Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove, #4) by Larry McMurtry

Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove, #4) Reviews

• 
  Andy Marr

  In order of publication:
  
  Lonesome Dove (1985) *****
  Streets of Laredo (1993) ****
  Dead Man's Walk (1995) ****
  Comanche Moon (1997) ****
  
  In order of internal chronology:
  
  Dead Man's Walk – set in the early 1840s
  Comanche Moon – set in the 1850–60s
  Lonesome Dove – set in mid-to-late 1870s
  Streets of Laredo – set in the early 1890s
• 
  Joe Valdez

  Comanche Moon is the fourth and final entry in a franchise spun from Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize winning western Lonesome Dove. Published in 1997, a tone of finality is absent due to the story taking place fifteen to twenty years before the events of McMurtry's magnum opus. His protagonists--Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call--are serving in a company of Texas Rangers charged with protecting settlers along the Rio Grande from Mexican bandits and those on the plains from the Comanche Indians. The writing is superlative, while the necessity of the book and its length are self-indulgent, which may be exactly what hungry fans wanted. They get it.
  
  The epic begins with the company cold, tired and dejected, pressing through sleet on the Llano Estacado under the command of Captain Inish Scull, a tough, adventurous Yankee nicknamed Old Nails due to his habit of picking his teeth with a horseshoe nail. In pursuit of the notorious Comanche horse thief Kicking Wolf, the men are instructed to cover the heads of their horses with sacking to keep the eyelids of their mounts from freezing. The taciturn, work dedicated Call is begged for some sacking by his friend Gus, a romantic idler who was too busy in a whore's tent before their dispatch to do much else but put on his pants.
  
  Alerted to the rangers is the Comanche chief Buffalo Hump, a feared warrior whose oldest son was shot and killed by Call in the Brazos River, earning the ranger the name Gun-in-the-Water. The chief's surviving son, a Comanche-Mexican mongrel named Blue Duck, is as fearless as his father, but exercises none of the judgment, as quick to kill a friendly Kiowa as a Texan. Buffalo Hump criticizes his son for bringing him news rather than a scalp and declines to attack the rangers that Kicking Wolf is responsible for agitating. Attempting to bushwhack Gun-in-the-Water himself, Blue Duck is shot twice by Call and barely escapes. The ranger, merely doing his duty, holds little animosity.
  
  Call had fought the Comanche as hard as any ranger, and yet, when he looked down at them through Captain Scull's glass, saw the women scraping hides and the young men racing their ponies, he felt the same contradictory itch of admiration he had felt the first time he had fought against Buffalo Hump. They were deadly, merciless killers, but they were also the last free Indians on the southern plains. When the last of them had been killed, or their freedom taken from them, their power broken, the plains around him would be a different place. It would be a safer place, or course, but a flavor would have been taken out of it--the flavor of wildness. Of course, it would be a blessing for the settlers, but the settlers weren't the whole story--not quite.
  
  The troop break off their pursuit of Kicking Wolf and head south, where Scull entertains the notion of finding his other adversary: Ahumado, the barbarous Mexican bandit known as the Black Vaquero, who once shot and wounded the captain's magnificent steed Hector. When Kicking Wolf sneaks up on the rangers and steals Hector, Scull promotes Gus and Call to co-captain and instructs them to take the troop home. Scull takes off on foot with their eccentric Kickapoo scout Famous Shoes on a foolhardy adventure to retrieve his horse. Kicking Wolf, meanwhile, decides to deliver his trophy south of the border as a gift to the Black Vaquero in a test of his courage.
  
  In Austin, Gus reunites with his sweetheart, sharp tongued shopkeeper Clara Forsythe, only to learn that her days of waiting on him have ended with her decision to marry a horse trader from North Dakota. Call has a woman, a whore named Maggie Tilton who is carrying his child, but the captain resists all overtures to settle down or even pay Maggie much attention. Captain Scull's rich and flagrant wife Inez takes a break from devouring any able-bodied man in sight to complain to the governor that her husband has abandoned her. Captains McCrae and Call are given orders to go in search of their captain, acquiring one-thousand head of cattle in a ransom to the Black Vaquero.
  
  Joining the expedition is Pea Eye Parker (a scarecrow who Call once rescued from starvation and has become the company's farrier), Joshua Deets (an escaped slave promoted from company cook to tracker) and Jake Spoon (a teenage fop much cozier around women and cards than rangering). Their journey takes them into a border encampment called Lonesome Dove whose potential for variety prove more tempting to Gus than locating their wayward captain. Call feels that rangering offers variety: freezing on the plains and getting scalped by Comanches one week, sweltering in Mexico and getting shot by bandits the next. Besides, there's work left to do.
  
  "Buffalo Hump's held the plains ever since we've been rangers," Call pointed out. "We've never whipped him. And Ahumado's held the border--we've never whipped him either. We can't protect the plains or the border either--that's poor work in my book."
  
  "Woodrow, you're the worst I've ever known for criticizing yourself," Gus said. "We've never rangered with more than a dozen men at a time. Nobody could whip Buffalo Hump or Ahumado with a dozen men."
  
  Call knew that was true, but it didn't change his feeling. The Texas Rangers were supposed to protect settlers on the frontier, but they hadn't. The recent massacres were evidence enough that they weren't succeeding on their job.
  
  "You ought to give up and open a store, if you feel that low about it," Augustus suggested. "There's a need for a store, now that the Forsythes are dead. You could marry Mag while you're at it and be comfortable."
  
