A Legacy of Violence

The Son
by Philipp Meyer
Published by Ecco
4 Out of 5 Stars

An epic tale of family set in a state big enough to bear the weight of legend, The Son follows three generations of the powerful McCullough family of Texas: "Colonel" Eli McCullough, the rough and tumble patriarch of the family, whose past includes being a Comanche captive and assimilated tribal member, Texas Ranger, Civil War Confederate, and Texas land baron; his son, Peter, a gentle soul tied to the land, but whose conscience weighs on him after his family's participation in the slaughter of their Mexican neighbors and subsequent land grab; and Jeannie McCullough, the granddaughter of Peter, who shuns society's gender defined role to become the family's first powerful matriarch in the wake of the Texas oil boom. Their stories are inextricably bound to the violent birth and coming of age of Texas. 

Through his exploration of the chains of familial duty and legacy, Meyer is depicting more than just the turbulent years of our country's pioneering past. Texas serves as a microcosm through which Meyer skillfully explores the cyclical rise and fall of empire: the success of a tribe or a country or a family is written in the blood of another, one generation crashes into the next, a king must fall before "the son" can take his place. And yet it's more than that--when men build empires, they stare into the abyss of their own mortality and try to leave their mark on a world and a history so vast, so infinite that even the most significant of lives will eventually be consumed and forgotten. Passing the torch to the next generation becomes the only form of immortality one can hope for. But what happens when the next generation wants to build their own legacy, or can't make peace with the sins committed in their family's past? This is particularly evident in the chapters following Peter McCullough, a man defined by a guilt that's not his own, and also in the chapters about Jeannie McCullough, a woman who has to blaze her own trail to keep the family name alive.

The chapters about Eli McCullough are the most engrossing and Meyer doesn't pick sides in presenting the ensuing conflicts between pioneers and the Native Americans. There is no noble savage here; the Comanche are capable of stomach-churning violence (raping and mutilating Eli's mother and sister before his eyes, torturing enemies in their camp, raping and brutalizing captives), but they are also compassionate and funny in their relationships with one another. The same is true of the pioneers--engaging in unspeakable acts of cruelty against the Comanche and other tribes, they are not monsters entire. Instead, both sides are all human with "Something of the reptile in us yet, the caveman's allegiance to the spear." The fight for land and dominance was not unique to the whites as it is ingrained in human culture to take from those who are different and whose ways one does not understand. 

An overall excellent novel, the only reason I'm giving it a 4 out of 5 star is because it is grim reading, which made me long for a bit of Larry McMurtry's ability to balance grim reality with the humor in life. Also, I found the presentation of the three differing narratives perplexing. The Eli and Peter chapters are told in first person, while Jeannie's are told in third (which may be to show her struggle for "voice"). Eli's chapters are originally presented as the result of an interview done at the end of his life, but do not read as an interview. Peter's chapters are told in the form of a diary, which reads like no diary ever kept by anyone in human existence. Instead, they read just like novel narrative, continuing for pages with exact dialogue and lengthy descriptions with little to designate them as diary entries other than the occasional insertion of a date. These conventions, the interview and the diary, seemed unnecessary and were at times off-putting. 

There was little to differentiate the voices of Eli, Peter, and Jeannie, but maybe that's the point--that theirs is the voice of history relating a story that will be told time and time again with no one learning its lessons.

Swords Without the Sorcery in a Blood-Drenched West

Red Country

by Joe Abercrombie

Published by Orbit

4 Out of 5 Stars

This is my first foray into the world of Joe Abercrombie and for those of you who are about to make the mistake of starting with Red Country like I did, my advice would be to go back and start with the First Law books. Red Country is marketed as a standalone novel and one can certainly enjoy it without having read Abercrombie’s other work, but the reason I’m giving it only 4 stars is because I always felt like I was missing out on something--that there was critical, need-to-know information from previous books that would have elevated this one to giddy kick ass heights. Reading the reviews and comments of other diehard Abercrombie fans, my suspicions have been proven correct. Without reading the previous books, I was doomed to live in the dark as references and revelations that should have held a “holy-shit-you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me” relevance whizzed right on by. Despite feeling like the kid who decided to start wearing stonewashed denim the day after stonewashed denim became decidedly uncool (as it should forever remain), I still really enjoyed the novel.

