Rating: 
Summary: Way more than 5.
Review: Blood Meridian will lead you to all the other Cormac McCarthy books, for that same clear power and beauty; but you will not find it.It is here only that McCarthy has taken the language and forged a novel of such individual intensity that it will strike you like the single clear tone from one huge bell. It is an exploration of an archaic vocabulary and a lost culture using a storytellers skill that was last used by Homer. The story and plot are irrelevant other than McCarthy has fashioned a group of crudely chiseled characters on a wide wide horizon of fine resolution; and he moves the characters across a blasted panorama in a pounding and relentless drama. There are portions of the prose that are so perfect in assembly and content that, like the Bible and just a half dozen other documents in English, they should be read aloud. In the thousands of books that I will read in the second half of my life I hope to find one more to equal this Blood Meridian.Put this book up on a shelf next to Homer, Cervantes, Melville, and Joyce.
Rating:
Summary: Greatest American novel since "Moby Dick"
Review: Only three times in my life have I felt like I was reading a great novel -- James Joyce's "Ulysees," Melville's "Moby Dick," and now Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian." This novel comes closer to the landscape of the male unconscious than any other book I've read, and I've read hundreds. A great and wild and obsessive book. It bears re-reading again and again.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece on every level
Review: This novel is filled with the most exquisite sentences I've ever read: laser-accurate diction, uncompromising truthfulness, evocative far beyond Faulkner, perfect structure. The content, the theme, the movement, the freshness on every level are staggering. Brutal beyond anything else I've read, but worth more than anything else I've read, too.
Rating: 
Summary: The problem is, it's repetitive
Review: BLOOD MERIDIAN was published in 1985 and I can see why it achieved lasting acclaim. Cormac McCarthy is a master of sentence and paragraph construction. The beauty of his words and the construction of his sentences provides a basic pleasurable sensation. Which is good for this book, because after a while the narrative begins to drag. They walk through desert. They massacre. They walk through desert. They massacre. They walk through awful landscapes and massacre again. And so on. It seems to lose coherence when it spins off from the heart of "the kid"--which may be a point being made but is damned annoying nevertheless. If you are coming to this novel retrospectively from his Border Trilogy, you might be disappointed in the absence of a "hero" on the scale of John Grady or Billy. At least there is in BLOOD MERIDIAN the character of the judge to (hopefully) capture your attention, though hero definitely does not apply.
Rating:
Summary: Inferno of the American West
Review: Cormac McCarthy is our most talented fiction writer and this is his best work. From his initial effort, The Orchard Keeper, which justifiably won the Faulkner Award, through his Border Trilogy (also justifiable honored with the National Book Award), McCarthy has practiced his craft with literary genius and a painful, searing perspective of the American soul. We have a violent past, the product of a violent streak in our character, and McCarthy explodes that violence on the landscape of the Mexican-U.S. border of the 1850's. The reader delves into the lower reaches of human desolation, hoping to eventually see the light reaching back towards the surface but always turning into a chamber that leads further down into renewed horror and degeneracy, each level a new incarnation of this Western Inferno. The fact that McCarthy can evoke beauty and nuance even amidst this unrestrained human carnage is supreme testament to his skills as an artist. This read is a challenge to the willing - as any approach to great art must be. However, it is well worth the effort with its reward of fantastic panoramas of man's descent into a chaotic state, evil outside the metering bounds of civilization, horrifying in its stark portrayal of the dark side of our national character.
Rating:
Summary: An allegorical tale comparable to "Moby Dick"...
Review: A thought provoking yet entertaining read; definitely one of the best books I've ever read. McCarrthy's imagery is always vivid and often disturbing, and he has produced an epic, oddly twisted and almost mystical journey of death, redemption, and discovery for his character and the reader. I can't recommend this book enough.
Rating:
Summary: A terrible beauty
Review: There is no bleaker or more bitter book. There is no better or more beautiful one, either. This novel, Cormac McCarthy's finest, depicts violence so depraved as to be almost unbearable, and doesn't ameliorate its impact by confining the evil within one or two sociopathic characters. His violence is institutionalized and endemic. His vision indicts the entire project of Western expansionism, and goes farther to become a threnody for the debased human condition.
The writing in this book, though, is so careful and pure that the act of reading it is itself redemptive. As the story grows ever more horrific and threatens to engulf the reader in despair, the cumulative power of detail and diction elevates the spirit and mind. More than almost any other book, "Blood Meridian" shows art's ability to ennoble us while it illustrates our worst aspects.
The experience is exhilarating.
Rating:
Summary: Language trumps all...
Review: Cormac McCarthy's command language is unlike any contemporary author in my experience. There are long descriptive passages here that make me think the words must pour out of him in a way he can barely control. His characters are sketchy, and the reader is never party to what a character might think or feel. You are left with actions and sparse dialogue. Although this may be unusual, it did not keep me from finding one sympathetic, nor does it make the characters less vivid. To say the vision is dark is gross understatement. There are parts where I felt as if I were experiencing some old testament prophet's nightmares. The violence is graphic, and it goes beyond men reacting to situations. There is pure evil here. Overall, descriptive language is the centerpiece of Mr. McCarthy's work. Plot complexity and intricate characters take a back seat. Read a description of the colors of a sunset reflecting on desert plants and rock formations, and you forget all ab! out characters and plot.
Rating:
Summary: Possibly, the greatest book I've read since Moby Dick!
Review: This book proved to me once and for all that reincarnation does exist. Herman Melville is alive and still writing as Cormac McCarthy. I don't know where to begin, except to say; I started over again at chapter one last night. McCarthy is able to weave a tapestry of unforgettable characters who move dream like through a surreal world of violence and horror which left me disturbed and wantng more at the same time. The people in this book are so real, their images were painted in my imagination by the words they speak and the all too brief sketching of their physical attributes put forth by McCarthy. I kept putting this book down, but had to pick it right back up to be sure I'd just read what I'd read. I don't want to give any of the story away, but the adventures of the main character brought tears to my eyes mixed with a sense of revulsion and envy. If you're a Melville fan and are unaware of Cormac McCarthy; you must read this book. Even if you're not, read it. You won'! ! t soon forget it.
Rating: 
Summary: Poetic and brutally exhausting work of art
Review: I am sure Blood Meridian can be considered a literary masterpiece. McCarthy's vocabulary is incredibly rich: vigas, azotea, shacto, cresset, clouting, javelina, sallygate, wainscotted, etc. His prose can be gruesome, as in, "A fistsized hole erupted out of the far side of the woman's head in a great vomit of gore and she pitched over and lay slain in her blood without remedy." But it can also be quite beautiful and poetic, as in, "The dying man by the ashes of the fire was singing and as they rode out they could hear the hymns of their childhood and they could hear them as they ascended the arroyo and rode up through the low junipers still wet from the rain. The dying man sang with great clarity and intention and the riders setting forth upcountry may have ridden more slowly the longer to hear him for they were of just these qualities themselves." Blood Meridian is a copious work of art to be explored for its profundity of treasures. Not for the faint of heart nor for those looking for light poolside reading. A relatively naive reader such as myself would no doubt benefit from some help with the myriad themes and imagery hidden in the folds of McCarthy's prose. Has anyone read "Notes on Blood Meridian", by John Sepich?
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