Rating: 
Summary: Great historical information, but the characters are lacking
Review: I had high expectations from this book because of the author. I was not disappointed in some respects, but in others I feel this book lacked. What I enjoyed were the colorful descriptions and accurate historical information about the early days of Los Angeles and the desert areas surrounding it. I also appreciated the way the Native Americans were portrayed--not as enemies, but as a complex people whose ways of thinking were deep and unique.
However... was it me, or was Johannes a little too perfect? We have in him a man who is strong, wise, mature, intelligent, competent, open-minded beyond his years and time... and the list could go on and on. I had trouble identifying with him throughout the entire book. Aside from some characters, like Miss Nesselrode, I felt the rest of the people populating this book were a little two dimensional. I especially did not like Meghan, who seemed a little too silly for someone like Johannes. Lastly, there were a few infodumps about historical Los Angeles that were a little to textbook for me.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. Some parts had me up embarrassingly late as I read to find out what happened next. I took off one star for the flaws I mentioned above, but I would reccommend this book to anyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Lonesome Gods: History, action, courage, and more . . .
Review: I love fiction books that include factual, historical data that teach you about California, as you read. Louis L'Amour is a master story teller. He captures your imagination with his courageous, but human, characters (male & female alike). I couldn't put this book down and was disappointed when it ended. It touched me in a way that caused me to look harder at myself, as a person. It encouraged me to say to myself, "I am a child of God and nothing will cause me to be afraid." -- I'm a tougher, better person because of this book. Read it and let it move you, too!
Rating: 
Summary: Not one of L'amour's better efforts
Review: I'm a big fan of Louis L'amour but, ultimately, I found "The Lonesome Gods" to be a rather mediocre effort. It suffers from an excess of historical data which, while interesting, doesn't really serve to advance the plot, weak character development, and an ending that's just a little too pat.The story moves along at a good pace at first with the tale of how Johannes Verne's dying father brought him west in the hopes that his estranged grandfather would take the boy in once his father passed on. However, once Johannes reach Los Angeles the story slows down considerably. At this point not a lot is happening with his characters so L'amour glosses over the passage of large spans of time and spends a great deal of time presenting historical information about the early years of the city but most of it isn't really relevant to the story. The result is that the story becomes bogged down in useless data that doesn't do anything to advance the plot. Making matters worse, I found his handling of the passage of time to be somewhat disorienting and on more than one occasion I found myself wondering if it had just been a few days or a few years since something had happened in the story. Usually I feel that L'amour is pretty good about developing his characters within the constraints allowed by his stories. Unfortunately that's not the case here. The only character to really feel fully fleshed out is Johannes, though the elder Verne and Miss Nesselrode are also fairly well presented. Everyone else is just sort of presented in a peripheral manner and never really achieve a status above stock character types. This becomes very frustrating later in the book when a number of characters are introduced who clearly have interesting stories of their own (Yacub Khan really deserves his own book) but we never really learn the stories. Instead the characters just appear out of nowhere with a little foreshadowing, perform their appointed tasks, and disappear again as if they were never there. Finally, the ending is just a bit too neat. It really feels like L'amour decided the novel had reached the right length and decided to just wrap things up in a nice, neat little package. Everything just suddenly falls into place to bring the story to an end. For example, one villainous character suddenly has a complete change of heart and instantly goes from bad guy to romantic interest with no real explanation. All that said, it's still an enjoyable read. It's just that it's far from the best that L'amour ever wrote. I would not recommend this book as an introduction to his work as I can see the slow pace of the book turning off some people. Instead I would suggest something like "Hondo".
