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acacia_happy_hour's review against another edition
4.0
I really wanted to give this 5 stars but I had to knock off a star for racism :/
nicolewilson's review against another edition
4.0
I cannot explain how much I love Zane Grey books. The ending of this one killed me! I need more, I need to know how they end up. I'd like to think happily ever after.
johnvson90s's review against another edition
emotional
lighthearted
relaxing
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.75
I love me some cliché but well-written romance. So simple and heartwarming, a very much needed reading. I dare to say my new comfort book.
nocto's review
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
At some random point in the night several months ago I found myself browsing ebooks at the library via Libby's random ordering and, I have no idea why, this jumped out at me as the thing to read to put myself to sleep. I liked the title. I'd never read a Western. I'd heard of the author but had no idea if he had a bad or a good reputation. I guess I think anything still going over a century after it was published is at least worth a look. I fancied something different.
I was ready to find, at the very least, sexism and racism. The central character here is Madeline Hammond, who goes out west to visit her brother and ends up staying, and I think because of this I didn't find the sexism in the book too overwhelming. I liked having a strong female character and though many of the other women in the book were shown to be 'weak' in one way or other most of them had a moment to shine. If anything it was the male characters who seemed to be a bit of an amorphous mass of cowboys that I struggled to remember which was which. And I was expecting "cowboys and indians" but this was "cowboys and mexicans" and a whole slew of racist stereotypes and that bit of the plot didn't really grab me other than to make me roll my eyes a lot.
I wasn't expecting temperance to be such a central theme of the book, which just shows how little I know about the prohibition movement in the US, now I've looked into that background a bit more it absolutely makes sense that a book aimed at male readers in 1914 has a large part of its plot about a drunkard redeeming himself. Oh, and the other defining feature of the book for me is terrible accents. I don't think it's any worse than any other genre of the era for that though! It always amuses me that the working class in mysteries are portrayed with these literal interpretations of the sounds of their speech but the upper classes don't get the idiosyncrasies of their speech similarly treated - I mean it would make books unreadable if they did, and I'm glad we don't see much of this device any more. But in this book I have no idea what accent is being evoked by making a character say "shore" rather than "sure" - homonyms in my English accent - I spent a while wondering if this was just an archaic spelling (which you find in even fairly recent books, for example, I noticed Anthony Powell uses "connexion" where we've since standardised on "connection") but it's spelt normally when said by every other character.
Though it's taken me several months to read the book I did enjoy most of it. There's some great descriptions of the landscape and riding through it. The plot is as obvious as any romance novel, it starts with girl comes to town and drunkard tries to marry her before she's even got away from the train station, and I don't need to spoil anything because that's page 1 and you already know where that storyline is headed. I had a lot of issues towards the end of the book with how that story line resolved itself though. There was needless cruelty and disregard for consent. The ending rather spoilt the book in fact, but it's of its time I suppose.
I probably won't read a western again any time soon, if at all, but I'm glad I persevered with this one and found out what they were all about.
I was ready to find, at the very least, sexism and racism. The central character here is Madeline Hammond, who goes out west to visit her brother and ends up staying, and I think because of this I didn't find the sexism in the book too overwhelming. I liked having a strong female character and though many of the other women in the book were shown to be 'weak' in one way or other most of them had a moment to shine. If anything it was the male characters who seemed to be a bit of an amorphous mass of cowboys that I struggled to remember which was which. And I was expecting "cowboys and indians" but this was "cowboys and mexicans" and a whole slew of racist stereotypes and that bit of the plot didn't really grab me other than to make me roll my eyes a lot.
