Comanch Moon has a compelling story but continuity problems

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	• Comanche Moon : A Novel Larry McMurtry Simon & Schuster, 2000 - 720 pages average customer review:based on 140 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Could have been two books instead of one

This books takes place over many years, which is something that I wish it had not done. As a result, there is so much that is packed into this book that it feels somewhat forced and extremely far removed from the earlier parts of the story.

While I enjoyed it, I didn't love it. I did like seeing Deets and Pea Eye and even Jake Spoon again, but not much was added to their characters. Pea Eye is as simple as ever, Deets still has a heart of gold and Jake Spoon is lazier than he is helpful.

Maggie was actually the best character, and one that I felt the most sorry for. Gus pines for Clara, who eventually leaves to marry someone else, but Maggie's dilemma with Call is ongoing, constant and unescapable. Once she becomes pregnant, their relationship withers and she is forced to live as best she can with thoughts of what may have been. As Newt grows up a little during the course of the story, Maggie takes what joy she can from that before becoming sick and dying. It's a tragic tale, and one that I thought was compelling and believable.

On the other hand, Call and Gus never seem to deserve the legendary status that people give them in Lonesome Dove. They are elevated on the whim of a superior to become captains in the Texas Rangers toward the beginning of the book. While they seem able, most of their missions are complete failures. They never capture or kill who they are supposed to be hunting, and toward the end of the book appear to be about to give up being Rangers. The one successful mission they do have, that of getting back a superior who had been captured, is really a failure in most ways. They wind up saving the superior only because the villains holding him have left him for dead.

Call and Gus are very human characters, and I enjoy their flaws, but I thought that their almost awe-inspiring status in Lonesome Dove (a later book chronologically) would have been based on more than their ability to simply stay alive. As difficult as the frontier life is portrayed in this book, Call and Gus just seem to be survivors, not necessarily Rangers who always got their outlaw.

The two heroes do not bring in or apprehend a single major nemesis, even though those antagonists have been built up since Dead Man's Walk. While some may consider that realistic, I found it to be somewhat of a letdown. Still, if you've read the other books, it's worth reading this.

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Mixed Feelings

Comanche Moon is a good book. Maybe I should begin by getting that statement off my chest. It draws many of the characters from Lonesome Dove together and the stories McMurtry places them in are generally worthy of their greatness. But there were very discernable problems with this book beyond the flaws in the long story that made it the weakest volume of the Lonesome Dove series. What kept frustrating me was how the continuity was wrong. By this I mean facts that should have meshed instead contradicted one another between the various books in this quartet. That is just about unforgivable. I hate when authors do that because it weakens the reality of the novel and reveals it as "just a book". I could go on and say some more things here that are critical but the fact is, I did like Comanche Moon and was glad to spend time with those I got to know in the immeasurably superior Lonesome Dove. Read this for what it is and don't expect a return to Lonesome Dove's perfection.

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Classic Western - second in series of four

If you are thinking of reading the much-praised book Lonesome Dove, you would do well to read the two prequels first (see my review of Dead Man's Walk), followed by the sequel Streets of Laredo. Comanche Moon is the most violent book in the series, but only because McMurtry isn't holding back. He tells it like it is, the glory and the horror, with realism and humor. As some reviewers have pointed out, McMurtry has not been totally consistent with his characters in the four books in the series, and he has not remained absolutely historically accurate. So what? This is historical fiction. Just think about all the books about the American West, even history books, that claim to be historically accurate, but don't really get anywhere near the truth! The inconsistencies in McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series are not glaring or important. Most readers would probably not even notice them. These are adventure stories in the best sense, dishing out plenty of realism. Comanche Moon features a nail-biting psychological adventure story. If you want to get some feeling for what it was like in this time and place, check all of your dry pseudo-facts at the door and dive into this series.

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Comanch Moon has a compelling story but continuity problems

Lonesome Dove, a masterpiece, deserved the Pulitzer Prize but the prequels and sequel have been disappointments. Comanch Moon is actually one of the better books of the series but there are some inconsistencies in continuity that make me think McMurtry forgot what he wrote before or perhaps he got someone else to wtite these less than stellar books. For instance the histories of Clara and Maggie the women who loved the main protaganists do not match up with the Lonesome Dove descriptions. Clara never returns to Austin TX to runs her parents' store as in LD after a terrible Indian attack in which her parents perish. She marries a dumb horse trader from Kentucky and leaves Texas forever leaving the store to languish in CM. Maggie, Call's ever suffering prostitute lover never makes it to Lonesome Dove to languish and die as an alcoholic as she does in the first book. Instead she dies of consumption 6 years after cleaning up her life and having Newt in Austin Tx in CM. Neither does the past marital history of Augustus ring true. Did he marry two fat women and become widowed after less than one year each or was 7 years his longest marriage?

Are they piddly details in an otherwise compelling story? Perhaps. But it is certainly annoyingly disappointing to encounter these simple continuity mistakes. Why make such mistakes in your own books? The changes wouldn't improve the story but only make one suspicious.

I think Margaret Mitchell had it right to not try to inflict on the public a sequel to Gone with the Wind. No one could ever top it. Look at the romance novel sequel that followed 50 years later written by another author and a different writing style. Take my advice. Read Lonesome Dove and enjoy but I wouldn't think it necessary to read the other books in the series.

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Too much violence this time

This is the final volume of the Lonesome Dove trilogy, which actually spans the time between DEAD MAN'S WALK and LONESOME DOVE.

Three blood-thirsty men - Buffalo Hump, his son Blue Duck, and the Black Vaquero - dominate the story: all three prey on and slaughter and torture whites who have moved into Texas just before the Civil War. McRae and Call and the Texas Rangers do what they can to stop them, but without much luck. The book is a bit too long and way too bloody and violent - one becomes numbed by it all. Missing are the fascinating characters and their sometimes loopy ways that McMurtry is so good at creating.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

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