  "I don't want to run a store or marry either," Call said. "I'd just like to feel that I'm worth the money I'm paid."
  
  "No, what you want is to take a big scalp," Gus said. "Buffalo Hump's or Ahumado's. That's what you want. Me, I'd take the scalp too, but I don't figure it would change much."
  
  "If you kill the jefe it might change something," Call argued.
  
  "No, because somebody else just as mean will soon come along," Gus said.
  
  "Well, we rarely agree," Call said.
  
  "No, but let's go to Mexico anyway," Augustus said. "I'm restless. Let's just saddle up and go tonight. There's a fine moon. Without the boys to slow us down we could make forty miles by morning."
  
  Call felt tempted. He and Augustus at least knew one another's competencies. They would probably fare better alone.
  
  One hundred pages into Comanche Moon, Larry McMurtry became one of my favorite authors. His ability to introduce characters quickly and invest me in them emotionally is bar none. My favorite is a tie between Maggie Tilton, the Austin harlot stoic in the face of not only a Comanche attack, but neglect by the only man she'll ever love, and Famous Shoes, the wily Kickapoo who is the only man on the llano respected by both Buffalo Hump and McCrae & Call. In addition to the wonderful characters, McMurtry's dialogue is like slipping into the banter between old friends while his prose achieves illuminates the bygone world of the American frontier with both wit and introspection.
  
  "What are you doing here?" Buffalo Hump asked, when Famous Shoes walked up. "Your white friends were here but now they have gone south."
  
  "Your son made me come," Famous Shoes replied. "He came with these other boys and made me come. I was on the Canadian, eating a duck. I would not have bothered you if these boys had let me alone. They said you might want to torture me for awhile."
  
  Buffalo Hump was amused. The Kickapoo was an eccentric person who was apt to turn up anywhere on the llano on some outlandish errand that no other Indian would bother about. The man would walk a thousand miles to listen to a certain bird whose call he might want to mimic. Most people thought Famous Shoes was crazy, but Buffalo Hump didn't. Though a Kickapoo, the man had respect for the old ways. He behaved like the old ones behaved; the old ones, too, would go to any lengths to learn some useful fact about the animals or the birds. They would figure that someone might need to know those facts; they themselves might not need to, but their children might, or their grandchildren might.
  
  If spending more time with compelling characters and magnificent prose is justification for itself, then Comanche Moon does that. The novel has an episodic, wandering quality to it, with the author like a tourist in Westworld who just isn't ready to leave the resort yet and wants to cowboy a bit more. The longer the novel goes on, and it goes on for 716 pages, the lack of strong narrative becomes more problematic and I even started skipping through paragraphs once the Mexican adventure was settled. Epic-itis is a bug that afflicts this series and I kept wondering whether a novel that was more focused on story would've had a greater impact on me.
  
  Lonesome Dove cast a long shadow over television, where all four novels were adapted (by Larry McMurtry, or McMurtry & Diana Ossana) and new casts utilized for the characters at different ages. Comanche Moon became a CBS mini-series in 2008 with Steve Zahn as Gus, Karl Urban as Call, Linda Cardellini as Clara Forsythe, Elizabeth Banks as Maggie Tilton, Val Kilmer as Inish Scull, Rachel Griffiths as Inez Scull, Wes Studi as Buffalo Hump and Adam Beach as Blue Duck. Lonesome Dove has made its case for being as mesmerizing a universe for some book and movie lovers as Middle Earth is to others.
• 
  Christopher

  There are two ways to read the Lonesome Dove series, and they're analogous to the ways you can watch Star Wars. You can start with the first produced, which fall in the middle of the story chronologically, then read/watch to the end of the story, then loop back around and meet back in the middle. That's the way I chose to go. Or you can read/watch from the beginning of the story straight through to the end. (Star Wars: no way! Lonesome Dove: as you can see later on, this is close to the way to go.)
  
  Order by Publication Date
  
  Lonesome Dove (1985)
  
  Streets of Laredo (1993)
  
  Dead Man's Walk (1995)
  
  Comanche Moon (1997)
  
  Chronological Order
  
  Dead Man's Walk
  
  Comanche Moon
  
  Lonesome Dove
  
  Streets of Laredo
  
  So this is the end of the line for me. No more Gus, no more Call. No more Deets or Pea Eye or Buffalo Hump or Blue Duck or any of the other characters with bizarre names.
  
  I say all this because this would certainly be a different review if this was only the second book I read in the series. If I was only halfway through, I'd be pumped up to read the rest of the series. I wouldn't be able to wait to find what other picaresqueties the boys would ramble into.
  
  As it is, though, this was a real let down of a finale. It went out with a whimper rather than a kaboom. Throughout the novel our heroes' plans are constantly foiled. They really didn't do much at all, besides ride out into the desert, either discover that their quest had been resolved by someone else or get so thirsty that they have to return to home base.
  
  It's frustrating as a reader, because I've spent a lot of time with these dudes. I wanted to remember them as heroic, looming figures. This book did not present them as such. And that's probably the point. McMurtry rarely gives the reader what she wants. He stands second only to George RR Martin, slayer of people you love, in being able to create characters that feel real, and then spilling their brains out over the ground at the least expected moment.
  
