Comanche Moon : A Novel

The best, of course, being the first book in this series, "Lonesome Dove". I'm not sure whether McMurtry ever intended to write more books featuring Gus McCrae & Woodrow Call, but I'm certainly glad he did. And it's only fitting, somehow, that the book that says on its cover, "the final volume of the Lonesome Dove story", be almost as good as the first.
We learn about some of the things that Gus and Woodrow referred to in that first book. We learn something about why Jake is the way he is in that first book. And we also learn a lot about Newt and his future relationships with the rangers. There's a lot more, but it would take a lot more than a thousand words to mention everything.
I do have some problems with this book - not with McMurtry's writing, but with the way the publisher laid it out. First of all, check out the back cover - Gus McCrae's first name is Augustus, NOT August. And check out the spelling of some of the words in the book. I didn't think McMurtry was British or Canadian; I don't remember "behavior" being spelled in the British manner in "Lonesome Dove", but here it's spelled "behaviour" consistently - and other words follow suit. The publishers better go over the next edition of this book very carefully so they can avoid these kinds of mistakes.

I would actually give this audio review 3.5 stars, and don't want to be misunderstood for even that low rating compared to the quality of the book. This is for the audio version Comanche Moon. Frank Muller is the narrator and honestly, I was disappointed in the reading. After listening to the wonderful Will Patton ACTING the book Dead Man's Walk, it took hours to get used to Muller's fast and slow reading. He starts like speed demon, then finally for the most part gets it to a normal pace. There isn't much difference in the character voices.

The story itself is excellent and furthers the Lonesome Dove backstory. It is pretty brutal in it's discussion of torture. If it were a big screen movie, it would be rated NC-17, at least. But, by the end of the book, I viewed even the most brutal characters in a different light.

If you are a Lonesome Dove fan this is not to be missed (at least in print).

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.

Comanche Moon, the prequel to Pulitzer Prize winning Lonesome Dove, finishes McMurty's Western series on an excellent note. In this, he recovers from "Dead Man's Walk," which I rated a good book, but not on a par with the others in his four book classic of the American West.
Here are Woodrow Call and Agustus McCrae, two Texas Rangers, becoming the personalities they will inhabit in Lonesome Dove (the first book of the series, though the third in time). These two start out as veteran Rangers, having earned their spurs during the hard years portrayed in "Dead Man's Walk."
Adventure and luck make them co-captains of the Rangers. This book starts with their expedition under the ever fascinating Captain Inish Scull. When Scull's wanderlust gets the best of him, he departs his ranger force in the middle of Indian Country, giving field promotions to Call and Gus.
This book focus on wonderful characters: Bufalo Hump, Kicking Wolf and Famous Shoes - two Comanche and a Kickapoo indian; Captain Scull and his ever amorous wife Inez; the women in our protagonists lives - Maggie the kindly prostitute and Carla the only human being able to corral McCrae's practiced insolence; Ahumado, the tortuous Mayan who has raised human suffering to a wicked art form. Also, several of the characters who provide wonderful support in Lonesome Dove arrive: Pea Eye, Deets, Jake Spoon and Blue Duck.
This book ranges over multiple plot lines as the author shifts focus form person to person. McMurty develops the indian characters to a high degree in this book -- they are interesting and sympathetic beings with histories, fears, weaknesses and beliefs -- just like the cowboys and sherrifs who populate the rest of the book.
"Comanche Moon" is an epic tale that never tires or bores. It is wide ranging and covers about twenty years in three major divisionis (or "books" as the author refers to them). Something interesting happens frequently, but there are chapters that develop characters or just take the story a little further with nary an arrow, shot, death or narrow escape (differnt from "Dead Man's Walk," which almost had a serial quality in the relentless action or cliff hanger appearing dutifully at the end of each chapter).
This book excites but also paints a great character sketch of McMutry's West as it exists in his Texas. A great work of literature and a great read.

I am a big McMurtry fan and was very excited to see this published. But, I was a little more than disappointed. I guess "Lonesome Dove" is a tough act to follow. With this novel, McMurtry tries to set the action for "Lonesome Dove". But, there are still many questions that are not answered. Such as, why is Call always so stoic and literal. Why is he this way? There is no section on how Call felt after he learned of Maggie's death. Since a great deal is spent on their relationship, or lack thereof, it would have added a few more pages but, heh, at 750 + what's a few more? The "rangering" sections are still top form. I particularly loved the sections on the Indians and their relationship to the gods and the earth. Buffalo Hump's characterization is probably the best in the novel. McMurtry does set up Blue Duck as one mean SOB. I had trouble putting it down but was not compelled to feel I had to read it in one sitting. But, a big thanks must go out to McMurtry for bringing these wonderful characters back into our world again.

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.

