Rating: 
Summary: Testimonial to the Tetralogy
Review: Comanche Moon is the last of the Lonesome Dove tetralogy revered as the Great American Western epic. Were I to write as well as McMurtry, I would have preferred his grand characters, Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call, to have been literary guides through the true stories of of the Meir, Santa Fe, and Ross Expeditions, Quanah and Cynthia Ann Parker, Bigfoot Wallace, Buffalo Hump and the Comanche Retaliatory Raids after the Council House Massacre, and Billy Dixon's seven-eighths mile shot of the medicine man at Adobe Walls, rather than through literary license to have taken the actions and done the deeds themselves. I would have written more of Charles Goodnight, Oliver Loving, One Arm Bill Wilson, Bose Ikard, Captain Richard King and even John Wesley Hardin, and included the story of Col. Ranald Mackenzie's tactical decision to kill the Comanches' horses in the Palo Duro Canyon, instead of confronting a larger force of hostile Indians with a smaller force of cavalry. That victory ultimately subdued the Comanche, said to have been the greatest light cavalry force in the world. Introduced in Comanche Moon, is a new character in the saga, Captain Inish Scull of Boston. I had first hoped that Captain Jack Hays, great Ranger, Indian fighter, later founder of Oakland, California and philanthropist to California colleges, would be the inspiration for Captain Scull. That notion was quashed when the author introduced Scull's wife Inez/Dolly. Jack Hays would not have suffered such. The true stories themselves make splendid literature and need not be altered to be riveting and entertaining. But I am not such a writer as he, and it is his story.McMurtry claims to be no student of Texas history and finds flaw in Walter Prescott Webb's The Texas Rangers (1935) for "inordinate admiration" [McMurtry, In a Narrow Grave (1968)]; yet he, like Webb, writes as a "symbolic frontiersman". His great Ranger captains must be composites of Captain Jack Hays, Captain Rip Ford, Captain L. H. McNelly, and Ranger scout Charles Goodnight, and his stories amalgams of theirs. His eye for the land captures the mystery and intrigue of the vastness and openness of the Llano Estacado. Its beauty, its starkness, its cultures, creatures and people, its geography, topography, archaeology and history all provide both setting, theme and metaphor. McMurtry writes well of a place he knows well, for as a boy he summered "above/on" the Caprock, at the McMurtry Reunions at Saints' Roost. (Neither preposition has ever seemed right, neither conveying what the Caprock meant to the shape of the lives of the people who lived there. Best said would be "of" as in "he was of the Caprock".) Comanche Moon spends much time both in Austin and of the Caprock. McMurtry's descriptions fit my memories and my imaginations of what the country must have been like during the 100 years removed from my lifetime. One can still see in Austin the lone northeast sally port of what was to have been Texas Military Institute and know exactly the author's inspiration for the Sculls' castle-like mansion above Shoal Creek, with its view of the Governor's Mansion. Today's traveler across the Texas Panhandle can still see the mirages shimmering in the distance and dust devils and blizzards cutting across the flat plains. After traveling miles in the vastness and flatness of the treeless llano from Post, Texas, up State Highway 207 on the way to the Canadian River, stomach leaps to throat as the Grand Canyon-like beauty of Palo Duro Canyon reveals itself. Opening itself to the traveler slowly at first, the country gives subtle clue that something is changing. Then all of a sudden its proportions hammer, as one finally comes close enough to its sides to see its bottom and its drama. Looking down from its south rim, one can see the Canyon's juniper cedar filled floor and imagine the teepees of the Quahadi or Penateka Comanches along the banks of the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River that carved the chasm. McMurtry once claimed to be novelist, "unaccustomed to the strain of prolonged thought" of non-fiction, believing his voice in novel more stentorian and full and with greater range than in essay. [In a Narrow Grave (1968), pp. 138-39, 142] While disclaiming being any thing other than a writer of fiction, it is obvious that McMurtry has read Webb, Bedichek, Dobie, Haley, Graves and Fehrenbach. While not a writer at all, I am glad to say that