Rating:
Summary: Verne
Review: Louis L'Amour is a giant when it comes to Westerns, and this best-selling historical novel shows why. The hero is Johannes Verne, left to die in the desert as a young boy by his hateful grandfather. L'Amour chronicles Johannes' growth from a naive child into a mature and experienced adventurer whose survival requires him to overcome both murderous enemies and rugged wilderness territory. Action, suspense and intrigue are rarely in short supply. In the course of the action, L'Amour offers delightful descriptions of the desert scenery, and of the small town life of early Los Angeles in a time of rapid transition and growth. "The Lonesome Gods" is not without flaws. The inflated dialogue at times takes on an unrealistic dry sermonizing tone, with one instance of uninterrupted three page monologue (p.108-111). The action is at times rather oddly broken by chapter breaks. The idea of the "lonesome gods" was important enough to make the title, and although is briefly explained as the spirits of the ancient ones who are lonely gods without worshipers (p.54,204,213,309,341,397), it is never fully developed, entirely pagan and hardly believable. Personally I do not share L'Amour's use of blasphemy (p.93), his endorsement of a multi-million-year-old earth (p.76), and his personal existentialist philosophy of self-determination where one's destiny is completely in one's own hands (p.265,341) and that "we're nothing until we make ourselves something." (p.242). Death may be standard fare in most Westerns, but that still does not excuse the twenty corpses littered over the pages, sadly giving the appearance that human life is cheap, and minimizing the tragedy of loss. But the strengths of this novel surpass its weaknesses. It is true that L'Amour does not depart completely from the formulaic Western plot where boy meets girl, shoots some bad guys, and rides off into the sunset with his girl. But in "The Lonesome Gods" L'Amour gives this formula at least some depth, which is more than can be said for most Westerns. He works with deeper themes, such as the development of Johannes Verne's character from childhood to manhood, and the self-destruction that results from his grandfather's obsession with revenge. To say, as California Magazine is quoted on the cover, that "This is L'Amour's finest book" is to say too much. It is not literature, but it is a good light read - an absorbing and enjoyable story. The pace of the action increases significantly towards the end, and you'll find yourself scrambling through the pages, and in the end, quite satisfied.
Rating:
Summary: Ok, but not what I expected
Review: Louis L'Amour is a great story teller, but he lacks depth. The book has about 10 storylines that somehow all come together in the last few pages. I do not agree that the characters are realistic. It is a good entertaining book if you like westerns, but the writing and development could be better.
Rating:
Summary: The Gods live in deserts and mountains
Review: The first thing we have to say about this book is that it does not fit the simplistic vision of western literature or cinema as for Indians. This book is a completely different approach that considers Indians are different, but of a higher level, somewhere, probably a higher mental or even intellectual and definitely spiritual level. And the book contains a severe criticism of Europeans along that line : « First we should study what they believe and how it applies to the way they live. First they must be sure of our respect. » And our respect was far from being obvious and our effort to study and understand what they believed, etc..., was far from being one of our lines of conduct. The book is very rich in that line, showing how they did have some beliefs and some theory of life and nature that went a lot farther than ours at times. So, some may say then that the clash was unavoidable. But it could have been quite different.
The second thing about this book is that it studies in great detail the status and use of violence in Californian society, and even in American society, around the 1840s and later years. The Spaniards were driven by their aristocratic sense of honor that made them look down upon all others without any distinction. They were the cream of the earth. The Mexicans were moved by the desire to keep California within the Mexican state and they were ready to do anything along that line. The Californios desired to be their own masters and become independent and they wanted to seize the day and take part, in a leading position if possible, in the great transformation that was coming up with the opening of California to the American entreprising spirit. Then the Anglos were that driving force that was going to transform California but they did not prove very subtle at times and their finesse was not very much refined and developed in some of them.
