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Rating: 
Summary: A Tough Story of Tough Men Excellently Told
Review: Blake saddles you up and sends you out riding and raiding with Quantrill's Raiders and Bloody Bill Anderson's Gang. It was hell. The political situation was all screwed-up and the worst type of border warfare erupted all over. You'll see it all first-hand as only Blake can tell it. You'll ride like hell, fight like hell, stink like hell, and hell, some of you won't make it. Saddle up!
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Summary: wildwood boys
Review: excellent excellent! This is really good J.C. Blake novel. he is a master of blood and guts, without it being overpowering. The characters are lifelike, they will jump out at you. If you like western history with a little romance and a touch of palatable gore, then you've got to try Blake. I've read all of his other novels (that I can get my hands on) and have put him on my "must read" list of authors.
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Summary: Discover Blake!
Review: Five solid GOLD stars for this phenomenal book! Blake grabs you by the throat from the very beginning and doesn't let up until you lay gasping for breath at book's end. Historically accurate with characters you can feel and dialogue that will leave you hanging on each word, this book is a "show-stopper' that you will read and re-read. You'll be right back at Amazon ordering his other books and, (horrors!) down at the local Public Library ordering his earlier out-of-print works. Get 'em all.......He doesn't disappoint!
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Summary: Don't bother- unrealistic, unpoetic & generally uncompelling
Review: I hate to be the dissenting voice to all the gushing reviews for this book, but I thought it was weak at best. The plot was thin, the dialogue sophmoric, the character development was forced, and the overall portrait of the war was unrealistic. For example, the bushwackers that form the core of the book are almost invincible except at times that aid the story. In battles with even seasoned federal calvary, they rarely lose more than one or two men while wiping out dozens of enemies. They never suffer from hunger, even at a time when many farms were burned.But, setting aside the lack of historical credibility, the book never evokes the feelings of the war or its human impact in a way that Charles Frazier did (I only bring up the comparision b/c of the quote on the paper edition). Bill, our main man here, never develops as a character- he just sort of lurches from phase to phase. I wouldn't bother with this book- there are so many other novels of the Civil War worth your time.
Rating: 
Summary: good
Review: I wish there were more writers like James Carlos Blake out there, who write about interesting historical themes and don't make it boring as hell. For example, His the friends of Pancho Villa told me more about Villas' life in under 300 pages than Friedrich Katzs' the life and times of Pancho Villa did in over a thousand. This is probably because nobody would want to finish the latter because it is so very boring. It bothers me when a writer takes on a subject who had an interesting or adventurous life and somehow makes it as fun as the clap. huzzah and kudos to James Carlos Blake!
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Summary: The bloody meridian of the Border War
Review: James Carlos Blake, the descendant of an American pirate in the Caribbean, once said he wanted to write the most violent book in American literature. In "Wildwood Boys," he might have succeeded. But the savage narrative isn't driven only by the body count nor the visceral horror in his account of barbaric guerrilla warfare; what makes this book truly horrific is the pure poetry and haunting beauty of Blake's writing. This is the richly re-imagined story of William Anderson, the real-life bushwhacker protégé of William Quantrill, the ruthless sacker of Lawrence, Kansas. For most of the Civil War, Quantrill commanded lawless, Southern-sympathizing brigands whose mass murders, rapes and calculated terror devastated pro-Union towns in the border states -- until he was eclipsed by the living, gore-splashed myth who came to be known as Bloody Bill Anderson. Of course, historical fiction wouldn't succeed if it didn't disturb the placid waters of allegedly true history. Blake portrays Anderson as a moral monster: a lover of dumb animals and poetry; a cold-blooded guerrilla who questioned the massacre of civilians, but did nothing to stop it; a principled leader of soulless pirate-warriors such as Jesse and Frank James, and Cole Younger; a devoutly loyal son and brother; a pathological hater of Yankees; even a handsome and gallant romantic who marries a young prostitute because she reminds him of his spirited little sister -- with whom he had a vaguely incestuous kinship. Anderson's famous 1864 raid on Centralia, Mo., is recounted in graphic detail, reworked to blunt the razor-sharp edge of traditionally accepted accounts of the terror he wrought. And by the time Bloody Bill is shot dead a few months later, his bullet-riddled corpse photographed and desecrated by Union troopers, the reader actually feels some sympathy for one of the most prolific mass-murderers in American history.
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Summary: A Master Storyteller
Review: Some authors you read because the journey is better than the destination, but I find with Blake it's the opposite. His action and storytelling outweigh his poetry, although there is poetry, to be sure. He writes with a passion and moves with a purpose. And yes, as other reviews state here, he does not disappoint.
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Summary: THE WILDWOOD BOYS
Review: THIS WAS AN EXCELLENT BOOK. I LOVED IT. IT TOOK ME BACK TO THAT TIME AND PLACE, AND GAVE ME A LOOK AT A GREAT HISTORICAL STORY. ONE REVIEWER WAS SO BIAS, I AM SURE HE WAS FOR THE OPPOSITE SIDE IN THIS STORY. HE MUST BE VERY UNHAPPY AND COWARDLY IN HIS APPROACHES TO NOVELS.
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Summary: THE WILDWOOD BOYS
Review: THIS WAS AN EXCELLENT BOOK. I LOVED IT. IT TOOK ME BACK TO THAT TIME AND PLACE, AND GAVE ME A LOOK AT A GREAT HISTORICAL STORY. ONE REVIEWER WAS SO BIAS, I AM SURE HE WAS FOR THE OPPOSITE SIDE IN THIS STORY. HE MUST BE VERY UNHAPPY AND COWARDLY IN HIS APPROACHES TO NOVELS.
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