Comanche Moon

Rating:
Summary: A very good book. Although Lonesome Dove is hard to top.
Review: Im interrested in Inish Scull. Was he a real person or a fictional character. I would love to see this in Movie form with Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall.

Rating:
Summary: Worthwhile, though not gripping
Review: Perhaps it is unfair to judge a book against a classic such as Lonesome Dove, however this is a hazard faced by writers of sequels (or in this case prequels). While much of the book was fascinating, such as those parts dealing with Inish Scull, Ahumado, Blue Duck and Buffalo Hump, it almost seems that McMurtry has run out of interesting things to say about Call and McCrae. While Lonesome Dove captivates from the start, Comanche Moon, like most good but not great books, allowed me to start feeling drowzy around midnight. Certainly this is a worthwhile book and at 700+ pages, it is well worth the price.

Rating:
Summary: Comanche Moon, good but not consistent.
Review: I loved Lonesome Dove. I also enjoyed the sequals(and prequals). I found that I could hardly put Comanche Moon down. It is a good book but be forewarned if you are a stickler for details, you may be disappointed. There are too many inconsistencies.

Rating:
Summary: Audio Review
Review: I read/listen to everything that McMurtry writes. Previous audio cassettes of his work were very good. The narrator of this work ruins it. He seems more impressed with tonal quality and over working the narrative. Occasionally he forgets to over act and the quality of the book comes through. I hope the publisher goes back to one of the narrators used on previous tapes.

Rating:
Summary: Better than "Streets of Laredo" and "Dead Man's Walk"
Review: I am a big McMurtry fan and was very excited to see this published. But, I was a little more than disappointed. I guess "Lonesome Dove" is a tough act to follow. With this novel, McMurtry tries to set the action for "Lonesome Dove". But, there are still many questions that are not answered. Such as, why is Call always so stoic and literal. Why is he this way? There is no section on how Call felt after he learned of Maggie's death. Since a great deal is spent on their relationship, or lack thereof, it would have added a few more pages but, heh, at 750 + what's a few more? The "rangering" sections are still top form. I particularly loved the sections on the Indians and their relationship to the gods and the earth. Buffalo Hump's characterization is probably the best in the novel. McMurtry does set up Blue Duck as one mean SOB. I had trouble putting it down but was not compelled to feel I had to read it in one sitting. But, a big thanks must go out to McMurtry for bringing these wonderful characters back into our world again.

Rating:
Summary: For lover's of American Indian tales....this is a "keeper"
Review: The fierce Commanche warrior Hunter Wolf is chosen by his people to cross the western wilderness in search of the elusive maiden who would fulfill thier sacred prophecy. He finds and captures Loretta Simpson, a proud golden-haired beauty who swears to defy her captor. What she doesn't realize is that she and Hunter are bound by destiny. When she is finally convinced of her love for Hunter she is given a wedding present by her lover's jealous enemy. It is a comb that belonged to her mother. Realizing that Hunter's tribe was responsible for killing her mother, she runs away. She can never stay with those that killed her family. Hunter goes after her.