Red Country is a western/fantasy, a combination that never fails to hook me. However, this is fantasy in the sense that Game of Thrones is a fantasy: there’s little/no magic (although it hints that it may exist, but in a darker, more sinister form than in lighter fantasies), nary a fantastical creature in sight, and no prophecies or fates to fulfill. This is fantasy in that the world in which the novel is set doesn’t exist; however, it’s written so realistically that it seems like the history of ordinary pioneers whose stories were simply swallowed by time. In fact, it’s possible to go entire chapters while forgetting that it is a fantasy, which at first bothered me. It’s so true to the western genre that I thought, “Why not just write a straight western?” The answer, of course, is that the novel fits into the context of a larger world created by Abercrombie and, if I had been exposed to that world by reading the previous books, such a trivial concern wouldn’t have bothered me. As it stands, Abercrombie’s tale of the main characters’ journey to the Far Country (the equivalent of the the Wild West) is gritty, blood-drenched, and populated by people who see violence as a tool to be wielded by those strong enough to use it when necessary. It’s a world where there aren’t anti-heroes so much as anti-villains—all of the characters have dark pasts shaped by need and want and necessity, carrying the guilt of doing what had to be done while possessing a moral code that leaves them painfully aware of why it shouldn’t have been done. All live with the ghost of regret and hope they have left their more violent selves behind.

Such is the case with Shy South, a young woman trying to raise her younger brother and sister while managing the family farm. Shy is a hard-worker and a ruthless negotiator, much too young to bear the burden of providing for so many and much too young to have to outrun a past that includes murder and theft. Shy’s hell-bent on seeing to it that her siblings don’t have to make such dark choices. However, when Shy returns from town to find her farm in smoldering ruins and her brother and sister kidnapped, her past serves her well in her quest for revenge. With only her passive and cowardly step-father, Lamb (whose past, much to Shy’s surprise, makes him far more equipped for the ensuing violence than she is), to help, Shy goes on a journey that brings her into contact with outlaws, pioneers, savages, mercenaries, and a soggy, hilariously droll lawyer named Temple while attempting to find her siblings and bring them home.

Shy’s tale is the axis around which Red Country revolves, but it’s not her tale alone. The novel follows a large cast of characters; it’s like True Grit meets Lonesome Dove. What makes the novel stand above typical fantasy fare is Abercrombie’s talent as a writer. There are no info dumps, and he’s happy to skip ahead to move the action along (for example, when Temple begins building a store for another character, there are plenty of writers who would have drug us through every damn day, describing every nail and every board). He also writes with humor and wit, refusing to imbue his characters with idealized perfection. They wake up with morning breath, they reek after months on the trail, their lovemaking does not read like sexy-time-porn, and they have physical as well as character flaws. What impressed me the most is how he takes characters that from the outside seem like stone-cold bad asses unfazed by anything and explores their internalized fears, regrets, and worries. Their actions may seem heartless, but his revelation of their motivations often makes them anything but. Theirs is a brutal, hardscrabble life where easy choices are hard to come by and an aversion to violence can place serious limitations on one’s shelf life. As one character is told, "The world out there is a red country, without justice, without meaning" (298). That these characters still go on without the guarantee of justice and meaning gives them a heroic bravery despite some often unheroic choices. And, if you ask me, that's the stuff of life, not fantasy.

Magic in the Wild, Wild West

Native Star

by M. K. Hobson

Published by Spectra

4 Out of 5 Stars

Take a pinch of the Wild West, a dollop of whimsy, just a dash of romance, and a heaping helping of magic and you apparently get the perfect summer read.