The the book is fascinating because of the plot and the characters and it shows how the American enterprising spirit was in phase with the survival instinct of humanity, a survival that could only be achieved through development and the conquest of new territories, new activities and wealth. This could lead to some criminal strategies : steal, murder, take control of what others have developed and accumulated. This could lead to some hard working strategies : work hard for others so that you can take part in the development of the country and get a share of the accumulated wealth, but through your own hands or your own intelligence. It could also lead to some spiritual strategies : those who had a vision of the future, generally rooted in a vision of their past, a vision of a better future rooted in the recollection of their sufferings or their parents' sufferings. But life is then the constant clash between those three groups, particularly between the two extreme groups and the outcome is never sure. Louis L'Amour adds to that a certain amount of mystical and mythical belief that gives some motivations a sort of cosmic dimension because he shows marvelously how the hard life they had to live was building their character and their strength, not only their greed and certainly not their fear.
A great book indeed. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
Rating: 
Summary: I bet they're lonesome
Review: This is only the second L'Amour novel I have read, the other being Hondo (1953). It is absolutely amazing to me that an author can spend thirty years telling stories and forget more than he learns about storytelling. Sadly, The Lonesome Gods is inferior to Hondo in every respect, especially brevity.
But if you like a transparent plot, cardboard characters and dialogue lumpier than cold chuck wagon oatmeal, this may be just the novel for you. Remember, "They're good people, but...".
Rating:
Summary: Should be 4.5
Review: This was one of L'Amour better books. I loved the way we grew up with Johannes. This book was well written (I didn't give it 5 stars because there were a few parts I rolled my eyes), but other than that, worth the read.
The spirituality the dessert and Indians brought to the book was one of my favorite parts. There is life bigger than us - L'Amour was able to express it in an entertaining way.
Unlike one of the other reveiwers I felt he expanded on the characters of the book - and the last 50 pages or so I couldn't put it down - always a sign of a good book.
Rating: 
Summary: one of the worst novels l'amour written
Review: very loose structure, loose plot, lots of repeatedly blahblahblah narrative. when l'amour getting older, he definitely lost his edge as a good western genre writer. he put too much stuff to those mysterious gods, beings, two worlds-one unseenable, one seenable. guess when anyone become older enough to see that he's close to demise would pay more attention to gods, supernature, or whatever that might ensure him that he might have another run in the other world. heaven or hell, that's how people try to pretend that good guys always ascend to heaven, bad guys down to hell, no matter what, good or bad, it's an entension of after life, if there's any. l'amour's later staged writings were all full of mysteries he wanted to probe, to understand, to force himself into belief that his spirit would continue in the other world. his writing during the later stage has become so ordinary, so loose, so tasteless, not as good as his early stuff that were all exciting, fantastic, grand and glamorous. i've completed reading his whole lifetime creative works and love it, but regret to see the deterioration of his later works turned into mediocre and tasteless ones, just like robert ludlum's, jeffrey archer's and other once great writers, when the hands of aging process setting in, the best choice for these writers is, i think, to put away the rotten pens and dimmed imagination, and don't try to cash in continuously and ruin the best ones at the same time. the other worst thing happened to these once great writers is that his offsprings are still trying to cash in after their deaths. that's the greatest sin.
Rating:
Summary: Classic Louis
Review: You could review this book critically detail by detail, but in the end this is classic L'Amour. I don't believe he ever wrote a bad book. No, I'm sure he never did. Some of the books are similar, some are vastly different. He proved himself able to write more than "just westerns". Louis' depth is seen in books like Last of the Breed, The Walking Drum, and Hills of Homicide. The book is interesting in that the lead role, Johannes Verne, is without full time adult supervision from a very young age and with the help of friendly indians must provide for himself. From my recollection this is the youngest character of L'Amour's to "go it alone". In this way, this book is similar to Reilly's Luck ( another youngster alone). This book seems to take a look at eternal things. There is mention of God and the story line is developed along the idea that many gods have existed through time. Men come and go and their gods are left behind with no one remembering who they are or what purpose they served. Unlike God, they are lonesome and left with no followers or those that look after their shrines. Johannes Verne identifies with them out of pity for there lonliness. Although somewhat predictable, I say "who cares". L'Amour's work is excellent. The reasons we love it are the imagery, storytelling, and the close bond we feel with the characters.
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