Rating: 
Summary: A Story and Maybe Something More
Review: What makes fiction fiction? Or at least what makes it serious fiction? A recent article in the New York Times extolled the virtues of the "post-modern" literary milieu in which authors allegedly meld the visceral with the experimental in order to re-combine the purely intellectual approach of those deemed by Philip Rahv (of PARTISAN REVIEW fame) to be literary "pale-faces" with the more earthy renderings of those he called the "red-skins." Story, as such, doesn't count for much in this analysis. And yet this surely gives short shrift to that aspect of fiction, leaving the telling of stories to the lower realm of so-called commercial fiction. An error in my mind since I think that stories, modernism or post-modernism be damned, are what fiction ought to be about. But what constitutes a story? McMurtry is an author who has repeatedly demonstrated his facility for telling tales though he has not surrendered his place in serious literature for that. And yet this one, COMMANCHE MOON, is no story in the ordinary sense at all. Nor is it experimental in any post-modern sense either. And yet it succeeds because it weaves a world of events for us which give us the feeling of being there, that we have seen and felt what its characters have seen and felt once we have turned the final page. Here is a tale of men surviving in a world of unknowable and almost metaphysical violence, of men who are not heroes in any formal sense of that word, men who are often clumsy, thoughtless blunderers who "make it through" by a combination of will and luck rather than heroic achievements. The last tale in the LONESOME DOVE saga, this one may be the strangest yet as it takes the two Texas Rangers, Gus MacCrae and Woodrow Call, through their formative years and into their maturity. Theirs is an odyssey of survival as they set out on numerous expeditions which mostly end in failure or partial success, at best. Although they are apparently successful much of the time (we hear about their capturing and hanging numerous thieves and brigands) it is not their successful forays which interest McMurtry. Rather it is those events which seem to characterize for him the futility of existence itself. Gus and Call repeatedly bang their heads against the harsh west Texas ground as they go after the Commanches (who are dwindling, though ever formidable, in the face of the white onslaught) and the implacably evil Mexican bandit Ahumado (a man, if we may call him that, whom even the Commanches fear, a man who seems to have stepped out of our darkest nightmares). The heroism here is not one of gunplay or gunfighters in bloody face-offs but of survival, as men contend against an implacably unfriendly world, a world in which all are beasts in an unremitting place where only the Law of the Jungle prevails. It is Gus and Call's victory to have survived this world and to have grown competent enough to endure it and, in the end, to have outlasted it as the tides of new settlers sweep over the violent and bloody west Texas plains and wash away the old ways and peoples. There is a terrible violence here which may be McMurtry's vision of the world as it is. And the heroism is nothing less than surviving the worst nightmares men can conjure up for their fellows. Women are brutally raped and slaughtered; men fare no better. All are subject to the vilest of tortures, some literally being skinned alive -- all very distasteful in the end. And yet it's also uplifting in a strange sort of way as our heroes outlast the dark world they have somehow stumbled into. No, there is no story here in the ordinary sense for this is a book of episodic and generally incomplete missions and contests between men who in the end are barely more than beasts (either because they are predatory or because they are reduced to resisting the predations of others). And yet it is a book which absorbs us and gives the sense of being there. In that sense it is certainly a tale. And a level of fiction which I doubt the so-called post-modernists, with all their experimental pretensions, are ever likely to achieve.
Rating: 
Summary: Nope
Review: The reviewer: 'A reader from Pittsburgh', hit the nail on the head. He/she notes-"A weary tale...but what's with all the torture (he seems to relish it)..I couldn't wait for it to end which it did finally with out resolving much." I agree with him\her. It was a depressing book. I'm now reading "Streets of Laredo", it's more like "Lonesome Dove".
Rating: 
Summary: Powerful story and reader
Review: I've listened to hundreds of audio books, but this is one of my all time favorites. Frank Muller is, if not the best, then the top 1% of audio book readers. The combination of an extremely powerful story and frank muller makes this one of my favorite audio books of all time. I've listened to other McMurtry books, but none were as incredibly written or phenomenally narrated as this story.Note to McMurtry: Continue this powerful style of constant action and drama. Be sure to have Frank Muller read all your work from now on. He *is* the best.