I wasn't expecting temperance to be such a central theme of the book, which just shows how little I know about the prohibition movement in the US, now I've looked into that background a bit more it absolutely makes sense that a book aimed at male readers in 1914 has a large part of its plot about a drunkard redeeming himself. Oh, and the other defining feature of the book for me is terrible accents. I don't think it's any worse than any other genre of the era for that though! It always amuses me that the working class in mysteries are portrayed with these literal interpretations of the sounds of their speech but the upper classes don't get the idiosyncrasies of their speech similarly treated - I mean it would make books unreadable if they did, and I'm glad we don't see much of this device any more. But in this book I have no idea what accent is being evoked by making a character say "shore" rather than "sure" - homonyms in my English accent - I spent a while wondering if this was just an archaic spelling (which you find in even fairly recent books, for example, I noticed Anthony Powell uses "connexion" where we've since standardised on "connection") but it's spelt normally when said by every other character.
Though it's taken me several months to read the book I did enjoy most of it. There's some great descriptions of the landscape and riding through it. The plot is as obvious as any romance novel, it starts with girl comes to town and drunkard tries to marry her before she's even got away from the train station, and I don't need to spoil anything because that's page 1 and you already know where that storyline is headed. I had a lot of issues towards the end of the book with how that story line resolved itself though. There was needless cruelty and disregard for consent. The ending rather spoilt the book in fact, but it's of its time I suppose.
I probably won't read a western again any time soon, if at all, but I'm glad I persevered with this one and found out what they were all about.
hopegirl0727's review against another edition
2.0
Oh god. This started out as a fun activity and has now turned into a Sisyphean task.
But first, backstory. I’m writing a western. Yes, a western. Hey, they say write about what you know, and I know about the Southwest. Also, research helps. Thus, I thought, you know, I’ve seen lots of westerns, I should also read some. So a while back (probably about a year now, god I’m bad at life) I bought three westerns. 1.) How the West Was Won because I saw the movie and figured it was pretty classic. Same for 2.) The Ox-Bow Incident. The third one I got, 3.) The Light of Western Skies, is a Zane Grey novel, because Zane Grey’s got his fingers in all the pies out here. Hell, there’s a ballroom named after him at the fancy, old-timey, tourist-trap hotel in our downtown here in Flagstaff. I used to go sliding down a waterfall named after him in the Tonto forest. So I was thinking, this’ll be classic too.
I want to poke my eyes out.
This is bad. And not just in the “vainly attempt to overlook the overt racism and misogyny of the time” kind of bad. Because that’s bad. Apparently all Mexicans are dirty and lazy if left to their own devices and will only be clean and hard-working if you as a white person force them to be so. Oh, and don’t forget, treacherous. And cowardly. And you also can’t tell how old they are because not white. And probably all these white people think they look the same because racism.
Then there’s also the misogyny. I think this is most deeply rooted in the depiction of the main character as being so perfect. She’s pretty and wonderful when she firsts comes out to the West but she literally does nothing else except for getting more wonderful and pretty. She literally says that her “beauty has trebled” since she came West. She’s not full of herself at all, that one. Literally everyone is in love with her. And she’s dumb as a bag of bricks. And condescending. She pretends to take these cowboys seriously but really she just sees them as quaint. There’s nothing to her. She’s not interesting, she’s not flawed, she’s not even useful. I can’t figure out the point of her, except that he needed a main character.
Madeline seriously is too perfect. There was an inkling of hope at the beginning when her brother’s like, “I lost all my fortune and cattle and everything because being dumb as a bag of bricks runs in the family,” and they could have really struggled. But she simply writes a check and all the bad things go away. The run-down ranch becomes as pretty and wonderful as she is and all their hopes and dreams come true and if only other people would just stop being so nasty and let them enjoy it then everything would be wonderful and pretty and perfect!
And don’t get me started on the chapter solely devoted to “desert golf”. I thought I was gonna hurl.
There were also many things which were an affront to us native Southwesterners. Such as, “the grotesque shapes of yucca and ocotillo”??? Are you really from the Southwest??? Because yucca and ocotillo are BEAUTIFUL, YOU DAMN FOOL. Or, when the party is riding to a camping spot and a thunderstorm is rising up. The leader of the party is like, “let’s keep going” and where do they end up? On a mountain top. Where they are more likely to be struck by lightning. Or washed completely away by torrential rains. What idiots.