We join Augustus and Call just before they become captains in the Texas Rangers. They are following Captain Innes Scull a crazed scholar of Greece who is soon to become a student of the eyelid—why? Because he leaves the Rangers and walks with Kickapoo guide Famous Shoes into Mexico to face off with Ahumado, a crook infamous for his use of torture, and Ahumado takes Scull hostage and skins away his eyelids so that his brain will get fried in the sun.
You have to know going in that if you are a Lonesome Dove fan, this book just won't be as good. Interestingly, it was written last, but it is chronologically the second in the four-book series. There's nothing tight about this book. It skips past long stretches of time. We see Call's relationship with gold-hearted prostitute Maggie, who just doesn't push him hard enough. One problem I had with this book is that it didn't make it as plausible that Call is ignorant of the fact that Newt is his son. Also, the relationship between Call and Jake Spoon are frostier than you'd think from the way they re-unite in Lonesome Dove, and Pea Eye seems much more racially tolerant than he is described in LD. Perhaps these represent the older McMurtry's greater knowledge of human nature—that's how William Faulkner excused the inconsistencies in his late novel The Mansion with the novels that came before it.
Where this book strikes out on its own is in the way it spends time with the Native American characters, particularly the Cherokees Buffalo Hump, a great chief, Kicking Wolf, a horse thief, and Blue Duck, Buffalo Hump's son, who becomes the scourge of Lonesome Dove. It's very cool to watch him come into his own—like it should have been watching Anakin Skywalker become Darth Vader. When it comes to the prequel games, Larry McMurtry doesn't make any of George Lucas' mistakes. Ideally, I think, you should read the series in order: Dead Man's Walk, this book, Lonesome Dove and Streets of Laredo. It should just hit the spot that way.

Larry McMurtry's mission in Comanche Moon seems to have been to fill in the last space in the complete Lonesome Dove saga. This leads to a problem; if there are a lot of loose ends to tie up, the process may distract the reader from any continuous story thread.
Part of the difficulty is that the timeline doesn't work well. Woodrow and Gus, based very, very loosely on Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, had a self-contained logic of existence in the marvelous first volume, but it was slightly out of kilter with history. Set in 1876 (I base this on the comment ". . . like they just done to Custer"), a backstory had to stretch a long way and stay consistent.
Starting with the Dead Man's Walk (which actually happened, vaguely as recounted -- not Sam Houston's most inspired idea) was a natural, but it left a whole life to be filled in, sometimes with ellisions covering years when nothing much happened.
But McMurtry is, as always, the master of villainy. The impenetrably -- and pointlessly -- cruel Ahumado is the perfect foe for Inish Scull, and the most absorbing part of the story for me was their silent contest.
I think McMurtry knew he needed to write Comanche Moon, if only to complete the cycle. But I think Woodrow Call was speaking for the author in the novel's last line.

It's been a long time since I've read a book that I got so wrapped up in, that I hated to finish it. "Commanche Moon" was like that for me. Following the middle years of Gus, Call, Deets, Newt and quite a few more characters first brought to life in "Lonesome Dove" was a nice refreshing change for me. I don't want to go into too much detail regarding the story, feel free to browse several other reveiws posted here that are more than happy to spell out spoilers that are better off discovered while reading, but suffice it to say, if you are a fan of the other books in this series, you won't be disappointed with "Commanche Moon". All of the things fans love about these books are once again present here; rich characters, excellent action, some romance, comedy....everything you could want. I can't wait to go back and read the series in chronological order now. Highly recommended.

The adventure continues for, now veteran, Texas Rangers Woodrow Call and Augustus (Gus) McCrae on the plains of Texas in the mid-1800's. We follow these two best friends through many adventures and hardships in this second installment of Larry McMurtry's epic Lonesome Dove series.
This book takes place a number of years after Dead Man's Walk left off. At this point Gus and Call are now part of the Ranger troop led by the Infamous Inish Scull. Scull and his troop's sole purpose are to destroy their abhorred enemy: The Comanche Indian and their Great War chief, Buffalo Hump. Both of which are formidable opponents especially the dreaded Buffalo Hump who is known for not only killing incredible amounts of white men but torture as well.
When urgent business calls Captain Scull he (almost haphazardly) assigns Gus and Call to captain of his beloved troop, who then leads their troop to the safety of Austin. This marks the beginning of their new career as captains of the Texas Rangers, a cherished and long sought-after position by many a Texan. But they soon learn it isn't as glamorous as it appears. Between low wages, crooked governors, men and close friends dying, and countless other obstacles Gus and Call start wondering if this is really what they want to do for the rest of their lives and if not what will be the next step for these two men who know nothing but rangering?
Most books over 700 pages can start to feel like a chore and often times make you question if it's worth actually getting to the top of the never-ending mountain. This was not the case for Comanche Moon. At no point did I feel obligated to finish it but rather turned the pages as quickly as if I was looking a word up in the dictionary and was a couple pages away. The characters are extremely well-defined and you are brought to a personal level with nearly a dozen different characters. Some loveable, some likeable, some so venomously evil you couldn't imagine being in the situation where you had to actually face them.
The aforementioned Inish Scull has become one of my favorite literary characters to date. His quick-wittedness and genius will have you laughing and rooting for this complicated man. Especially when he is faced with the most perilous situation one can imagine.
Also we dig much deeper into the lives and heads of our two heroes, along their loves, their pains, their triumphs, and their regrets. Both seem like simple men, neither are.
<DISCONTINUE READING IF YOU DON'T WANT A MAJOR SPOILER>
The point of the book where McMurtry really shine is in the last 50 pages, when he describes the grizzly murder of the now elderly Buffalo Hump by his banished son. I wouldn't have thought possible if the smartest literary minds all told me but McMurtry actually made you sympathize with the aging Indian. Throughout the previous 1000-1100 pages (spanning two different books) he has described this man as such a hated villain and feared individual that his death should be a triumph for the Rangers, but you actually have to hold back a tear. It was that good.
I've yet to read Lonesome Dove and all I hear is that it is such a cornerstone of literary history. If it is actually better than Comanche Moon it must be. Bottom line: read this book. Might be my favorite book ever.

