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3.88 AVERAGE
3.88 AVERAGE
adventurous
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
4.5 stars!
I loved this book!
It's a story of a sick, struggling Vietnam vet who "loses it" when he is denied a loan extension at the bank. That's all I'm going to say about the plot other than general observations.
The characters in the book are truly unique. I wager that you've never met characters like these in any other book, no matter how well read you may be.
This story is serious while also being quite funny and adventurous. This is also a spiritual story, which I find to be true of almost every single Robert McCammon book.
If you are a fan of Mr. McCammon, you are sure to enjoy this novel. If you have never read any of Mr. McCammon's works, this would be an excellent place to start. This story has everything: love, hate, anger, disappointment, and most importantly, redemption.
I give this novel my highest recommendation! Please do yourself a favor and read it!
I loved this book!
It's a story of a sick, struggling Vietnam vet who "loses it" when he is denied a loan extension at the bank. That's all I'm going to say about the plot other than general observations.
The characters in the book are truly unique. I wager that you've never met characters like these in any other book, no matter how well read you may be.
This story is serious while also being quite funny and adventurous. This is also a spiritual story, which I find to be true of almost every single Robert McCammon book.
If you are a fan of Mr. McCammon, you are sure to enjoy this novel. If you have never read any of Mr. McCammon's works, this would be an excellent place to start. This story has everything: love, hate, anger, disappointment, and most importantly, redemption.
I give this novel my highest recommendation! Please do yourself a favor and read it!
I love Halloween, and consequently, every October I read exclusively horror books. It being only September I wanted to begin to get in the mood, so I decided to pick this book up, because I knew it was a bit Gothic in tone, and anything that has to do with faith healers in the Bayou is going to have a good introduction to the tone I strive for in October.
So I read this book with these expectations in mind, and it totally surpassed what I thought it would be. I shouldn't have been surprised because McCammon is a wonderful author and a wonderful storyteller, with the ability to take the some of the most outlandish ideas and make them palatable (I.E. Wolf's Hour).
This book is by no stretch of the imagination a horror book. It is much more an adventure, but with surprising depth. He brings the themes together exceptionally well, and you transition from the everyday, to the fantastic, but in such a smooth motion that you don't notice it happening, and then your stuck looking at this beautiful landscape of the mind where redemption, hope and salvation come together.
So I read this book with these expectations in mind, and it totally surpassed what I thought it would be. I shouldn't have been surprised because McCammon is a wonderful author and a wonderful storyteller, with the ability to take the some of the most outlandish ideas and make them palatable (I.E. Wolf's Hour).
This book is by no stretch of the imagination a horror book. It is much more an adventure, but with surprising depth. He brings the themes together exceptionally well, and you transition from the everyday, to the fantastic, but in such a smooth motion that you don't notice it happening, and then your stuck looking at this beautiful landscape of the mind where redemption, hope and salvation come together.
Dan Lambert is a Vietnam vet and laid-off carpenter who spends his days driving to a parking lot called Death Valley in Shreveport, Louisiana with the hopes of being picked up for odd jobs every day. He's hanging on by a thread, and then the bank alerts him: his car is being repossessed. He goes to meet with the bank manager and Dan ends up shooting him (arguably in self-defense). He goes on the run.
Flint McMurtagh has a secret. This secret might punch you in the face. He's a bounty hunter, but that's not the secret. He'll tell anybody that. No, his secret is a half-formed twin affixed to his chest. Well, half is generous. It's really a mouth and an arm. And he wants the $15,000 the bank offers as a reward for Lambert's capture. His boss, Smoates, forces a companion on him: a timid Elvis impersonator named Pelvis Eisley. Together, off they go across the South hunting down Lambert.
I know. I KNOW. This book sounds ridiculous. It kind of is. But it's one of those things where when someone asks you what it's about and you end up with this ridiculous-sounding summation...what I said above is literally what the book is about, but it's not really what it's about. No, not at all. What it's really about is the taut thread keeping every individual person conforming to the pretense of society and what can cause it to snap. What does it mean to "go south"? To Dan and the other Vietnam vets in the novel, it means to lose it mentally and emotionally, to kill someone who doesn't need to die, to retreat inwards, to go crazy. To some drug runners our heroes encounter later on in the book, it means to die. And in the setting of McCammon's story, it means to go deeper and deeper, magnetically truly South, into the alligator-infested swamps of Louisiana, which make a truly spectacular setting, by the way.
This was a doozy of doom and delight.
Flint McMurtagh has a secret. This secret might punch you in the face. He's a bounty hunter, but that's not the secret. He'll tell anybody that. No, his secret is a half-formed twin affixed to his chest. Well, half is generous. It's really a mouth and an arm. And he wants the $15,000 the bank offers as a reward for Lambert's capture. His boss, Smoates, forces a companion on him: a timid Elvis impersonator named Pelvis Eisley. Together, off they go across the South hunting down Lambert.
I know. I KNOW. This book sounds ridiculous. It kind of is. But it's one of those things where when someone asks you what it's about and you end up with this ridiculous-sounding summation...what I said above is literally what the book is about, but it's not really what it's about. No, not at all. What it's really about is the taut thread keeping every individual person conforming to the pretense of society and what can cause it to snap. What does it mean to "go south"? To Dan and the other Vietnam vets in the novel, it means to lose it mentally and emotionally, to kill someone who doesn't need to die, to retreat inwards, to go crazy. To some drug runners our heroes encounter later on in the book, it means to die. And in the setting of McCammon's story, it means to go deeper and deeper, magnetically truly South, into the alligator-infested swamps of Louisiana, which make a truly spectacular setting, by the way.
This was a doozy of doom and delight.
The compelling story of a war veteran who "goes south" (or mentally and emotionally breaks down) and wreaks havoc on his own life and others.