here, the tale which started all this but, in fact, that is the obvious reason for this book, to show us how the two old Texas Rangers, Call and MacCrae, got to be the way we found them in the latter book. And yet it all works here without reference to that first book. This one reverberates with a real feeling of life, despite its lack of any real plot and the utter sense of despair which permeates the tale. And it holds you. It's not so much that you want to know what happens (I already largely did, having seen the TV movie previously), but that you want to be there with them, to experience the world which McMurtry so brilliantly conjurs up for Call and MacCrae. Sometimes it's not a matter of trying to guess what's around the next bend only but wanting to live it. And that's what McMurtry gives us here. And that's good writing.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent! Smooth reading, enticing characters.
Review: Sure, nothing can rival Lonesome Dove or Terms Of Endearment, yet, anyway. But this book is so smooth. An easy read that gives you a good feel for what got Call & McCrea started. I loved it, and would love to see some more tales of our two heroes in their younger years! Thanks Larry, a good escape! I'll pass it on.
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