Rating:
Summary: A worthy prequel to the classic Lonesome Dove
Review: "Comanche Moon" is described as the final volume of the "Lonesome Dove" saga although chronologically it is the second of the four novels, taking place between "Dead Man's Walk" and "Lonesome Dove". Readers of the other volumes in series will encounter familiar names here: Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae, of course, but also Jake Spoon and Pea Eye Parker and Deets of "Dove", Long Bill Coleman and Buffalo Hump of "Walk", Famous Shoes and Charlie Goodnight of "Streets of Laredo" and others. As has become increasingly evident in his novels, McMurtry is not concerned with presenting a story of the West correct in all the minor historical details. For example, in "Comanche Moon" we find one character armed with a Winchester rifle 10 years before that weapon's introduction. Instead, his aim appears to be to create a story of about four parts gritty realism and one part romantic myth - and in "Comanche Moon" he achieves success. The novel abounds with characters more extravagant, larger-than-life personalities, yet these people are true to the story McMurtry is telling. Captain Inish Scull of the Texas Rangers and his wife, Inez, and the "Black Vaquero" Ahumado are unlikely to have had close real-life models, but in "Comanche Moon" they are forceful, fascinating figures. As is usual, McMurtry's characters are driven by their own obsessions. If I might sum up the theme of this novel, and much else of McMurtry's fiction, I would say that it would be "times change, people don't" - and not just "people" in the larger sense, but people as individuals, holding true to their own particular, narrow view of how they should live their lives. Characters like Woodrow Call and Inish Scull and Buffalo Hump are admirable because of their great integrity, no matter what destruction they seed while pursuing their individual visions of what is right. In "Comanche Moon", McMurtry's Indian characters - the Comanche Buffalo Hump and Kicking Wolf and the Kickapoo Famous Shoes - are perhaps more finely drawn than in any of the other Lonesome Dove books. They are not merely white men wearing paint and feathers. They live and die by their own logic, as alien as that system of belief may seem to a late Twentieth Century reader. Although any judgment must be subjective, I would rate "Comanche Moon" as at least the equal of "Streets of Laredo" and better than "Dead Man's Walk", although not so high as the magnificent "Lonesome Dove". I know that part of my enjoyment of the novel is my familiarity with several of the major characters, and my advice to any reader new to the "Lonesome Dove" saga would be to read the books in their order of publication rather than their chronological order of internal dates.

Rating:
Summary: A real page turner.
Review: This book is wonderful. It's about the rise and fall of powerful leaders and the demise of the Indian way of life. My favorite part of the book is the end of Chapter 31 in Book III, when the great white snow owl flies near the face of Famous Shoes, the scout and tracker for the Rangers. Famous Shoes is more frightened than he's ever been before in his life because the white owl means death-the death of a great man. Gus's cheerful comment about the owl being a "right pretty" bird is priceless. I've read the end of that chapter quite a few times because it's so powerful...
"Famous Shoes realized then, when he heard Captain McCrae's casual and cheerful tone, that it was as he had always believed, which was that it was no use talking to white men about serious things. The owl of death, the most imposing and important bird he had ever seen, had flown right over the two captains' heads, and they merely thought it was a pretty bird. If he tried to persuade them that the bird had come out of the earth, where the death spirits lived, they would just think he was talking nonsense.
Captain Call was no more bothered by the owl than Captain McCrae, a fact which made Famous Shoes decide not to speak. He turned and led them west again, but this time he proceeded very carefully, expecting that Blue Duck might be laying his ambush somewhere not far ahead, in a hole that one would not notice until it was too late." A short time later the white owl was spotted by Buffalo Hump as he was preparing for his death.
The Indian characters were brought to life in this book. I was awed by them.
Who would have thought a western could be so much fun to read!

Rating:
Summary: "Bible and sword!"
Review: This is kind of a mixed bag and if you view the Pulitzer Prize winning "Lonesome Dove" as sacrosanct, you'll probably want to avoid it. But if you just want to spend a little more time with Gus, Call, Deets, Jake Spoon, Blue Duck and my favorite character, the Kickapoo tracker Famous Shoes, then prepare to kick back for a while.

"Comanche Moon" has two things working against it right off the bat. First of all, it falls chronologically between two better known novels and it's straight-jacketed by the fact that we already know very well what happens to most of the characters. That limits the ability of what McMurtry can do and while it makes, say, Jake Spoon's boyhood actions more poignant because we know where he eventually ends up, it also means that when Blue Duck wades in to fight a duel to the death with a sworn enemy, we know what *won't* happen, because we know Blue's fate, too.

Plus, it extends one of my least favorite aspects of "Lonesome Dove" (Call's tedious and inexplicable disavowal of Maggie and Newt) and since we already know he never claims her as a wife or Newt as a son, a boring issue becomes even more frustrating.

The other problem is that the novel is broken into three parts, or "books." The first establishes Call and Gus in their 30s, patrolling the llano under Capt. Inish Scull and becoming captains themselves. The second covers the Comanches' raid to the sea and Scull's bloody battle of wills with Ahumado, the Black Vaquero. And the third closes the gap and points the way to the opening of "Lonesome Dove."

The reason this is a problem is that Scull's "Book II" struggle against Ahumado is the most interesting part of the story and because of this "Book III" feels like it arrives in the wake of a blown load. McMurtry skims through the Civil War and the rangers' approach to middle age, and as much as I like the characters, it feels a bit anticlimactic.