This is a middle book in the Lonesome Dove series; it's the one that comes before Lonesome Dove proper. Pleasantly, McMurtry doesn't subject any of his main characters to horrible deaths this time around. On the other hand, if you've read the other books you know what's coming, so the comforting effect of that is relative.
Native Americans get a slightly better portrayal here than in some of the other volumes. There are still psycho killers, including one really frightening bandit, but there are also brave and genuinely human characters. Overall it's a gritty version of the period just before the Civil War, with gripping scenes of torture and survival. As usual, there are strong female characters, but they generally come to bad ends, just as the men do.
I'd recommend this for readers of the series. I'm not sure how well it stands alone.

It is out of step chronologically, but that and minor inconsistencies in details between books of the series, take nothing away from this story. Characterization is an important element of any story and the protagonist, Woodrow Call develops throughout the series. Augustus McCrae and other supporting characters such as Jake Spoon, Pea Eye Parker, Famous Shoes, and antagonist like Blue Duck, are skillfully developed through sub-plots. Others are taken from historical figures such as Buffalo Hump and Charles Goodnight. Being from Texas I've grown up with stories of the Texas Rangers and their exploits, these characters fit the profile. I found it very entertaining. [...]

I got Comanche Moon from the library. I read it because I'd read Lonesome Dove and for no other reason. It's far better the Dead Man's Walk, a good read in its own right, but I wonder what its sales would have been if LD had not been published? Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the book; it includes interesting characters and stories. Comanche Moon takes the reader up to the point where Gus and Call are about ready to quit being rangers. They had visited Lonesome Dove on their ranging and Gus suggests it as a possibility. I may get the book in Kindle, as I did LD and Streets of Laredo. I may want to reread it and think about some more.

Another reader riveting story. Spine tingling with chill bumps over the torture scenes of skinning, cutting off eyelids, and starving to death from hanging baskets also captures the lives, loves, whoring, and drinking of a band of Texas Rangers during the years between the War with Mexico to the end of the Civil War. An 800-page paperback that you'll carry around with you, looking for a quick read between idle moments. Cheers, Dave

This is the finest and most intricate graphic book (not quite a novel) I've ever read. The illustrations reach levels of beauty and artistry seldom seen in this genre of storytelling. Comanche Moon (not to be confused with the Larry McMurtry novel of the same name) tells the end times history of the Comanche peoples, with emphasis on their great leader, Quanah Parker, and his mother, the "white Comanche" Cynthia Ann Parker. The story of the Comanche's' violent way of life, their struggles against the whites in Texas and across the Southwest, and of the brilliant leadership of Quanah Parker, are rendered in a way that provides as much meaningful information to a reader as most text-only tales of the Comanche and the brutal period of the mid-1800's thru the 1870's. This is a great (though often sad and bloody) segment of North American history, and this rapidly-paced, carefully produced graphic re-telling of it is a more than worthy read.

Comanche Moon has all the expectations of Jurassic Park III -- after the first creative burst, it's a tough act to follow; by the third part of the trilogy (second in the chronology of the protagonists), the author has set a definitive tone and built an adoring audience. "Moon" carries on in the "Lonesome Dove" tradition, but with some apparent errors in chronology, excessive torture details, and little of the humor of the original.
The color of Texas is there. The struggle to live. The demise of the Indian culture and population. Honor, venegance and tradition. The details of the dreary topography. The eccentricities that must have accompanied many of those who tested this rugged life. There's a vivid portrait of a morbid time of war, Indian raids, and rapes.
Having immensely enjoyed the original "Dove" book and miniseries and having a less glowing memory of the follw up, picking"Moon" up at the public library, I was expecting a long, rich read. McMurtry kept me engaged through the 700+ pages. But I finished with a deep sense of disappointment. For the same reason I've stopped reading the repetitive themes of Tom Clancy and John Grisham, I doubt I'll try McMurtry again.

Apparently way too many reviewers were confusing this comic book by Jack Jackson with the novel by Larry McMurtry. Jackson's comic book came out in the 70s, and is so well researched and historically accurate that I believe that The Empire of the Summer Moon ripped him off. If you want a great Texas history lesson, and more insights on the Comanches, this comic (or graphic history book) is the place to go. I've reread mine several times and never get tired of it.