  McMurtry is also a great writer of Westerns because he knows that the heroes of his books are not truly heroes. Call and Gus are as flawed as anyone I've ever known. While you root for them, McMurtry's always making you keep in the back of your mind that these guys are pretty much taking part in a genocide. Their job is to suppress the "savages". That's not to say that the Indians are the good guys, either, but much of this book, even more than the others, is dedicated to the perspective of the Indian characters.
  
  So it's safe to say that I'm ambivalent about this book. On the one hand, it did not give me the closure I wanted for a series end. On the other, it was a worthy continuation of McMurtry's bloody Western saga.
  
  In light of this, I propose a new reading order for the books. Lonesome Dove is still the obvious starting point. It's the best and if you're only going to read one of them, it has to be this one. Then go back to the chronological beginning and read Dead Man's Walk, then Comanche Moon. Then go to the chronological end and read Streets of Laredo. It's good stuff, and a more fitting endpoint.
  
  My Recommended Reading Order
  
  Lonesome Dove
  
  Dead Man's Walk
  
  Comanche Moon
  
  Streets of Laredo
• 
  Megan Baxter

  In Comanche Moon, Larry McMurtry has a deep sense of his characters and what they might do at any given moment. This often leads to scenes that ring true for the characters, but don't advance the narrative, or, indeed, subvert the narrative drive. This sprawling novel is not one of plot. It is one of detail, and character-driven meandering.
  
  Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision
  here.
  
  In the meantime, you can read the entire review at
  Smorgasbook
• 
  Edward

  I just love Larry McMurty's writing. Phenomenal book.
• 
  Michael Finocchiaro

  This is the final book McMurtry wrote in the Lonesome Dove series, coming 2nd in the chronology (
  Dead Man's Walk ->
  Comanche Moon ->
  Lonesome Dove ->
  Streets of Laredo.)
  In
  Comanche Moon, we seem to be about a decade beyond the events in
  Dead Man's Walk with Gus and Call both Captains in the Texas Rangers running missions into the llano and in Mexico against new bad guy Ahumado "The Black Vaquero" and old bad guys Buffalo Hump, Kicking Wolf and Blue Duck. I felt this one started out strong and sort of petered out at the end. It felt as if he had a few plot points he needed to cover, but wasn't sure how to stretch his story and his character arcs to cover them. I did enjoy the episodes with Ahumado, the new character Inish Scull (although I was disappointed at his small cameo at the end), and the character Famous Shoes. Gus and Call are, well, Gus and Call and it was nice to meet Maggie as she turned out to be a fully fleshed-out character. It was also interesting that some of the harsh realities of frontier life (such as Indian raids and the rejection by surviving husbands of their raped wives) are depicted with unflinching realism. It was also interesting to see the Civil War as viewed from Texas with both protagonists avoiding to take sides.
  I gave this one four stars because of the strong first half of the book, but it falls short of
  Lonesome Dove by a longshot while being an improvement over
  Dead Man's Walk. Now onto
  Streets of Laredo.
• 
  Paul

  3.5 stars
  The second chronologically in the Lonesome Dove series, but the last one to be written.
  “See this page of paper? It’s blank,” Scull said. “That, sir, is the most frightening battlefield in the world: the blank page. I mean to fill this paper with decent sentences, sir—this page and hundreds like it. Let me tell you, Colonel, it’s harder than fighting Lee. Why, it’s harder than fighting Napoleon. It requires unremitting attention,”
  “I suppose she's just dying of living--that's the one infection that strikes us all down, sooner or later.”
  This is better than the first in the series. Mc Murtry does build characters well and like Martin in Game of Thrones, has no compunction in killing them off if he needs to. Call and McCrae although present throughout are not the standout characters (Inish Scull manages that). However the ongoing relationship between them is interesting. McMurtry indicates it is straight from Don Quixote; the juxtaposition between the visionary and the practical.
  Beatriz Fernandez, in a PhD looking at masculinity in McMurtry and James Welch’s portrayal of the West makes the following rather interesting comment about Call’s character:
  “He is the epitome of the Westerner, a Christian by birth who has adopted Christian aesthetics but has rejected Christian religion: an Indian by choice who unconsciously imitates the former’s pose and character but rejects Native American pantheism and the belief in the individual as part of a wider totality. Lack of spiritual and emotional anchors inevitably lead the Westerner to his death.”
  The timeline covers the 1850s and 1860s, though it is a little fuzzy. The time period covers the expansion led by settlers and encroachment onto Indian lands; the decline and death of a way of life and the struggles and conflict that surround it.
  But what of the representation of the Comanche. How far have we come since John Wayne said the following?
  "I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from [the Indians], if that's what you're asking. Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.”
  Was there any moving on from the colonial framing of Indian savagery? McMurtry does try to focus on spirituality and connection to the land and its animals. There is some subtlety in the character of Buffalo Hump, much less in Blue Duck, but it could be argued that he was taking on some of the characteristics of the settlers. There is, I feel a sense that the Native American is either homicidal or spiritual with not much in between. It may be an improvement on John Wayne as quoted above, but the portrayal made me uneasy and made me wonder whether there are any other narratives from a Native American source.
  