Rating:
Summary: a must book for truly avid readers
Review: I have read all of mcmurty's books. He is the type of author that you hate for the story to end. His writing style is so very easy to follow as well as relaxing. In Commanche Moon, Gus, Call are their old usual selves as well as Pea Eye. I truly wish this saga could go on forever. I am an african-american female so it may be surprising to some that our culture also enjoy the old west.
Rating:
Summary: Great read, but too many details are wrong
Review: I thought this was a great story. The storys concerning the Comanches were the most compelling to me. I was a little disappointed in the storys regarding the Rangers. They were a little dull in my opinion. After I finished, I was really looking forward to rereading Lonesome Dove, to continue the books in order. However, I have become very annoyed with the little details (well, some not so little)that are not the same from book to book. For example, Jake talks about courting Clara in Lonesome Dove, however she is gone & married in Comanche Moon before he ever would have had a chance. And, in Lonesome Dove, Maggie lived & died there, but in Comanche Moon she lives & dies in Austin. It is distracting to have those kind of discrepencies.
Rating:
Summary: Another you rarely hear about
Review: A good yarn, I haven't read his others and ran onto this one at random. Quite lucky as this is a good one. If his others are this good, I'll order them. I thought the movie, that I really like, had some background but this gives it. I really enjoyed the captain that went to Mexico with his big horse to stand vis-a-vis with the brutal indian that has people skinned or thrown into snake pits. Highly recommended if you like this sort of thing.
Rating:
Summary: Kept Me Reading
Review: Before writing a review, I enjoy browsing previous reviews of the same book. With as many opinions expressed with Comanche Moon, a majority of folks enjoyed this book. What kept me coming back were the characters. Now, I've read how McMurtry's characters were weak but I didn't see that. Every day after work and on weekends, I anxiously picked up where I left off, to see what adventure lay ahead. This is an easy book to unwind. Very enjoyable...
Rating:
Summary: Better than I was expecting!
Review: Having read many of McMurtry's books, including all in the Lonesome Dove series, I was anticipating a let down of sorts. I was pleasantly surprised with Comanche Moon. It developed many of the characters seen in Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo, and even Dead Man's Walk. McMurtry's ability to truly explore the characters about whom he writes is superb. His background and description of the villains made them seem very real, and the suffering of their victims was comparable with anything McMurtry's ever done. This was an outstanding book, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who's acquainted with Captains Woodrow F. Call and Augustus McCrae
Rating:
Summary: Better than I was expecting!
Review: Having read many of McMurtry's books, including all in the "Lonesome Dove" series, I was anticipating a let down of sorts. I was pleasantly surprised with Comanche Moon. It developed many of the characters seen in Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo, and even Dead Man's Walk. McMurtry's ability to truly explore the characters about whom he writes is superb. His background and description of the villains made them seem very real, and the suffering of their victims was comparable with anything McMurtry's ever done. This was an outstanding book, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who's acquainted with Captains Woodrow F. Call and Augustus McCrae
Rating: 
Summary: Famous last words
Review: Larry McMurtry's mission in Comanche Moon seems to have been to fill in the last space in the complete Lonesome Dove saga. This leads to a problem; if there are a lot of loose ends to tie up, the process may distract the reader from any continuous story thread. Part of the difficulty is that the timeline doesn't work well. Woodrow and Gus, based very, very loosely on Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, had a self-contained logic of existence in the marvelous first volume, but it was slightly out of kilter with history. Set in 1876 (I base this on the comment ". . . like they just done to Custer"), a backstory had to stretch a long way and stay consistent. Starting with the Dead Man's Walk (which actually happened, vaguely as recounted -- not Sam Houston's most inspired idea) was a natural, but it left a whole life to be filled in, sometimes with ellisions covering years when nothing much happened. But McMurtry is, as always, the master of villainy. The impenetrably -- and pointlessly -- cruel Ahumado is the perfect foe for Inish Scull, and the most absorbing part of the story for me was their silent contest. I think McMurtry knew he needed to write Comanche Moon, if only to complete the cycle. But I think Woodrow Call was speaking for the author in the novel's last line.
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