Ultimately, this book rubbed me the wrong way. The action didn’t have the right pacing, I didn’t care about the characters, and the meaning felt preachy. Men are manly and ladies are feminine and fainting and you better be the best person ever or else everyone will hate you! Oh, I’m sorry, wait, you better make sure everyone knows you’re the best person or they’ll hate you anyway automatically assuming the worst of you. And judging you unnecessarily.
If the rest of Zane Grey’s novels are like this, count me out. If there’s one in the pack that could redeem him, let me know. I’ll take the chance, I guess.
But first, backstory. I’m writing a western. Yes, a western. Hey, they say write about what you know, and I know about the Southwest. Also, research helps. Thus, I thought, you know, I’ve seen lots of westerns, I should also read some. So a while back (probably about a year now, god I’m bad at life) I bought three westerns. 1.) How the West Was Won because I saw the movie and figured it was pretty classic. Same for 2.) The Ox-Bow Incident. The third one I got, 3.) The Light of Western Skies, is a Zane Grey novel, because Zane Grey’s got his fingers in all the pies out here. Hell, there’s a ballroom named after him at the fancy, old-timey, tourist-trap hotel in our downtown here in Flagstaff. I used to go sliding down a waterfall named after him in the Tonto forest. So I was thinking, this’ll be classic too.
I want to poke my eyes out.
This is bad. And not just in the “vainly attempt to overlook the overt racism and misogyny of the time” kind of bad. Because that’s bad. Apparently all Mexicans are dirty and lazy if left to their own devices and will only be clean and hard-working if you as a white person force them to be so. Oh, and don’t forget, treacherous. And cowardly. And you also can’t tell how old they are because not white. And probably all these white people think they look the same because racism.
Then there’s also the misogyny. I think this is most deeply rooted in the depiction of the main character as being so perfect. She’s pretty and wonderful when she firsts comes out to the West but she literally does nothing else except for getting more wonderful and pretty. She literally says that her “beauty has trebled” since she came West. She’s not full of herself at all, that one. Literally everyone is in love with her. And she’s dumb as a bag of bricks. And condescending. She pretends to take these cowboys seriously but really she just sees them as quaint. There’s nothing to her. She’s not interesting, she’s not flawed, she’s not even useful. I can’t figure out the point of her, except that he needed a main character.
Madeline seriously is too perfect. There was an inkling of hope at the beginning when her brother’s like, “I lost all my fortune and cattle and everything because being dumb as a bag of bricks runs in the family,” and they could have really struggled. But she simply writes a check and all the bad things go away. The run-down ranch becomes as pretty and wonderful as she is and all their hopes and dreams come true and if only other people would just stop being so nasty and let them enjoy it then everything would be wonderful and pretty and perfect!
And don’t get me started on the chapter solely devoted to “desert golf”. I thought I was gonna hurl.
There were also many things which were an affront to us native Southwesterners. Such as, “the grotesque shapes of yucca and ocotillo”??? Are you really from the Southwest??? Because yucca and ocotillo are BEAUTIFUL, YOU DAMN FOOL. Or, when the party is riding to a camping spot and a thunderstorm is rising up. The leader of the party is like, “let’s keep going” and where do they end up? On a mountain top. Where they are more likely to be struck by lightning. Or washed completely away by torrential rains. What idiots.
Ultimately, this book rubbed me the wrong way. The action didn’t have the right pacing, I didn’t care about the characters, and the meaning felt preachy. Men are manly and ladies are feminine and fainting and you better be the best person ever or else everyone will hate you! Oh, I’m sorry, wait, you better make sure everyone knows you’re the best person or they’ll hate you anyway automatically assuming the worst of you. And judging you unnecessarily.
If the rest of Zane Grey’s novels are like this, count me out. If there’s one in the pack that could redeem him, let me know. I’ll take the chance, I guess.
skittles0313's review against another edition
4.0
This is my favorite Zane Grey book so far. The only thing is that I was disappointed by the ending of the book. I really want to know what happens after Madeline's last statement!
Be sure to read the sequel, Majesty's Rancho.
Be sure to read the sequel, Majesty's Rancho.
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