What makes fiction fiction? Or at least what makes it serious fiction? A recent article in the New York Times extolled the virtues of the "post-modern" literary milieu in which authors allegedly meld the visceral with the experimental in order to re-combine the purely intellectual approach of those deemed by Philip Rahv (of PARTISAN REVIEW fame) to be literary "pale-faces" with the more earthy renderings of those he called the "red-skins." Story, as such, doesn't count for much in this analysis. And yet this surely gives short shrift to that aspect of fiction, leaving the telling of stories to the lower realm of so-called commercial fiction. An error in my mind since I think that stories, modernism or post-modernism be damned, are what fiction ought to be about. But what constitutes a story? McMurtry is an author who has repeatedly demonstrated his facility for telling tales though he has not surrendered his place in serious literature for that. And yet this one, COMMANCHE MOON, is no story in the ordinary sense at all. Nor is it experimental in any post-modern sense either. And yet it succeeds because it weaves a world of events for us which give us the feeling of being there, that we have seen and felt what its characters have seen and felt once we have turned the final page. Here is a tale of men surviving in a world of unknowable and almost metaphysical violence, of men who are not heroes in any formal sense of that word, men who are often clumsy, thoughtless blunderers who "make it through" by a combination of will and luck rather than heroic achievements. The last tale in the LONESOME DOVE saga, this one may be the strangest yet as it takes the two Texas Rangers, Gus MacCrae and Woodrow Call, through their formative years and into their maturity. Theirs is an odyssey of survival as they set out on numerous expeditions which mostly end in failure or partial success, at best. Although they are apparently successful much of the time (we hear about their capturing and hanging numerous thieves and brigands) it is not their successful forays which interest McMurtry. Rather it is those events which seem to characterize for him the futility of existence itself. Gus and Call repeatedly bang their heads against the harsh west Texas ground as they go after the Commanches (who are dwindling, though ever formidable, in the face of the white onslaught) and the implacably evil Mexican bandit Ahumado (a man, if we may call him that, whom even the Commanches fear, a man who seems to have stepped out of our darkest nightmares). The heroism here is not one of gunplay or gunfighters in bloody face-offs but of survival, as men contend against an implacably unfriendly world, a world in which all are beasts in an unremitting place where only the Law of the Jungle prevails. It is Gus and Call's victory to have survived this world and to have grown competent enough to endure it and, in the end, to have outlasted it as the tides of new settlers sweep over the violent and bloody west Texas plains and wash away the old ways and peoples. There is a terrible violence here which may be McMurtry's vision of the world as it is. And the heroism is nothing less than surviving the worst nightmares men can conjure up for their fellows. Women are brutally raped and slaughtered; men fare no better. All are subject to the vilest of tortures, some literally being skinned alive -- all very distasteful in the end. And yet it's also uplifting in a strange sort of way as our heroes outlast the dark world they have somehow stumbled into. No, there is no story here in the ordinary sense for this is a book of episodic and generally incomplete missions and contests between men who in the end are barely more than beasts (either because they are predatory or because they are reduced to resisting the predations of others). And yet it is a book which absorbs us and gives the sense of being there. In that sense it is certainly a tale. And a level of fiction which I doubt the so-called post-modernists, with all their experimental pretensions, are ever likely to achieve.

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.

Larry McMurtry's `Comanche Moon' follows the Texas Ranger Captains Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae in their middle years. This is a stand alone book in the series which can be read with enjoyment and understanding by itself. In `Comanche Moon, McMurtry's isolating and development of each character's voice is amazing. Coupled with entrancing detailed descriptions of the Texas badlands interspersed throughout, `Comanche Moon' is McMurtry's best of series. I have never been a fan of novel landscaping minutia. McMurtry writes word pictures with enthralling technique. I know gritty westerns aren't for everyone. If you've ever wanted to try one out, `Comanche Moon' would be my recommendation.

This is a middle book in the Lonesome Dove series; it's the one that comes before Lonesome Dove proper. Pleasantly, McMurtry doesn't subject any of his main characters to horrible deaths this time around. On the other hand, if you've read the other books you know what's coming, so the comforting effect of that is relative.
Native Americans get a slightly better portrayal here than in some of the other volumes. There are still psycho killers, including one really frightening bandit, but there are also brave and genuinely human characters. Overall it's a gritty version of the period just before the Civil War, with gripping scenes of torture and survival. As usual, there are strong female characters, but they generally come to bad ends, just as the men do.
I'd recommend this for readers of the series. I'm not sure how well it stands alone.

It is out of step chronologically, but that and minor inconsistencies in details between books of the series, take nothing away from this story. Characterization is an important element of any story and the protagonist, Woodrow Call develops throughout the series. Augustus McCrae and other supporting characters such as Jake Spoon, Pea Eye Parker, Famous Shoes, and antagonist like Blue Duck, are skillfully developed through sub-plots. Others are taken from historical figures such as Buffalo Hump and Charles Goodnight. Being from Texas I've grown up with stories of the Texas Rangers and their exploits, these characters fit the profile. I found it very entertaining. [...]