• 
  aPriL does feral sometimes

  If a reader wishes to read the Lonesome Dove series in chronological order:
  
  1.
  Dead Man's Walk (1995)
  2.Comanche Moon (1997)
  3.
  Lonesome Dove (1985)
  4.
  Streets of Laredo (1993)
  
  I read the series in publishing order. I'm sorry I did since the anticipation of what would happen quite disappeared during my reading of 'Comanche Moon', the last book for me. If one reads in chronological order, readers watch the two main characters, Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call, change from callow and inexperienced young men into seasoned and tough Texas Rangers and beyond, into old age. But that doesn't mean I am sad about reading the novels in a more mixed up timeline at all. Instead, I am sad there are no more than four books in this series. Every character in the books is fascinating, and many are based on real life people of the time. But whether the books' characters are invented or composites or real individuals of historical repute, they are all awesome and memorable.
  
  'Lonesome Dove' won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In my opinion, it completely deserved to win. The other three novels are small moons accompanying the huge shining star of 'Lonesome Dove', but that said, every book has broken my heart by the last page. 'Comanche Moon' is no exception. Each novel depicts the end of some aspect of the wildness of the American West. It is not hyperbolic to say the overall arc of this series is about the death of the Wild West as it was in the mid-19th-century America.
  
  Western life as portrayed in these novels is harsh and deadly for many, yet it is as fascinating as watching a building on fire for those characters who survived its terrors and hardships as well as for us, gentle reader.
  
  The Indian tribes, Mexican and American adventurers - all were drawn to the quiet beauty and challenge of conquering the vast spaces and empty lands of what we know today as Texas and the surrounding llanos and deserts. Those who loved warfare, adventures and lawlessness thrived in these lands - until they didn't. Usually age, disease, accident or a tougher, faster, luckier warrior bested them. Others died from ignorance of living in a land without much water, or because of a lack of knowledge of plants or how to hunt animals. Tracking, shooting, living off of the land and knowing horses was a must. Physical weakness of any kind was a death sentence. But many men and women were strangely attracted to the challenges in surviving these life-and-death dramas. These were not people who contained themselves wholly within the civilized boundaries of social niceties or accepted and usual moral certainties. They couldn't be and live. Some never knew social boundaries of any kind. However, the individual human mind is a strange labyrinth of hopes, desires and dreams as the author Larry McMurtry vividly reveals through his characters. A lot of outcomes are not predictable when people are permitted to live off the leash as Westerners could.
  
  The toughest American Rangers, ranchers and settlers killed off even tougher Indians and Mexicans, and vice versa, while at the same time acquiring the experience and necessary knowledge of how to survive there in the western territories. The mapping of unexplored lands and the building of primitive small towns inevitably reduced the dangers for less violent and less adaptable eastern folks, who began to invade the Wild West in large numbers. This was the end of the West which author Larry McMurtry brings into breathing reality in these novels. It was both a wonderful and terrible era. However, civilization and its mores was standing by and eager to move in.
  
  I am going to miss Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call, Texas Rangers extraordinaire, in more ways than I can say. Somehow author Larry McMurtry has made these two characters and all of their friends and enemies, particularly the fierce and terrible Comanche, be as dear to me as the beats of my heart.
• 
  Murray

  the long rough story of the Comanche
  
  This is a long book. About as long as Lonesome Dove. There are many plots and subplots, but it basically begins with the Comanche free and proud and able to terrorize whoever they wish to terrorize. By the end of the book the day of the free Comanche has come to an end and their era is over.
  
  McMurtry is an accomplished writer and the main river of his tale of the Comanche tribe in the 1850s and 60s flows powerfully forward despite its many tributaries (the other plots). I only wish I had not had to wade through reams of pages about torture and Comanche trying to devise new and vicious ways of causing more pain to humans and animals. It was enough to talk about this once not a dozen times. Less is more. I know he has done his research and the cruelty was the way it was, but it did not need to be spelled out in lurid detail over and over again.
  
  A strong story yet it’s an exhausting story too. Chronologically, this is the second book in the quartet about Woodrow Call and Gus McRae. The next is the famous Lonesome Dove itself.
  
  This novel can be read by some, but not by all.
• 
  Fred Shaw

  One reviewer commented that a lover of westerns would only need to read one series: The Lonesome Dove novels consisting of Dead Man’s Walk, Comanche Moon, Lonesome Dove and Streets of Laredo. All written by Larry McMurtry. I totally agree. Be prepared to sit on the edge of your seat, laugh and cry.
• 
  Carol Storm

  Given that this book is the final volume in the LONESOME DOVE series, (the last one written, but second in the series time line) I was surprised at just how enjoyable and poignant it really was. Where to begin?
  
  Buffalo Hump, Buffalo Hump, Buffalo Hump! This magnificent warrior is not only a devastating action hero in dozens of scorching battle scenes, he's also a tragic hero worthy of Shakespeare.
  
  Just like Shakespeare's kings, the last great Comanche chief is surrounded by legend and mystery. Like Richard III, he has a humped back which is both sinister and a sign of supernatural powers. Eerie prophecies surround him. Just as Macbeth can never be defeated till Birnam wood comes to Dunsinane, Buffalo Hump can only be killed when his mighty hump is pierced.
  
  And just like Gloucester in KING LEAR, Buffalo Hump's doom is spelled out in the form of a bastard son -- the result of a sinful past he can never escape. Or as Blue Duck puts it at the end, "the gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make means to plague us."
  
  The Comanche side of the story was worth the price of the book alone. The father-son conflict between Buffalo Hump and his son Blue Duck is literally Shakespearean, with enormous intensity and passion. As the son of a Mexican woman Buffalo Hump brutally raped, Blue Duck is a symbol of tragic retribution, and the destruction he brings on Buffalo Hump is chilling and inevitable.
  