I have read McMurtry, and Comanche Moon. To my eye and ear it is second only to Lonesome Dove itself. One sees in it the beginning McRae's great dialog which made the first 100 pages of Lonesome Dove worth reading over and over. Through it, one realizes that the western genre has in the past been more about gunfighters than cowboys. McMurtry's Texas Rangers are really not either. Today we see examples of why soldiers should not be policemen, and why policemen should not be organized as paramilitary groups. Unique times and territory dictated that the Rangers be neither, but both. They ranged. And it is the choice of the Rangers that sets the tetralogy apart and allows its epic status. Because I grew up in the Panhandle whose Anglican genesis is yet not so removed from the present, unlike others of my age from other parts of the state, I missed its settlement by only one wide generation and perhaps another not so wide. For this reason, perhaps, the myth and the reality of the Plainsman are to me but one. I never wrestled with any disparity between the sociology and the mythology of the cowboy as McMurtry apparently did. [In a Narrow Grave (1968)] Although a worthy tome, its publisher missed the mark by waiting until November for its release, more mindful of Christmas sales than of its title and theme. It should have been released in early October, allowing the reader to spend late nights and early mornings reading as the big full October Moon traveled across the night sky. The Comanche Moon, the moon under which young Comanche warriors went down the Comanche Trail, from Kansas and the Panhandle crossing into Mexico at Boquillas and Lajitas, of the area now known as the Big Bend, to prove their courage and raid for horses, children and women. The reader could then experience both the beauty of the season and the settlers' fear brought by that the moon. Lonesome Dove was of former rangers, men restless to see new country under a good horse, realizing that action is needed while bodies can still cash the checks written by wills; of friendships and loyalties forged in adventures and hardships; of feelings that the conditions and reasons of one's society that once gave purpose to one's life may no longer be valid for one's present country, driving one to find another place and time where that purpose might still be found. Streets of Laredo is of evil men, despicable to the core; of the Mexicans along the border; and of stoic, solid women enduring severe hardship, while remaining steadfast, giving us McMurtry's notion of frontierswomen; of old men "whose wills had begun to resent their weakening bodies." Dead Men Walking is of boys and young men and fools. Comanche Moon is of men and the Indians. The Indians, The People, McMurtry's foils in the first three books, must be understood to understand those who opposed them, the history carved in that opposition, and the sense that man's relationship with the country has always been of one group displacing another by force, sometimes of arms, oftentimes by force of culture. McMurtry's genius is found in his ability through the written page to stir in and leave the reader with the exact feeling felt by his characters, Call and McCrae, at the end of the book, certainly if the reader has not read, or does not plan to immediately pick up and read Lonesome Dove. This is to be the last that McMurtry will give us of Augustus and Woodrow.
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Summary: Frank Muller does it again!
Review: I listen to a lot of audio books, but this was one of the best.. I rate it evenly with the Green Mile by Stephen King in Quality Audio Books... Not only is Larry's style at his best in this book, but it almost seems as though it was written for Frank Muller to read.... Frank Muller is the best of the Audio book world, and this is one of his best of the best... I liked the first 2/3 of the story much more than the last third, but still, overall it was incredible! Larry!!! You must get Frank Muller to read ALL your books!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Well written, but not a food as Lonesome Dove
Review: In the last novel in the Lonesome Dove saga, Comanche Moon is interesting, but not quite as fascinating or inspirational as the original. I'd still obviously reccomend it if you read any of the others, because it fills in some gaps and puts a satisfying close to the moving saga that has been praised and admired for years. Overall, a good novel but not the best in the series.