Nevertheless, it's a worthy entry to the series (and, if McMurtry is still in the mood to write about any of these characters, I seriously would love to see a book solely devoted to Scull or Mr. Shoes). After I finished "Lonesome Dove," I was still in the mindset of these books and plunged right into "Comanche." By the time I finished "Comanche," I realized I'd absorbed over 1600 pages of this material -- no wonder McMurtry sometimes loses track of where Clara is when or how Maggie lived before she died. Sixteen hundred pages and I have half a mind to start on into re-reading "Streets of Laredo."

There's just something fascinating to me about McMurtry's matter-of-fact prose and his plain-phrased approach to the country, violence, sex, horse maintenance, Native Americans (who are presented with respect but without faux-varnish) and just the day-to-day process of living in the 1800's and getting yourself from point A to point B in an age before accurate maps, cell phones, interstates and cruise control.

Rating:
Summary: Lots of Problems, but Still Enjoyable (3.5 Stars)
Review: First, I will wail, and lament, and gnash my teeth (all five of them). "Lonesome Dove," THE definitive novel of the American West, should have proudly stood all alone, on its own shining merits, sans sequels and prequels. From what I understand, several motives drove Larry McMurtry to write the other three books in the "Lonesome Dove" series; I only wish he had resisted all temptations and allowed Gus and Call to dwell in literary history exclusively in the pages of his Pulitzer Prize winning novel. But, I realize, I'm whistling up a ladder: a sequel ("Streets of Laredo") and two prequels ("Dead Man's Walk" and COMANCHE MOON) were written, and now that the "Lonesome Dove" series is complete, with McMurtry's COMANCHE MOON, I found myself relishing a psuedo "closure" with the story--with the author's unforgettable characters.

COMANCHE MOON is a delightful read, starting in the mid-1850's, when Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call were coming into their own as newly-promoted Captains in the Texas Rangers. Gus and Call's main task: keep marauding bands of Comanches, led by the menacing Buffalo Hump, out of the western frontier settlements (no easy task, given the Rangers' limited resources and manpower). Even more fun, we get to meet, for the first time, the mainstays of Lonesome Dove's Hat Creek Cattle Company: Deets, Pea Eye Parker, Jake Spoon--Newt Dobbs. For this very reason, there is so much more of a "connection" with "Lonesome Dove," a fact making this prequel so entertaining.

Yet, despite its entertainment value, what is this book about? What is the motor that drives the story? Why are we reading about Gus and Call as they travel the llano estacado in search of bad guys (some very, very bad guys)? I must confess: after some 750-plus pages, I still don't know what this book is about, as the plot meanders and swirls over some 10-year period, and nothing. . .nothing. . .is resolved, when it ends. We are introduced to a plethora of interesting characters, who do very interesting things, but their deeds (or misdeeds) do nothing to enhance the nonstory. And Maggie Tilton, Newt's long-suffering mother who so desperately loves Call, leaves the story with an insignificant whimper that did her character no justice. On turning the last page I felt so incomplete I wish there had been another 300, or more, pages to tie up infinite loose ends. For one thing: the town--Lonesome Dove--does, briefly, dominate the story, yet we're given no details telling us how Gus and Call left the Rangers, left Austin, and moved south to the Rio Grande. An integral facet setting up "Lonesome Dove," I would maintain, so why doesn't McMurtry provide more information?

There are also numerous chronological/timeline/plot inconsistencies leading into "Lonesome Dove," but I won't go over this tired old ground; it's been rehashed via several reviews on this website. But I will express my utter disapointment, for a book coming out of a major publishing house like Simon & Schuster, at all the typos--and just plain sloppiness--of the copy. Where in the world were the copy editors? On Spring Break? They weren't paying attention to the proofs, that's for sure, so reading this book becomes a most turbulent experience.

For diehard fans of the "Lonesome Dove" series, COMANCHE MOON will, overall, constitute a must-read. For those of us who mourn the fact the original novel spawned three other books, this novel has its moments--and its problematic non-moments. I only wish this book hadn't been written, but since it has, I recommend it with very reserved reluctance.
--D. Mikels