  But Blue Duck is more than just a bad son like Edmund in KING LEAR. He is also a symbol of change. As hateful as he can be, Blue Duck does what no other Comanche warrior in this series does. He sees the destruction of his people as an opportunity rather than a catastrophe. Instead of refusing to adapt and giving in to suicidal despair, (like his father, and Three Birds, and Idahi) Blue Duck actually adjusts to changing conditions. He fights better with pistols and rifles than with the bow or the lance, and he leads an army of white drifters rather than native warriors. Blue Duck's story is almost frighteningly intense. He grows from a boastful adolescent to a proven warrior to a terrifying menace, losing his humanity by such small degrees that he isn't even aware of it.
  
  On the other hand, the story of the Texans is not told so well. Captain Scull and his sexy wife Inez are both annoying cartoon characters in the book, and McMurtry dances around the issue of slavery without ever confronting it directly. Making Inez Scull crazy and vicious is a way of subverting the myth of the angelic southern belle without really challenging it. And it also takes all the guilt off of Gus and Jake for their whoring around, as if somehow her vileness cancels out theirs. I didn't buy it. A lot. But I was rooting for Buffalo Hump and Blue Duck anyway, along with their friends Idahi, Three Birds, and Kicking Wolf.
  
  Those guys are the heart of COMANCHE MOON. And that's the way it should be!
  
  
• 
  Nate

  This is chronologically the second book and that’s how I’m going through them, even though he seems to have written them in a relatively confusing order (I know Lonesome Dove was the first, but I have no idea what came when after that.) I definitely liked it more than Dead Man’s Walk! I think it has to do with the fact that we get a little more time to settle into the characters and also get a little bit of town living, whereas the first one was just Gus and Call trekking through a violent, harsh wasteland for 400 or whatever pages. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a metric fuckton of walking and dying in the desert this book, but it’s relieved by scenes in Austin and even Lonesome Dove’s first appearance in the series.
  
  I really have no idea what the plot of this one was. It’s more like a few shorter novels about the same characters packed into one big book. Most of it consists of Gus and Call in their time as Texas Rangers patrolling the Comancheria in the pursuit of the same few dudes (Kicking Wolf and the mighty Buffalo Hump and his shithead son Blue Duck, all from Dead Man’s Walk and the new baddie Ahumado.) Joining them are a few familiar characters including Deets, Pea Eye Parker and Long Bill Coleman. This sounds kinda boring on paper but when the characters are as lovingly rendered as these are and when some horribly violent shit could befall anyone at any them it keeps the pages turning...which is necessary with a book with 800 pages.
  
  I should really say that horribly violent shit could befall them or they could perpetrate it. One of the major themes that McMurtry is pushing is the plain hardness of this time and place. On one end of the spectrum you have guys like Ahumado who have personal flayers that do all kinds of horrid shit to people and on the other you have the clear and inarguable good guys Gus and Call, who lead ranger troops that kill women and children. (Okay that part was clearly an accident but it’s not like they noticeably felt bad or gave a shit, they were just like “Whoops, gotta go kill Blue Duck!”) Tragedy is common and a lot of the time not even that big of a deal. As much dramatic stuff happens in these books you could never call it melodrama because it’s everyday life. Speaking of melodrama, I really quickly just wanna give the shoutout to Inish and Inez Scull as the legendary-and-legendarily-dysfunctional power couple of this series.
  
  So I’m finally up to the big one, the original and the legend; Lonesome Dove. Thing is, I kinda just wanna skip to Streets of Laredo because I’ve seen the miniseries with Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones probably fifty times. It’d be one thing if it was like three or four hundred pages but that motherfucker looks longer than this one and I already have a billion brick-size historical novels I wanna read. Anyways, I happily recommend this series to people with an interest in old west fiction, but I just gotta warn you to clear your calendars because the pace of these books can be about five miles above glacial at points. You really have to enjoy the setting and the characters and spending time with them.
• 
  Tyler

  By far the best of the
  Lonesome Dove sequels, and, for the first 2/3rds, the most purely exciting McMurtry novel I've read. It's a very typical McMurtry book, too, circling in on many of those same themes and character types that pop up in much of his fiction and nonfiction: meaningless, unromantic sex in the arid desolation of Texas; the fundamental inability of many men and women to understand each other, despite each being inherently sensible; the closing, or taming, of the American West; Maggie Tilton, seen here for the first time as a full-bodied character, as a kind of version of
  The Last Picture Show's Ruth Popper, one hundred years earlier in time. In addition, there are some great supporting characters, particulary the insane East Coast/Old South transplants Inish and Inez (Dolly) Scull; I'd call Inish's storyline, with the on-foot trek to Mexico to retrieve his stolen horse and subsequent crazy-ass survival narrative, the best B-plot in the series.
• 
  Dan Secor

  The second in the famed Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove tetralogy. Filled with unforgettable characters and unspeakable actions. The book is a trilogy unto itself, following the Texas Ranger heroes and unlikely friends Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae.
  
  Unfortunately, the romantic elements of this novel (which left alone outside of the tetralogy are memorable) suffer from consistency when compared to the third volume of the series (which was the first written).
  
  Still, we are introduced to characters we have loved and hated from the key novel of Lonesome Dove - Deets, Pea Eye, and Jake Spoon, and find out what happens to characters we came to love in the first novel (Dead Man's Walk).
  