On the surface, The Native Star is fairly formulaic. There's the Austen-esque dynamic of the stubborn and headstrong (but always proper beneath it all) woman who finds herself at odds with a pompous and equally headstrong jerk (who remains, fundamentally, a gentleman beneath it all). I have to admit that I'm a sucker for this dynamic because nothing triggers my gag reflex quicker than a simpering and whiny heroine, unless it's the "here I come to save the day" uber-perfect hero. Circumstances arise that force these two into unwelcome proximity to one another for the duration of the novel and witty banter between crises ensues. This is pretty standard stuff and even the less sophisticated readers among us can probably make accurate predictions as to where this plot is headed, but . . .

. . . holy shit, was this fun! While the basic narrative is standard, the world building is delightful. Set in the west during the Reconstruction, the United States has always relied on magic to grease the wheels of commerce. There are three primary types of magic practitioners: sangrimancers (who rely on gruesome blood rituals to tap into their power), animancers ("earth" magicians who draw upon nature to heal), and credomancers (faith magicians who draw upon the beliefs of others to make the impossible, well, possible). There's much in-fighting amongst these magical traditions, as well as opposition to magic in the form of religious zealots and the increasing threat of science as a replacement for magic. Several reviews have labeled this as "steampunk," which is misleading as there are no gimmicky, steam-powered gizmos and gadgets. Everything is fueled by magic (as one reviewer said, this is "witchpunk"--a term that seems much more accurate). There are zombies, Native American holy women, murderous spirits, fantastic magical devices, as well as witches and warlocks of every stripe and color imaginable. There are quirky little details (my favorite being the idea of a "squink," a word created by the combination of the words "squid ink" and meaning to lessen the power of a credomancer by clouding his ability to believe in himself).

The Native Star is clever, witty, and intelligently written light reading when you just want to reconnect with the joy of a rollicking journey whose only destination is to enchantment. There are no deeper meanings, no pompous literary preening, no need to bust out the theory books to figure out what is up with the symbolism. It's just fun. And sometimes that's more than enough.

I Think This King Guy May Have a Future in Writing

The Drawing of the Three

by Stephen King

Published by Plume

5 Out of 5 Stars

"What the hell was that?!!?" basically sums up my response to The Drawing of the Three. And I mean that in the best possible way.

As I opined in my review of The Gunslinger, I have avoided The Dark Tower for so long because it's a series and usually series books serve up a formulaic reheating of what happened in previous books. I usually enjoy the first book, like the second book, and begin to get that deja vu feeling that I've read all of this before somewhere around book three. Not so with this bad mamma-jamma. The Drawing of the Three couldn't be more different from The Gunslinger--and yet it works. The Gunslinger offered a bleak, apocalyptic world and a terse writing style to match as we followed the Man in Black along with Roland, the last Gunslinger. At the end of the novel, Roland is told that three people will be key in aiding his quest to the Dark Tower, leading into The Drawing of the Three.

In the second novel, the narrative begins with a shocking development in the first few pages that instantly causes us to reassess the character of Roland in terms of his abilities and his physical/emotional limits. Under considerable strain and a very real life-threatening situation, Roland begins to draw the three prophesied. As he does so, Roland breaks the barrier between his world and ours while discovering unlikely connections among the three people he encounters.

Unlike The Gunslinger, the writing here is more descriptive and King does a superb job of capturing Roland's awe with the plenty offered in our world in contrast with the world that has "moved on," as well as creating tension with the character of Detta Walker (I was as on edge during her scenes as Roland was; reading chapters with her was emotionally exhausting). In the first novel, Roland talked about how the Dark Tower was some kind of nexus holding worlds and times together and The Drawing begins to explore and clarify this idea more so than the previous book did.

It's very difficult to say much about the book without spoiling it, but King is to be commended for writing a book that varies in so many ways from the first novel and yet still seems a natural part of the world he created. If this continues, I may be one very happy series reader indeed.

Now I just hope that I don't order the Lobstrosities the next time I'm at Red Lobster. Seriously, I'll never look at lobster in the same way again.