I got Comanche Moon from the library. I read it because I'd read Lonesome Dove and for no other reason. It's far better the Dead Man's Walk, a good read in its own right, but I wonder what its sales would have been if LD had not been published? Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the book; it includes interesting characters and stories. Comanche Moon takes the reader up to the point where Gus and Call are about ready to quit being rangers. They had visited Lonesome Dove on their ranging and Gus suggests it as a possibility. I may get the book in Kindle, as I did LD and Streets of Laredo. I may want to reread it and think about some more.

Another reader riveting story. Spine tingling with chill bumps over the torture scenes of skinning, cutting off eyelids, and starving to death from hanging baskets also captures the lives, loves, whoring, and drinking of a band of Texas Rangers during the years between the War with Mexico to the end of the Civil War. An 800-page paperback that you'll carry around with you, looking for a quick read between idle moments. Cheers, Dave

This is the finest and most intricate graphic book (not quite a novel) I've ever read. The illustrations reach levels of beauty and artistry seldom seen in this genre of storytelling. Comanche Moon (not to be confused with the Larry McMurtry novel of the same name) tells the end times history of the Comanche peoples, with emphasis on their great leader, Quanah Parker, and his mother, the "white Comanche" Cynthia Ann Parker. The story of the Comanche's' violent way of life, their struggles against the whites in Texas and across the Southwest, and of the brilliant leadership of Quanah Parker, are rendered in a way that provides as much meaningful information to a reader as most text-only tales of the Comanche and the brutal period of the mid-1800's thru the 1870's. This is a great (though often sad and bloody) segment of North American history, and this rapidly-paced, carefully produced graphic re-telling of it is a more than worthy read.

Comanche Moon has all the expectations of Jurassic Park III -- after the first creative burst, it's a tough act to follow; by the third part of the trilogy (second in the chronology of the protagonists), the author has set a definitive tone and built an adoring audience. "Moon" carries on in the "Lonesome Dove" tradition, but with some apparent errors in chronology, excessive torture details, and little of the humor of the original.
The color of Texas is there. The struggle to live. The demise of the Indian culture and population. Honor, venegance and tradition. The details of the dreary topography. The eccentricities that must have accompanied many of those who tested this rugged life. There's a vivid portrait of a morbid time of war, Indian raids, and rapes.
Having immensely enjoyed the original "Dove" book and miniseries and having a less glowing memory of the follw up, picking"Moon" up at the public library, I was expecting a long, rich read. McMurtry kept me engaged through the 700+ pages. But I finished with a deep sense of disappointment. For the same reason I've stopped reading the repetitive themes of Tom Clancy and John Grisham, I doubt I'll try McMurtry again.

Apparently way too many reviewers were confusing this comic book by Jack Jackson with the novel by Larry McMurtry. Jackson's comic book came out in the 70s, and is so well researched and historically accurate that I believe that The Empire of the Summer Moon ripped him off. If you want a great Texas history lesson, and more insights on the Comanches, this comic (or graphic history book) is the place to go. I've reread mine several times and never get tired of it.

What makes fiction fiction? Or at least what makes it serious fiction? A recent article in the New York Times extolled the virtues of the "post-modern" literary milieu in which authors allegedly meld the visceral with the experimental in order to re-combine the purely intellectual approach of those deemed by Philip Rahv (of PARTISAN REVIEW fame) to be literary "pale-faces" with the more earthy renderings of those he called the "red-skins." Story, as such, doesn't count for much in this analysis. And yet this surely gives short shrift to that aspect of fiction, leaving the telling of stories to the lower realm of so-called commercial fiction. An error in my mind since I think that stories, modernism or post-modernism be damned, are what fiction ought to be about. But what constitutes a story? McMurtry is an author who has repeatedly demonstrated his facility for telling tales though he has not surrendered his place in serious literature for that. And yet this one, COMMANCHE MOON, is no story in the ordinary sense at all. Nor is it experimental in any post-modern sense either. And yet it succeeds because it weaves a world of events for us which give us the feeling of being there, that we have seen and felt what its characters have seen and felt once we have turned the final page. Here is a tale of men surviving in a world of unknowable and almost metaphysical violence, of men who are not heroes in any formal sense of that word, men who are often clumsy, thoughtless blunderers who "make it through" by a combination of will and luck rather than heroic achievements. The last tale in the LONESOME DOVE saga, this one may be the strangest yet as it takes the two Texas Rangers, Gus MacCrae and Woodrow Call, through their formative years and into their maturity. Theirs is an odyssey of survival as they set out on numerous expeditions which mostly end in failure or partial success, at best. Although they are apparently successful much of the time (we hear about their capturing and hanging numerous thieves and brigands) it is not their successful forays which interest McMurtry. Rather it is those events which seem to characterize for him the futility of existence itself. Gus and Call repeatedly bang their heads against the harsh west Texas ground as they go after the Commanches (who are dwindling, though ever formidable, in the face of the white onslaught) and the implacably evil Mexican bandit Ahumado (a man, if we may call him that, whom even the Commanches fear, a man who seems to have stepped out of our darkest nightmares). The heroism here is not one of gunplay or gunfighters in bloody face-offs but of survival, as men contend against an implacably unfriendly world, a world in which all are beasts in an unremitting place where only the Law of the Jungle prevails. It is Gus and Call's victory to have survived this world and to have grown competent enough to endure it and, in the end, to have outlasted it as the tides of new settlers sweep over the violent and bloody west Texas plains and wash away the old ways and peoples. There is a terrible violence here which may be McMurtry's vision of the world as it is. And the heroism is nothing less than surviving the worst nightmares men can conjure up for their fellows. Women are brutally raped and slaughtered; men fare no better. All are subject to the vilest of tortures, some literally being skinned alive -- all very distasteful in the end. And yet it's also uplifting in a strange sort of way as our heroes outlast the dark world they have somehow stumbled into. No, there is no story here in the ordinary sense for this is a book of episodic and generally incomplete missions and contests between men who in the end are barely more than beasts (either because they are predatory or because they are reduced to resisting the predations of others). And yet it is a book which absorbs us and gives the sense of being there. In that sense it is certainly a tale. And a level of fiction which I doubt the so-called post-modernists, with all their experimental pretensions, are ever likely to achieve.