  Even without the inconsistency, this novel is an example of how great a writer McMurtry is, at least in character development.
• 
  Ahmad Sharabiani

  Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove #2), Larry McMurtry
• 
  Ms.pegasus

  The full moon was a harbinger of death to the settlers on the Texas frontier – the Comanche welcomed it's light to guide their fearsome nighttime raids. This is a book about death – the contemplation of endings rather than beginnings. McMurtry, in this prequel to LONESOME DOVE, seizes the opportunity to present a historical context, rather than merely a backstory, to his Pulitzer Prize winning story of Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae. He peoples it with a host of memorable characters: Capt. Inish Scull of the Austin Texas Rangers, the Kickapoo scout Famous Shoes, the sly and silent horse thief Kicking Wolf, the great Comanche war chief Buffalo Hump, and his vicious son Blue Duck. The story begins in the 1850's. It straddles a mere 2 decades – a generation that sees the extermination of the southern buffalo herds, the last struggle of the Comanche to push back the demarcation line of white settlers, the collapse of traditional culture after decimation from smallpox and cholera in the previous decade, and finally, the realization that a way of life has come to an end. As befitting its significance, McMurtry spreads his story across three books with multiple plot lines: Scull's pursuit of one final adventure seeking out the sadistic Ahumado; Buffalo Hump's final assault on white settlements; and Blue Duck's vengeful violence.
  
  We look back on the period with mixed feelings today. The West is symbolic of American courage and self-reliance, but also of genocide on a massive scale. It's difficult to imagine what kinds of people sought lives on the frontier. It's difficult to imagine life in a warrior culture such as the Comanche, or a life so completely dependent on chance. McMurtry skillfully imbues his characters with the emotions and temperament consistent with the violence and haphazard outcomes of the period, but permits them to speak and think in unique voices. I particularly loved the musings of Famous Shoes. Guiding Call and McCrae in their pursuit of Blue Duck, he encounters an ominous white owl – not characteristic of that part of the country. “Famous Shoes realized then, when he heard Captain McCrae's casual and cheerful tone, that it was as he had always believed, which was that it was no use talking to white men about serious things.”(p.741). The real courage of these characters is to be found in the attitude of unflinching acceptance of reality. In Capt. Call that attitude solidifies in a stoicism so deep it enables his survival. By silencing his inner emotions, he is able to channel his senses to the most subtle signals of impending danger. In Buffalo Hump it is the understanding that the buffalo herds will never return. Even Maggie understands: “There was no changing men – not much, anyway; mainly men stayed the way they were, no matter what women did.” (p.241)
  
  McMurtry mines his wealth of historical knowledge effectively. The prophet Worm reveals an unsettling dream to his traveling companion Buffalo Hump: Thousands of squealing horses – they are squealing because they are being killed. It is a premonition of a sombre event. In 1874 over a thousand Comanche horses were captured and slaughtered in the battle of Palo Duro Canyon at Ranald MacKenzie's command. His reasoning was that the Commanche would steal the horses back, so he had them killed. McMurtry is a disciplined writer. Despite the violence and sadness, he never lapses into sentimentality.
  
  Most readers will approach this book after having read LONESOME DOVE. In contrast, it is a more sprawling narrative. Call and McCrae are part of an ensemble of interesting characters, and there is less narrative focus. The implicit comparison was always in the back of my mind. I missed that sense of forward momentum and wonder if anyone has approached this book without having read LONESOME DOVE first.
  
  Gr 1/4/13
  
  
  
• 
  Kyle

  Comanche Moon is the second book in the "Lonesome Dove" series, and it continues to provide the back story on the lives of Woodrow Call, Augustus McCrae, and several other major characters. I really enjoyed getting to know Call and Gus better, and to see the events that hardened them into the men that shined in the third, and in my opinion, the best book, Lonesome Dove.
  
  Compared to the first book, Dead Man's Walk, I thought Call and Gus were older, more seasoned, and even less fearful of the Comanches. I also thought Gus showed a lot more of his banter that I enjoyed so much in Lonesome Dove. There were numerous scenes that brought a smile to my face and one where I literally laughed out loud!
  
  I ranked the story down one star becuase it felt like the book jumped around too much at times. You would be reading about characters in one place, and the next chapter would have them miles and/or years down the trail. It felt like editors might have cut chapters and cobbled it back together to form a complete story.
  
  Warning! This book included a lot more sexual references, and rape than other books in the series. The scenes with Inez Scull seemed a bit over the top for the "Old West".
  
  
  
• 
  Robert

  Same characters, but less skillfully crafted than 'Lonesome Dove'. The story-line is predictable and McMurtry dwells too much on gratuitous violence which at times borders on the sadistic. The last 200 pages were more torturous than McMurtry's two-dimensional Indians and mostly loped ponderously to an ending (or a beginning considering that this is a prequel to 'Lonesome Dove') that all readers could see coming like a thunder-storm across the Great Plains. Also, one wonders if the character of Inez is McMurtry's attempt to write a 'strong' female character. If so, he failed miserably.
• 
  Lewis Weinstein

  Lonesome Dove was outstanding, so is Comanche Moon, which chronologically comes first. An immersion into a different time and place.
• 
  Trisha