Have Gun Will Travel (to Other Worlds Than These)

The Gunslinger

by Stephen King

Published by Viking Adult

4 Out of 5 Stars

Recently, my comrades in literature featured a Dark Tower conversation on (prepare for shameless plug) Shelf Inflicted.  Unfortunately, I was unable to participate because I had not yet read the series.  It felt a little like being the uncool kid who gets picked last for  kickball.  I decided it was time to remedy this.  I was going to prove I could kick that damn ball.

Now I have made vague promises for years to them and to others that, yes, I would read the book and I was sure that I would love it.  Last summer I even went so far as to purchase a copy of the book.  That was as far as I got.  So what was the problem?  After all, I've read a few Stephen King books and enjoyed them.  The problem was that it was a series.  A series where the books become progressively longer.  And if I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times:  I hates me a series.  Because "series"usually translates to "sucking at the teat of the publishing cash cow for as long as possible."  Such novels often recycle the same premise over and over and over again until they have completely worn out that which began as unique and inventive.  They're the Lost of the literary world.  If you can't wrap it up in a trilogy, you have nothing to offer me.

But caving to peer pressure placed upon me by people I both trust and fear, I finally started The Gunslinger.  And so it has begun.

In a narrative as bleak and barren as its landscape, The Gunslinger follows Roland Deschain, the enigmatic gunslinger of the title, as he chases the man in black across a seemingly post-apocalyptic desert wasteland.  The last of his kind, the gunslinger is the ultimate anti-hero--a knight in tarnished armor with polished guns.  He's capable of extreme violence and single-mindedness in pursuit of his prey: 

he stood, screaming and reloading, his mind far away and absent, letting his hands do their reloading trick.  Could he hold up a hand, tell them he had spent a thousand years learning this trick and others, tell them of the guns and the blood that had blessed them?  Not with his mouth.  But his hands could speak their own tale (64).

However, he is also surprisingly tender to the helpless and hopeless who cross his path, like the young Jake, a boy plucked from 1970's America and brought to the nowhere through which Roland is traveling.  This place, while seeming like the frontier of the Old West, may be more than it appears to be as machinery is scattered throughout like so many fossils and everyone seems to be familiar with Hey, Jude.  The gunslinger himself is from New Canaan, a place like a medieval western (imagine A Game of Thrones with guns) where time has suddenly accelerated.  As best as I can tell, Roland's ultimate goal is to capture the man in black and make his way to the Dark Tower, a nexus of time and space, to seek answers as to why this is. 

The novel itself is a mash-up of all that is good:  sci fi, fantasy, western, horror, dystopian, legend, quest.  However, I can see where this book is not for everyone.  It's not a book that explains itself to you so much as happens to you.  If you don't like narratives that offer more questions than answers and leave you with no sense of resolution, then you might want to sidestep The Gunslinger.  I, however, am anxious to start The Drawing of the Three because destination is irrelevant to me at this point.  I just plan on enjoying the ride.

A Brotherhood Born of Blood and Violence

The Sisters Brothers

by Patrick DeWitt

Published by Ecco

4 Out of 5 Stars

I like reading about bad people in fiction.  And, lest we jump to conclusions, it's not because I'm a bad person myself (at least not in the torture or kill people kind of way; no, the sins in which I dabble are much more pedestrian than that), but it's because I like peering into those dark little corners of their brains.  The most frightening and fascinating realization I come to in such novels is that, really, they're much more like me than I care to admit. 

Take Pulp Fiction, for example, which may be my favorite movie of all time.  Sure, you've got some of the old ultraviolence, but what's really chilling is to see how it's part of the average work day for Jules and Vincent.  Their days are filled with conversations both philosophical and mundane, punctuated by acts of violence that they accept as part of how their world works.  When we think of men who can kill, we think of monsters, depraved beings who have no moral compass, an inability to reason.  While that is certainly sometimes the case, sometimes we find that--behind the monster--there is just a man, one who knows that what he is doing is wrong, but does it anyway: for money, for love, for power.  And what worked for Pulp Fiction is what works for The Sisters Brothers.

