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A review by hannxm
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy
Did not finish book. Stopped at 52%.
DNF @52%
It sucks to give up on this book because I was hoping I'd like this but it's taken 9 days to get just half way through. I like a western and extreme gore doesn't bother me, and I even got kind of used to McCarthy's writing, which irked me at first, so I thought this wouldn't be an issue for me.
There was shocking moments and some funny moments but ultimately, when a book is more full of description, very little dialogue and no real character development, it falls flat. It was like watching a gang in the Wild West just murdering and fighting people for no obvious reason, whilst not really knowing anyone, not even the protagonist, who it seems stops being the protagonist at some point.
Half the time I felt like I didn't even know what was going on or why something was happening, so if you feel out of the loop all the time, it's hard to keep going. It didn't help that there are several conversations in Spanish - luckily reading on kindle let me translate easily but reading this as a printed book would've drove me mad. They say McCarthy's writing is all about keeping the flow of the narrative, but having to stop regularly just to translate damages the flow.
I'm giving it 3 stars because there are definitely some strong moments and good writing but ultimately, it fell flat for me. I was starting to hate having to come back to this book which was my sign that I wasn't getting anything out of it.
It sucks to give up on this book because I was hoping I'd like this but it's taken 9 days to get just half way through. I like a western and extreme gore doesn't bother me, and I even got kind of used to McCarthy's writing, which irked me at first, so I thought this wouldn't be an issue for me.
There was shocking moments and some funny moments but ultimately, when a book is more full of description, very little dialogue and no real character development, it falls flat. It was like watching a gang in the Wild West just murdering and fighting people for no obvious reason, whilst not really knowing anyone, not even the protagonist, who it seems stops being the protagonist at some point.
Half the time I felt like I didn't even know what was going on or why something was happening, so if you feel out of the loop all the time, it's hard to keep going. It didn't help that there are several conversations in Spanish - luckily reading on kindle let me translate easily but reading this as a printed book would've drove me mad. They say McCarthy's writing is all about keeping the flow of the narrative, but having to stop regularly just to translate damages the flow.
I'm giving it 3 stars because there are definitely some strong moments and good writing but ultimately, it fell flat for me. I was starting to hate having to come back to this book which was my sign that I wasn't getting anything out of it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Gore, Gun violence, Racial slurs, Torture, Violence, Blood, Murder, War, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Medical content, and Fire/Fire injury