  A rollicking read!! And for those of us who got to know Texas Rangers Augustus McCrae and Woodrow F. Call in Mc Murtry’s Lonesome Dove this is a chance to meet up with them again, but this time as younger men. No sooner does the story get going but what they find themselves summarily turned into captains by their own thoroughly eccentric Captain Inish Scull (Bible and Sword!!) so that he can leave them on their own and head on south in pursuit of his huge horse, Hector, who had been stolen by the notorious Commanche horse thief Kicking Wolf. And so it’s one adventure after another as we gallop along from one scenario to the next – from the two camps of Buffalo Hump and Kicking Wolf to the open plains of Texas to the cliffs of the Rio Grande in northern Mexico. Along the way we meet up again with some familiar faces from Lonesome Dove – including the thoroughly evil Blue Duck. Gus and Cal’s fellow rangers -- Deets, Jake Spoon, Pea Eye Parker and others -- are part of the story as well as are Clara Forsythe, Gus’ one true love and Maggie Tilton the whore with the heart of gold whose love for Cal will forever be unrequited. We also meet a whole book full of equally unforgettable characters like the lusty Inez Scull who’ll bed anyone in sight, and the terrifying “Black Vaquero” with an amazing repertoire for torture. This is one of those books that kept me wanting to keep coming back to it as soon as I’d put it down. McMurtry is a great story-teller and his imaginative use of dialogue, not to mention his talent for creating characters that are hard not to like (even the bad guys are so colorful that it’s hard not to like the fact that we hate them!!) makes this book every bit as much fun to read as his other books that are set in the West.
  
• 
  Chris Gager

  Back with Gus and Call in the prequel to "Lonesome Dove" and back out West, where I like to be literature-wise, if not physically. I'd like to be there physically as well but there are complications. Nothing not to like so far, though the prose style seems overly precious and funny/ironic. I just realized that I'm going from one buddy book(Aubrey/Maturin) to another. One on the high seas and the other out west about 50-60 years later on in the 19th century. The story begins on a rough night on the llano. Been there, done that on a January night east of Amarillo on I-40. What a mess! My experience of the llano is confined to driving on it/across it in West Texas-Oklahoma and New Mexico, mostly on that interstate highway. Not a whole lot there!
  
  Moving on with several different-but-related stories going on. I'm not sure what the "problem" is but I'm not finding this to be as compelling as "Lonesome Dove." I know that LM is a prolific writer and that gives me pause. When does quantity overwhelm quality? This book is fine as it is but not exceptional. And it is LONG! Not boring(so far) but not exactly a page-turner either.
  
  - Time frame? About 5-10 years later than "Blood Meridian." Ante-bellum Texas... 20 years before Lonesome Dove.
  
  - The Cap'n uses the word automaton - is that anachronistic?
  
  - Jake's fate in Lonesome Dove is presaged by his coupling with Call's girl. He's "weak" and he'll pay for it down the road.
  
  - Wait a minute! p. 132... First Scull says he doesn't know Three Birds, then "he" says he's known him a long time - bad editing and not the only place where it's unclear who is speaking.
  
  - Cap'n Inish Scull - perhaps inspired a bit by Judge Holden in Blood Meridian? Or should that be the EVIL Ahumado?
  
  - I like that this book spends more time with the Indians - at least LM tries. Not as well as in "The Son"(Philip Meyer) though.
  
  - I just came up with another reason why this book seems a bit flat: it seems to be lacking the unifying epic scope of Lonesome Dove, which also had a point A to point B narrative flow.. I also think it was a mistake to make Madame Scull such a cardboard edition of the sexually voracious, selfish, infantile, nasty female. I don't recall hating anyone in Lonesome Dove, but her... I definitely DON'T like. Blue Duck was a villain, but like Magua in The Last of the Mohicans, he had his reasons.
  
  Reached the half-way point last night. A bit of a slog but interesting enough - especially the Indian stuff. It's a different world through their eyes. Other G'reads reviewers comment on the profusion of violence here and links this book unfavorably(judging it to be a pale imitation) to "Blood Meridian." It is pretty nasty, but then the 19th century west was a nasty, violent place. It's not bothering me... What bothers me the most is the draggy narrative. LM goes back again and again to Gus' sadness at Clara's decision to jilt him; to Maggie's less-than-ideal relationship with the dour Call; to Inez' plain nastiness, and everybody else kind of wandering here and there. Still... there's plenty of interesting stuff going on to focus on - especially the tale of Inish Scull and Ahumado.
  
  - A word about chronology... I just looked up Buffalo Hump in wiki and it turns out that the great raid to the sea took place in 1840, not the mid-1850's as this book suggests. "Lonesome Dove" begins in 1876 and this book is said to cover the previous 20 years. That puts the start at 1856, not 16 years earlier in 1840. WTF????? The Mexican War is over in this book but wiki says the Great Raid took place before the MW????
  
  Now at the beginning of Book 3, which will have to cover 1860 - 1876(or close). The preceding pages have been focused on consecutive events in about 1856(I think). Anyway, it'll be good to be finally done with it in a few days.
  
  - Hema envisions a Scull-rescue a la Gandalf's in LOTR!
  
  Moving on now as Gus has wandered off with Famous Shoes and Pea Eye in pursuit. Once again I find that the "gruesome" details of Inez' compulsive sex live are a bit more than I feel comfortable with. Maybe LM was making a point about violence and sex in public media. I really don't know but I could do without it. Is he revenging against some past female disappointment? Authors have been known to do it - see Cathy in "East of Eden."
  
