“This is perhaps the best McCarthy Novel. It is a powerful tale full of twists with surreal characters and events. Much like His 'Blood Meridian', I felt like I was in a dark dream scape while reading this.The dichotomy between McCarthy's plain spoken, pragmatic dialog and the depth of underlying philosophy and description that weaves through his writing always leaves me with the feeling that I've read a good, solid, straight up story with subconscious layers that I do not fully realize or comprehend. McCarthy demands a lot of his readers. He uses an extraordinary vocabulary not to be pretentious but to fully utilize the descriptive power of the English language. He also throws in a lot of untranslated Spanish dialog which is very authentic but not always understood to non Spanish speakers. Additionally,there is a steady theme of disturbing realism through his writing; bad things happen to good people, murdering savages often profit and escape unscathed etc. In short, there is not necessarily accountability or consequence for evil deeds. If you need good Karma, a just god or happy endings in your stories you will be disappointed. Or, like one of my friends who read this book said; "there are no redeeming qualities to this story". True! Yet it is still a great story! That is McCarthy's magic.”
“The passages with Billy and the wolf were incredible, but for me, the book suffered from its multiple long-winded philosophical monologues delivered by minor characters.”