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.

Larry McMurtry's `Comanche Moon' follows the Texas Ranger Captains Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae in their middle years. This is a stand alone book in the series which can be read with enjoyment and understanding by itself. In `Comanche Moon, McMurtry's isolating and development of each character's voice is amazing. Coupled with entrancing detailed descriptions of the Texas badlands interspersed throughout, `Comanche Moon' is McMurtry's best of series. I have never been a fan of novel landscaping minutia. McMurtry writes word pictures with enthralling technique. I know gritty westerns aren't for everyone. If you've ever wanted to try one out, `Comanche Moon' would be my recommendation.

Over a period of several days, while I should have been doing other things, I stole away to a corner or sacrificed hours of sleep to read this book. Like all of McMurtry's books, it opens up new vistas not hinted at previously, in his work or that of others. He has a way of drawing us into the pictures he paints with a delicate balance between the thoughts and feelings of his characters and their words and actions. This book recreates what its characters call "the Comanche way of life", and uses it to set off the world of the Texas Rangers Gus and Call, who were introduced in earlier books in the Lonesome Dove series. Combined with the first three books in the series, this one gives a completely convincing picture of Gus and Call as mythical heroes of the frontier. What the present book adds to their portrayal is their image in the eyes of the Comanche. The book shows that the formidable Comanche warriors not only learned to respect Gus and Call as fighting men, but could even show a little regret at the thought that Gus and Call would some day fade into the sunset along with themselves. Gus and Call (especially Gus) have become in many ways like the Comanche they fight.

Historically accurate biography of Quanah Parker, last Commanche to live free on the LLana Estacata of Texas. Also bio information about his mother Cynthia Ann Parker, a European girl captured and raised by Commanches as their own, later taken back by her white family by force after she had married and had children as a Commanche woman. Lots of information regarding the everyday life of Commanche people. Told in a graphic novel format , the drawing is not particularly beautiful, but the story and accuracy make up for it. My copy is bound in psuedo leather, looks nice. Highly recomended for adults or older adolecents. Especially those who are intellectually curious, who may or may not have trouble with standard written texts.

"Comanche Moon" is much better than "Dead Man's Walk" - the writing is much tighter and more addictive. This novel really develops the key characters to set the stage for "Lonesome Dove". The sub-storylines work well together and create a nice overall theme. I like that you see the changes coming about in this historical period through the eyes of the Rangers, the Comanches, and other characters. Taken in sequence, this elevates the characters from "Dead Man's Walk" to a much higher level. Highly recommnended as a read (and the movie follows the book pretty well).

Thank you, Mr.McMurtry, for another fantastic installment to the Lonesome Dove series...I sure hope another is already in the works (one to fill in between Commanche Moon and Lonesome Dove? I'd be one of the very first to buy it...)
Now, "hooray!" for all of the wonderful reviews here that I agree with. To the rest of you "nay-sayers" I say "Cmon, people...get real...loosen those ties that must be choking you and relax those sphincter muscles! Good grief, man! Commanche Moon is GREAT FICTION! A great, can't put it down, don't want to ever get to the last page, just don't want it to end story, with great characters, dialogue and events...all the stuff we L.D fans can't get enough of and come back for with tongues wagging. Sure there's some brutal torture and very bad treatment and disregard to women and children, but bad stuff like that did happen and don't kid yourselves, still does happen today in parts of the world. To all you "researchers" and "typo" complainers: Lighten up! It's a FICTIONAL STORY and a fantastic one, to boot! Give us some more, Larry!

NO ONE makes you feel as much a part of the story as larry mcmurtry. when i put one of his books down i generally have to get a glass of water to get the dust out. I enjoyed comanche moon, but felt it just left me hanging, which would be fine, except that i already read the other 3 parts to the series. as i was reading comanche i wondered how the book would have been if read in sequencial order, not knowing the future. GUS AND CALL are probably the two best characters in american fiction, and in comanche moon you can find several reasons not to like CALL. read this if you have read lonesome dove or plan to read it. alone, i am not sure.