Charlie and Eli Sisters are two of the most feared assassins in the West, working for a shadowy figure known only as "The Commodore."  Charlie, the older brother, is ruthless and power hungry, while his brother, Eli, is a sensitive sort who is prone to violence when he becomes enraged--a tool often used by Charlie to his advantage.  Even in adulthood, Eli is relegated to the archetypal role of the younger brother, haplessly following and obeying his older brother, while occasionally challenging Charlie just to see how far he can be pushed. 

The brothers are sent by The Commodore on an errand to kill Hermann Kermit Warm, a prospector who has crossed The Commodore in ways unknown to the brothers.  Not that it matters as their job is to kill and not ask questions.  The journey there provides the brothers with adequate time to be attacked by a bear, run into a backwoods witch, visit a brothel, and encounter characters curious and strange.  As the men travel, we see them banter back and forth, every bit true siblings, alternately needling each other's quirks and weaknesses and then engaging in profound conversations about their beliefs and shared history. 

The dialogue between the brothers is the real treat of the novel--witty and peculiarly formal (think Charles Portis's characters as portrayed in the Coen version of True Grit).  As he longs for love, worries about his weight, discovers the joys of dental hygiene, and wrestles with his disdain and admiration for his one-eyed, cantankerous horse, Tub, Eli Sisters is the more relatable of the two brothers.  However, before one can become too attached to either character, a scene of needless and wanton violence reminds us that both of these men are killers and, for all the contemplation of human nature the two engage in, it proves as difficult to put down a gun as it is to pick one up. 

That Which Does Not Break You

The Wake of Forgiveness

by Bruce Machart

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

4 Out of 5 Stars

This was an impulse buy at Barnes and Noble. I ignored the book at first in favor of looking at the books around it, but I caught the words “Tim O’Brien” during a cursory glance at a book blurb on the cover. One of my rules in life is to pick up anything with Tim O’Brien’s name on it and buy it immediately, no questions asked. To date, this rule has served me well and The Wake of Forgiveness by Bruce Machart is no exception.

Set in Texas at the dawn of the 20th century, the novel focuses on the Skala family, which consists of an immigrant father and his four motherless sons. Vaclav’s wife, Klara, dies while giving birth to their fourth son, Karel, and the book focuses on the physical and emotional marks these men carry as a result of her death. The shadow of Klara haunts every page. In a cruel and unforgiving landscape, Klara would have served as the buffer between the physical and emotional demands of pioneer life, between the immigrant and his new homeland, between father and son, and between the sons themselves. Without her, these men throw themselves against each other, against the landscape, and against life itself with a brutal tenacity that can only be born of intense pain and loss.

After the loss of his wife, Vaclav Skala, an ascetic man by nature, becomes even harder and more unforgiving in his dealings with the world. To spare his fine racing horses the detrimental effects of fieldwork, he instead hitches his four sons to the plow. Their time in the harness has left the boys with a peculiar deformity: they all have twisted necks that symbolize their skewed view of the world inflicted upon them by their father. Of all the boys, none are as warped as Karel. Having never known his mother and carrying the burden of guilt for her death, Karel is nonetheless Vaclav’s pride as Karel is a gifted horseback rider whose skills have won his father many a high-stakes gamble. As the novel goes on, the narrative moves back and forth between the story of Karel as a young boy and Karel as a grown man, now alienated from his brothers. The circumstances leading to the severing of the connection with his siblings are revealed as the book goes on and heighten the suspense as the novel moves toward its satisfying resolution.

Machart has created a tragedy that is epic in scope and is often reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s best work (in particular, All the Pretty Horses comes to mind). The language is poetic and so frequently captures the heart of the moment or the quality of the landscape with such a perfect turn of phrase that I often went back and re-read certain lines just to savor them. Another point in Machart’s favor is that his characters are complex and never watered-down; these are hard, often cruel men, but that doesn’t mean they are completely devoid of kindness, poeticism, or intelligence. They are victims of a lifestyle and a landscape that naturally cripples the finest points of humanity to ensure survival in a merciless environment. That any of the characters retain even a shred of their capacity for forgiveness is the ultimate triumph.