  - Is the hopping thing supposed to be funny?
  
  - Looks right about the time frame BTW. Starts in 1855/6. NOT 1840 when the real Raid to the Sea by Buffalo Hump took place. Isn't historical fiction supposed to be accurate - sort of?
  
  - Another editing boo-boo. A G'reads reviewer calls this one of the worst edited books he's ever seen.
  
  In the final stretch now and will finish today/tonight. I'm becoming more enamored more and more with the character of Famous Shoes. It seems clear now that LM intends to contrast his way of life and living with the whites. FS is kind of a native American hippie. He's at home in the natural world. He is driven by curiosity about it. He doesn't live in fear. He is not materialistic etc.
  
  - Charlie Goodnight arrives in one scene like Omar Sharif in "Lawrence of Arabia"!
  
  - Ahhh - the mystery clears up a bit about Buffalo Hump's raid to the sea. There were two of them(according to this book) but wiki only mentions the 1840 one. Did LM make up the other for this book?
  
  - Cynthia Anne Parker makes a brief appearance. Seems gratuitous to me.
  
  - When Jake leaves is about 1865.
  
  Finished a couple of days ago. At the end we're still about ten years shy(1865 or so) of the beginning of Lonesome Dove, despite the claim in some blurbs that this book bridged the 20-year gap between Dead Man's Walk and LD. The final events were sad... wistful... nicely done.
  
  - Final rating is 3.25, which rounds to 3*.
• 
  Steve

  Gus and Call are a great pair with nuances of Oscar Madison and Felix Unger thrust into the role of Texas Rangers in the years of the 1840s to ‘60s. It’s their job to protect an increasingly white Texas from the bad guys, Comanches from the west or evildoers from Mexico in the south. This is chronologically the second of four books in the Lonesome Dove quartet, and it’s entertaining and well written, sometimes poignant and sometimes violent and sometimes a bit risqué. That makes it very enjoyable and very good, but for this reader, like Dead Man’s Walk, the first chronologically, not as good as Lonesome Dove.
  Gus and Call are terrific protagonists, and their support characters are wonderful, the women Clara and Maggie, the wealthy north and south husband and wife Inish and Inez Scull, south of the border bad boy Ahumato, fellow rangers, and most notably, Indians, including Chief Buffalo Hump, his son Blue Duck, and winner of the best name award, Kickapoo Indian tracker Famous Shoes.
  I had wanted an enjoyable diverting read for a stressful time. This met the requirement quite well, but I’m sure I would have enjoyed it any time. To anyone looking to read it, I’d issue the caveat that there is violence, sometimes pretty gross, and sex, but McMurtry’s style seems to make it all so borderline unbelievable that this reader didn’t mind either. If the warnings don’t bother you, by all means read and enjoy this.
  
• 
  Paul

  Having read all the books that make up the Lonesome Dove Saga i have a couple of thoughts to share. My recommendation would be to read Lonesome Dove. And possibly Comanche Moon as well. The other two? Nah.
  If i had to describe Dead Man's Walk and Streets of Loredo in one word, that word would be perfunctory. Dead Man's Walk concludes with a number of characters who don't appear in the story until the last couple of chapters. Streets of Loredo begins by dispensing with two characters, one of whom features prominently in Lonesome Dove, but is eliminated in the first chapter in barely more than a single paragraph. Perhaps this wouldn't bother another reader, but both books left me feeling that the author, Larry McMurtry indulged in a little careless self editing or was directed to by his publisher. Maybe that isn't so, but that's the impression i have.
  So my suggestion is, read Lonesome Dove by all means. It's an excellent piece of historical fiction/western. Read Comanche Moon, if you just can't get enough of the adventures of Gus and Call, but only read the other two if you can't get enough of the wild west and a bunch of folks getting shot, scalped, hung or just plain expiring.
  The real star in all these books that make up the Lonesome Dove Saga is the wonderfully captured wildness and savagery of life in the west, mostly Texas and along the Mexican border.
  So recommended, but with reservations.
• 
  Pete

  All of McMurtry's books are peopled by the most fascinating characters in American literature. As far as I'm concerned, McMurtry rivals Dickens in his colorful characterizations and this book rivals even Lonesome Dove with great characters such as Famous Shoes, Blue Duck, Pea Eye, Maggie and the rest of the characters that enrich and complicate Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae's lives.
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  John

  I've put together a quiz perhaps you'll like it.
  
  Lots of pages, not much depth. Fast reading story. Not much depth. Ummm did i say "not much depth?" Well it's kinda shallow like a mudhole in the llano.
  
  "You're right. The only thing the man ever roped on the first try was himself. That's a curiosity, ain't it?" Call speaking of Lonesome Bill.
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  Janine Rosas

  McMurtry needs a new editor! Pretty boring and not well written. Could have been 200 pages shorter if McMurtry didn't keep repeating unnecessary details.
  
  Also-I'm really surprised no one has mentioned how downright dirty the scenes involving Mrs. Scull are!
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  Carol Catinari

  I love this series! and this was one of my favorites. I love the character development, the setting and the dialogue between all. I read Lonesome Dove first, and then picked up the two sequels. It's not a bad way to go. I now have the back story and can see all the major characters in their formative years. I only have the sequel, Streets of Laredo, left to read.
  
  Each book is a long one, and yet, I hate to have them end.