I am a huge Larry McMurtry and "Lonesome Dove" fan. This is written in a younger timeframe of Gus and the Captain. If you like Western historical fiction, "Lonesome Dove" or Larry McMurtry books in general, you will enjoy it!!!

NO ONE makes you feel as much a part of the story as larry mcmurtry. when i put one of his books down i generally have to get a glass of water to get the dust out. I enjoyed comanche moon, but felt it just left me hanging, which would be fine, except that i already read the other 3 parts to the series. as i was reading comanche i wondered how the book would have been if read in sequencial order, not knowing the future. GUS AND CALL are probably the two best characters in american fiction, and in comanche moon you can find several reasons not to like CALL. read this if you have read lonesome dove or plan to read it. alone, i am not sure.

Having read many of McMurtry's books, including all in the Lonesome Dove series, I was anticipating a let down of sorts. I was pleasantly surprised with Comanche Moon. It developed many of the characters seen in Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo, and even Dead Man's Walk. McMurtry's ability to truly explore the characters about whom he writes is superb. His background and description of the villains made them seem very real, and the suffering of their victims was comparable with anything McMurtry's ever done. This was an outstanding book, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who's acquainted with Captains Woodrow F. Call and Augustus McCrae

I saved this one until I went to the Grand Canyon, figuring to read about hard country in a hard country portion of the USA. It was a perfect setting for a magnificent read.
Call & McCrea, their adversaries and allies come to life in technicolor.
Spent one day hiking the Canyon's South Rim, stopping to rest and read and what a way to enjoy this great portrayer of the American West.
Don't think it would have mattered where I read it as it was quite a treat. Being in the Grand Canyon was just a bonus.
I have yet to be disappointed in a McMurtry novel and these characters are full of life, color and verve.

This book is haunted by being a middle volume. Mr. McMurtry's writing is excellent but the story really goes nowhere. It takes the Lonesome Dove characters and gives them some advevtures for their middle years. Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae are full fledged Captains now. The time spance of the novel is too long and the stories are too disjointed. Characters are introduced and dropped. An example of this is Captain Scull, who is given much time in the first half of the book ( and is quite interesting in a Theodore Roosevelt sort of way) but is reduced to a caricature in the second half. This book was in dire need of some editting. I liked "Deadman's Walk" and I loved "Lonesome Dove". This book was best summed up by Woodrow Call's las line "It may be over but it wasn't fun".

I was expecting great things from this book after Lonesome Dove the movie being so good. I was thoroughly disappointed. There was no semblance of historical accuracy in this book. The story lines were completely unbelievable by anyone who has any knowledge of the time and place. Even considering the time and place, the violence was extremely cruel and excessive. Channeling Vlad the Impaler from Medieval Europe and stealing Val Kilmer in a cage from the movie Willow in something that claims to be a Western was pitiful. The only reason I finished this book is because I had seen the movie Lonesome Dove and wanted to see what happened with the characters. This book seems like the author just threw the most outlandish crap he could think of into a book in order to fill a contract. What a disappointment from a Pulitzer Prize winning author.

I can't decide whether this is better than McMurtry's original epic. Probably not, but I think it's far better than the other two in the series (the depressing Streets of Laredo, and the forgettable Dead Man's Walk) What makes this novel so good is not the story of Call and Gus, but the secondary characters. They're really wild this time, Inish Skull is probably the best of the new characters, when he is prisoner of the Mexican War Chief the book really takes off. I couldn't stop turning the pages, because I'm all too familiar with McMurtry's tendency to kill off likeable characters. Overall definately a great read, if you like McMurtry this is an excellent addition to your collection. Also try Elmore Leonard's westerns.

I think of all the books in the series about Gus and Woodrow, Comanche Moon is the closest in tone and feel to Lonesome Dove. There are fewer annoying inconsistencies than there are in the other prequels and sequels. McMurtry might have been making a special effort to wrap the series up neatly. The plot ambles along like a lost mule looking for water and there are occasional episodes of sickening violence and torture, but on the whole, one is just grateful for the chance to spend another seven or eight hundred pages with McCrae and Call.

