THE LONESOME GODS

by Louis L'Amour ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1983

L'Amour doesn't write long books by nature--most of his paperback favorites are under 200 pages--and, at 464 pp., this mini-melodrama of mid-19th-century California suffers a good deal from padding, repetition, and sluggish pacing. The beginning is fine enough: narrator Johannes Verne remembers coming West as a child with his noble, dying widower-father--on a dangerous solo-wagon trek; though they nearly reach Los Angeles (thanks to Verne Sr.'s sharpshooting), they're attacked out in the desert by assassins working for Johannes' Spanish-nobleman grandfather. . . who has always hated Verne (a Protestant) for marrying his daughter; Johannes survives, his father is killed--and after a desert stint with the Cahuilla Indians, Johannes goes to live in small-town L.A. with dear Miss Nesselrode, a handsome but independent young entrepreneur (a friend from the wagon trip). From there on, however, L'Amour does a choppy, ill-focused job of stretching out an essentially tiny plot. We watch Johannes (a righteous prig of a hero) go to school, fall in love with playmate Meghan, then work for Miss Nesselrode rounding up wild horses in the desert. He muses repeatedly about a mysterious giant who supposedly lives in the desert. (""Who was he? What was he? A giant? A monster? An evil spirit, as some presumed? Had my father known him? Had the Indians seen him?"") He offers pompous little lectures on ecology, Native Americans, etc. There are a few sketchy subplots--including an utterly foolish one about Miss Nesselrode's secret past as a refugee from ""the zar."" And finally there's the inevitable (and, some will feel, interminable) showdown-sequence in the desert--as Johannes walks knowingly into a trap set by his evil grandfather (and by his grandfather's super-evil heir): attacks and counter-attacks ensue; Meghan goes out into the desert to look for Johannes; good-hearted Mongolian warrior Yacub Khan follows, to look for Meghan; the gothic identity of the desert giant is revealed (with the Evil Grandfather suddenly cast in the role of Ralph Nickleby); plus some ultimate--if inconclusive--bloodshed. Lesser L'Amour, in other words, with a fair amount of solid action but far less charm than the modest Cherokee Trail (1982). . . though heavy promotion and the increasing L'Amour celebrity may put this inflated second-stringer across.

Pub Date: April 1, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Bantam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1983

Categories: FICTION