Still, Shrake moves the plot along with zest. His portrait of a tiny nation, born in struggle, fighting to survive and to...
A vigorous portrait of the fledgling Texas republic, set in 1839 and involving a large cast of gaudy, outsize characters.
Journalist and screenwriter/novelist Shrake (Blessed McGill, 1967; coauthor, with Harvey Penick, And If You Play Golf, You're My Friend, 1993) has done his research well. Like Larry McMurtry, he has employed astonishing details about the period, and his backdrops—of Comanche and Cherokee villages, and small, embattled Texas towns—are convincing, as are the motivations of his characters, many based on actual figures. Their actions, however, can sometimes approach melodrama. Sister and brother Cullasaja amd Romulus Swift, the offspring of a Cherokee woman and an Irish-American sea captain and merchant, head west because beautiful, determined Cullajasa wants to find an Indian utopia rumored to be in Texas, a village built by her mother's people. The handsome, accomplished Romulus, a physician, accompanies her. They quickly fall afoul of the sexual psychopath Henry Longfellow, a Texas politician who, when his rape of Cullasaja is frustrated, plans revenge. All three become entangled with Matthew Caldwell, a bright, lethal frontiersman who is a captain in the newly formed Texas Rangers, trying to preserve Texas from another Mexican invasion and the plots of a variety of shabby politicians attempting to loot or exploit the new nation. Looming in the background are the Comanches, who claim much of Texas as their hunting ground and view the white settlers with bafflement and disdain. Before the narrative is over, the village Cullajasa has been seeking is destroyed, a disastrous war with the Comanches is instigated, and Longfellow exacts his vengeance. Shrake's battle scenes have a gory reality, and his depiction of life on the frontier is vivid and compelling. But the novel is slowed somewhat by characters who can seem one-dimensional. And a subtext regarding a mystical quest is both jarring and cryptic.
Still, Shrake moves the plot along with zest. His portrait of a tiny nation, born in struggle, fighting to survive and to invent an identity, is often gripping. An unusual, ambitious work of historical fiction.Pub Date: April 5, 2000
ISBN: 0-7868-6579-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2000
At the outset, this might seem like minor Morrison (A Mercy, 2008, etc.), not only because its length is borderline novella,...
A deceptively rich and cumulatively powerful novel.
At the outset, this might seem like minor Morrison (A Mercy, 2008, etc.), not only because its length is borderline novella, but because the setup seems generic. A black soldier returns from the Korean War, where he faces a rocky re-entry, succumbing to alcoholism and suffering from what would subsequently be termed PTSD. Yet perhaps, as someone tells him, his major problem is the culture to which he returns: “An integrated army is integrated misery. You all go fight, come back, they treat you like dogs. Change that. They treat dogs better.” Ultimately, the latest from the Nobel Prize–winning novelist has something more subtle and shattering to offer than such social polemics. As the novel progresses, it becomes less specifically about the troubled soldier and as much about the sister he left behind in Georgia, who was married and deserted young, and who has fallen into the employ of a doctor whose mysterious experiments threaten her life. And, even more crucially, it’s about the relationship between the brother and his younger sister, which changes significantly after his return home, as both of them undergo significant transformations. “She was a shadow for most of my life, a presence marking its own absence, or maybe mine,” thinks the soldier. He discovers that “while his devotion shielded her, it did not strengthen her.” As his sister is becoming a woman who can stand on her own, her brother ultimately comes to terms with dark truths and deep pain that he had attempted to numb with alcohol. Before they achieve an epiphany that is mutually redemptive, even the earlier reference to “dogs” reveals itself as more than gratuitous.Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-59416-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
This is historical adventure on a grand scale, right up there with the works of Conn Iggulden and Minette Walters.
Plenty of gore from days of yore fills the 12th entry in Cornwell’s The Last Kingdom series (War of the Wolf, 2018, etc.).
The pagan warlord Uhtred of Bebbanburg narrates his 10th-century adventures, during which he hacks people apart so that kingdoms might be stitched together. He is known to some as the Godless or the Wicked, a reputation he enjoys. Edward, King of Wessex, Mercia, and East Anglia is gravely ill, and Uhtred pledges an oath to likely heir Æthelstan to kill two rivals, Æthelhelm and “his rotten nephew,” Ælfweard, when the king dies. Uhtred’s wife, Eadith, wants him to break that oath, but he cannot live with the dishonor of being an oathbreaker. The tale seems to begin in the middle, as though the reader had just turned the last page in the 11th book—and yet it stands alone quite well. Uhtred travels the coast and the river Temes in the good ship Spearhafoc, powered by 40 rowers struggling against tides and currents. He and his men fight furious battles, and he lustily impales foes with his favorite sword, Serpent-Breath. “I don’t kill the helpless,” though, which is one of his few limits. So, early in the story, when a man calling himself “God’s chosen one” declares “We were sent to kill you,” readers may chuckle and say yeah, right. But Uhtred faces true challenges such as Waormund, “lord Æthelhelm’s beast.” Immense bloodletting aside, Cornwell paints vivid images of the filth in the Temes and in cities like Lundene. This is mainly manly fare, of course. Few women are active characters. The queen needs rescuing, and “when queens call for help, warriors go to war.” The action is believable if often gruesome and loathsome, and it never lets up for long.
This is historical adventure on a grand scale, right up there with the works of Conn Iggulden and Minette Walters.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-256321-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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