Rating: 
Summary: The characters were great; the plot lazy
Review: While I found COMANCHE MOON very entertaining and a worthwhile read, I have to echo the disappointment expressed by some of the other readers here. I love McMurtry's characterizations and dialogue in all his period novels, but in this book, these vivid characters (Gus, Call, Famous Shoes and especially Inish Scull) were basically wandering around, free of convincing motivation, sent on wild goose chases or foolish errands. They mostly even lacked emotional investment in their missions. The stakes were low. The novel could have been vastly improved if it had ended a little more climactically with the rescue of Scull from Ahumado's camp by Gus & Call; in the book, the rescue has a whiff of anticlimax, as does the actual ending some 200 pages later. We see how good McMurtry can be; LONESOME DOVE is my favorite single book of the last 15 years. In that book, though, there was a quest, a job to do, and a direction for the plot. COMANCHE MOON had the feel of a writer having created these wonderful characters and writing a stream-of-conscious story; no idea where the characters were going, and little interest in how they got there.
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Summary: imaginative and mesmerizing
Review: Over a period of several days, while I should have been doing other things, I stole away to a corner or sacrificed hours of sleep to read this book. Like all of McMurtry's books, it opens up new vistas not hinted at previously, in his work or that of others. He has a way of drawing us into the pictures he paints with a delicate balance between the thoughts and feelings of his characters and their words and actions. This book recreates what its characters call "the Comanche way of life", and uses it to set off the world of the Texas Rangers Gus and Call, who were introduced in earlier books in the Lonesome Dove series. Combined with the first three books in the series, this one gives a completely convincing picture of Gus and Call as mythical heroes of the frontier. What the present book adds to their portrayal is their image in the eyes of the Comanche. The book shows that the formidable Comanche warriors not only learned to respect Gus and Call as fighting men, but could even show a little regret at the thought that Gus and Call would some day fade into the sunset along with themselves. Gus and Call (especially Gus) have become in many ways like the Comanche they fight.
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Summary: Excessive violence
Review: The book is not bad, but the first half has excessively graphic and unnecessary violence and torture. Hardly necessary. It ruined the book.
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Summary: a good read but lacking in some of the details we wanted
Review: I enjoyed this book - I always enjoy L. McMurtrys books. This book gave us some of the details we wanted of Gus and Call's life before Lonesome Dove but just not enough. Clara left the book too soon and I would have liked to hear more about their "exploits" that made them the great Texas Rangers they were supposed to be. I would rate this as #3 on the Lonesome Doves list of books. I did enjoy seeing how Pea Eye, Deets, and Jake Spoon entered the picture. I wish there would be another Lonesome Dove book - I do love the character of Gus McCrae.
Rating: 
Summary: The book did not meet expectations.
Review: Most readers of this book have probably already read Lonesome Dove, and thus were expecting the legend of Gus and Call to be filled in. It wasn't. How did Gus and Call become known as the greatest Texas Rangers that ever lived? Beats me. It seems all they did was keep from getting killed and bury the bodies of those who were killed. Maybe that was McMurtry's whole intention--to reveal that Gus and Call were really just a couple of overrated Texans. This explains the scene in Lonesome Dove where Gus and Call went into San Antonio to look for a cook, and noticed that no one remembered them. It turns out there was nothing to remember. I almost wish I hadn't read Comanche Moon, because it deflated my impression of Gus and Call significantly.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good, I couldn't put it down.
Review: The story picks up about 15 years after Dead Man's Walk and ends about 10 years before Lonesome Dove. Great story, great characters, but it just didn't have the great ending McMurtry usually delivers.
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Summary: Finally, a fitting companion for Lnoesone Dove
Review: An outstanding read. The book, style, and story we hoped we'd get from Larry McMurtry after the Pulitzer Prize winner. Head and shoulders above Streets of Laredo, and better than Dead Man's Walk, Comanche Moon actually re-creates the characters Call and McCray and fills in the huge expanse of time between their near death at the hands of Buffalo Hump and the departure for the Rio Grand. Very satisfying reading, and a novel truly worthy of the classic characters McMurtry created previously. DO NOT MISS THIS ONE !
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