I'm Your Huckleberry . . .

Doc

by Mary Doria Russell

Published by Ballantine Books

Reviewed by Amanda
5 Out of 5 Stars

A youth in the South. An education in the North. Bred for life in the East. Trying not to die in the West.

This synopsis of the life of John Henry "Doc" Holliday is elegant in its simplicity and perhaps holds more truth about his life than the hundreds of thousands of words that have been written about him.

I will confess that my earliest exposure to Doc Holliday was Val Kilmer's excellent portrayal in Tombstone. I have probably watched that movie in its entirety no less than 15 times; however, I've always known that, as is true with so much history, it's a super-charged, testosterone fueled, balls out version of events that plays up the romanticism of the Old West and makes giants of common men in uncommon circumstances. Unlike so many movies and books about him, Doc by Mary Doria Russell is not interested in perpetuating the reputation of Doc Holliday as a cold-blooded killer and a ruthless gambler, but instead focuses on trying to restore humanity to a man whose world was broken by war and sickness and shaped by the luck of the draw.

Doc is not a biography, but instead a fictional account of Doc's life from birth up through his years in Dodge City, where Russell imagines the circumstances that would cement his friendship with the Earp brothers. Using the framework of Wyatt and Doc's friendship with the fictional John Horse Sanders and the mysterious circumstances of his death, Russell explores the lives of John Henry Holliday, dentist by day, gambler by night; his tempestuous and fiercely intelligent companion, Kate Harony; a reticent and doggedly honest Wyatt Earp; Mattie Blaylock, already ruined and addicted to laudanum when she enters Wyatt's life; the friendly and intelligent Morgan Earp; and the vain Bat Masterson. In doing so, she brings the society of Dodge City to life and vividly portrays a town at the edge of the American frontier where the law had no finer points other than "Don't shoot the customers." Lawmen like Wyatt Earp were expected to do little more than keep the drovers who came to Dodge at the end of a cattle drive from killing each other before they could spend the season's wages on whores, alcohol, and gambling. While Dodge prospered, there was a ruthless, mean edge to its economic principles.

Born to Georgian aristocracy, classically educated, trained as a dentist, raised for the life of a gentleman, and already diagnosed with tuberculosis, a town like Dodge should have consumed a man like Doc Holliday who seemed so ill-suited to a rough-and-tumble lifestyle. Instead, Doc's recognition of life as the ultimate gamble ("Bein' born is craps . . . How we live is poker") served well in equipping him with the ability to make the most of a poor hand. Suffering from a cleft palate that his uncle repaired once the baby became healthy enough, Doc was been born struggling to cling to whatever life chance would allow. This resilience, along with a sharp tongue and an intellectual's curiosity, helped sustain him during his exile West and enabled him to make a family of friends to substitute the one he longed for back East.

Russell also reminds us of the Doc Holliday that existed beneath the swagger and bravado--a man, little more than a boy, who knew he walked in death's shadow, but was determined to prevent death from claiming its prize too soon. The pain of Doc's circumstances, especially in a town where young men treated life so carelessly as they courted danger, is evident: "Certain that if he were to move at all--even slightly, even to speak--everything human in him would be lost to blind, bestial, ungovernable rage, John Henry Holiday sat silently while in the coldest, most analytical part of him, he thought, If I go mad one day, it will be at a moment like this. I will put a bullet through the lung of some healthy young idiot just to watch him suffocate. There you are, I'll tell him. That's what it's like to know your last breath is in your past. You won't ever get enough air again. From this moment until you die, it will only get worse and worse."

Doc is not a fast-paced book, but it is a beautiful one. Often funny, philosophical, and gritty, it honors the men and women at its core and removes them from the lofty heights of myth and returns them where they belong--firmly on the earth they walked not as titans, but as mortals.