Comanche Moon [Hardcover]

In this book the author hits the reader across the face with facts. He never mentions Clara's future husband without refering to him as "the horsetrader from Nebraska" which just gets annoying. (additionally, this doesn't jive with the impression I got from Lonesome Dove, in which he and Clara went out to make their fortune, settled in Nebraska and became horse traders. The fact that he has an existing horsetrading business in Nebraska and still hangs around Austin wooing women?) We hear about "Young Jake" which is okay, but "Young Deets" and "Young Pea Eye" just don't work. He never misses a chance to note Maggie's last name, which is an unknown in Lonesome Dove.

Nothing original happens with the main characters, and every plot turn is spelled out in Lonesome Dove. It feels very forced that in a period of just a few months (maybe a year) Call and Gus become captains, meet Jake, Deets, and Pea eye, Maggie tels Call she's pregnant, Clara gets married, and her parents get killed. Hell, those last three take place in the course of a few weeks.

The characters don't seem true to themselves, but pale copies. I cannot imagine Call not taking responsibility for a child the whore tells him is his, but riding back in and finding a whore he had some relations with for a few months with a toddler, and never making the connection to himself, that's a bit more in character.

Skip this one folks.

Comanche Moon is actually the second book in the series and takes up where Dead Man's Walk leaves off.

Comanche Moon is essential in that it provides much-needed connective tissue between Dead Man's Walk and Lonesome Dove. It brings Gus and Call back home after their failure in taking Santa Fe. It also paints much clearer portraits of important characters like Maggie, Newt's mother, and Clara Harris, the love of Augustus McCrae's life.

Especially important are the answers to questions that Comanche Moon provides about Blue Duck. But I'll leave you to the book to discover those for yourself.

No less than Lonesome Dove, Dead Man's Walk and Streets of Laredo, Comanche Moon is an incredible story in true Larry McMurtry style and, as already noted, is essential to the complete Lonesome Dove saga.

There are some characters who haven't been seen before, or who weren't in Lonesome Dove, anyway, and they provide some amusement. One, Inish Scull, is Gus and Call's captain in the rangers at the start of the book. He's a weird, strange character, and frankly should have been dropped two thirds of the way through the book when he returns to New England, or alternatively reintroduced to the plot somehow. His wife is even more outrageous than he is, and somehow is so annoying you're almost hoping the Indians get her and inflict some of McMurtry's patented unpleasantness upon her.

That being said, there's not much of a plot here, and there are conflicts with other books (notably Lonesome Dove itself). There's also the issue of history, and historical detail. It's as if McMurtry doesn't care, or doesn't know, and his publisher is uninterested too. So one character sings a song before it was written, another has a gun that hasn't been invented yet. The Civil War is almost an afterthought to the story. Frankly, Gus and Call would have been a lot more interesting if they'd gone east to fight in the war (many Texas Rangers did) and wound up at Pea Ridge or something. *That* would have been interesting. Instead, they act like the war didn't happen, almost, and no one else pays it much attention either. The one Northern-born ranger stays with his troop and rangers on, without much mention of his dilemma.

I've enjoyed many of McMurtry's books, and I enjoyed the characters here, but the plot was very thin. I can only recommend this book to those who already know they enjoy McMurtry, and are aware of what they're getting into.