In January, I heard Larry McMurtry speak briefly about COMANCHE MOON and his prevailing emotion was relief -- relief that he had finally finished the beautiful monster he had created with LONESOME DOVE. In fact, the author openly expressed weariness with Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae. While I can understand the unfortunate dilemma of a writer becoming enslaved by his own characters, as an ardent fan of McMurtry's work, I could not help but notice that his exhaustion with Call and McCrae comes through in COMANCHE MOON, the novel I had expected to take us through their most daring exploits. Indeed, COMANCHE MOON is not about Woodrow and Gus. Instead it is McMurtry's sad, revealing fictional depiction of the impact Western expansion had on Comanche warrior culture. Most of the novel is devoted to non-white characters: Buffalo Hump, Blue Duck, Kicking Wolf, Three Birds, Famous Shoes and Ahumado. What's great about COMANCHE MOON is McMurtry's ability to show his readers, ostensibly 20th Century white readers, the other side of those people our culture has deemed as the "other," the red and black-skinned villains lurking on the fringes of white civilization. What COMANCHE MOON reminds us of is that American progress transfigured such strong characters by placing them on "our" fringe and that their actions against our historical movement is the stuff of legend and tragedy. Ironically, Buffalo Hump emerges as the tragic hero of this novel. McMurtry paints him so vividly that by story's end we are more upset over his death, than by his massacre of the citizens of Austin. One clever technique McMurtry uses to pull this off is slightly shifting the point of view during attack scenes: an Indian shoots three arrows into Clara's parents impaling them to the floor of their store (later we learn it was Buffalo Hump); and it's nameless faceless Texans who charge into a Comanche camp killing several women (later we learn it was Call, McCrae, and some soldiers). Other new characters, Harvard scholar-cum Texas Ranger Inish Scull and his "slutty" southern wife Inez work well until they reach levels of excessive absurdity. Particularly disappointing considering McMurtry's gift for developing powerful female characters is Inez, a surprisingly one-dimensional woman who, after uttering an insightful observation to Woodrow Call that cuts to the core of his character, resumes her carefree existence as a frontier dominatrix. Her lack of evolution becomes silly and tedious. Also, tedious was the action in COMANCHE MOON, especially the Rangers' sojourns, which by and large prove uneventful. Perhaps McMurtry is trying to show that the allure of ranger life was just that, more fictional heroism than anything else, which would propel Gus at least to seek fulfillment in a whiskey jug in Lonesome Dove. But what of Call? His blind obedience to the governor's mandates produce little good for the commonwealth he seeks to protect. It has been stated many times that Call's relentless pursuit of outlaws is unmatched, but if you're looking for an example of that quality in COMANCHE MOON, you're bound for a let down. Basically, he and his partner (and Pea Eye, Jake Spoon and Deets) don't do much good in COMANCHE MOON. What's missing is at least one successful mission that would justify the admiration and respect flung at Call and McCrae by virtually every character they encounter in LONESOME DOVE. To claim disappointment over COMANCHE MOON is disappointing, but that's only because the legend of Woodrow and Gus as rangers in their prime McMurtry created in LONESOME DOVE in turn created certain expectations within the reader. What I didn't count on was McMurtry growing tired of the two characters we his fans can't seem to get enough of. So if you're a fan of McMurtry read COMANCHE MOON, but if you're a fan of Gus and Call you already read the book about them -- it was LONESOME DOVE.

I LOVE Lonesome Dove. I own the movie and watch it every couple of years and bawl like a baby every time. That always spawns a big reading spree of the whole series. I started with Dead Man's Walk figuring I'd read my way from start to finish in chronological order. I finished it and immediately devoured Comanche Moon, then dashed to Half Price Books for Lonesome Dove. Not even ten pages into Lonesome Dove it was glaringly obvious that either Mr. McMurtry didn't write the others, as I had always heard, or if he did it was under a quick deadline or extreme duress. The writing style is completely different, the wit is missing, the details first revealed in Lonesome Dove don't match (1.Maggie lived and died in Lonesome Dove, not Austin; 2.Gus was significantly older than Clara. He was married to his second wife when he met her; 3. He was married to wife #1 for 2 years, wife #2 for seven. They didn't both die within months of marriage as told in Comanche Moon. I could go ON and ON) and the historical FACTS are askew. Buffalo Hump was leading his people to a reservation in 1856 - not on a raid to the ocean. The raid was in 1840. And the hump on his back? I haven't found a reference to it yet in Texas History books. Oh, Comanche Moon is a decent read if you can ignore the facts and don't miss the lack of trademark McMurtry humor, but I'll stick with Lonesome Dove and skip the first two next time.

Gus and Call are now adults with experiences and memories both good and bad as they continue their exciting adventures as Texas Rangers determined to make the Texas frontier a safe place for settlers. There are daily challenges that test their strength, endurance, and will. The book takes us through the "highs-and-lows" of their lives and impresses us with how difficult it was to "tame the frontier." Many gripping and sometimes brutal moments.
Evelyn Horan- teacher/counselor/author
Jeannie, A Texas Frontier Girl, Books One - Four

How can one man write four books about the same characters with no concern for continuity? I don't know, but I am equally clueless as to how he can dispense with continuity, alter events, change characters' histories and personalities and still make me love the work. As he did in Streets of Laraedo and Dead Man's Walk, McMurty changes certain elements of his well established characters' pasts. The changes are most glaring in this book, the immeadiate precursor to his magnificent Lonesome Dove. However, as poorly as his four Gus and Call books fit together, they stand alone very well. In Comanche Moon, McMurtry leads us from Gus and Call in their late twenties to their mid fourties. It appears to end roughly 5 or so years prior to Lonesome Dove. Many will be surprised and delighted to find that the relationship between Call and Maggie, mother of Call's son Newt, is well defined and much more significant than was alluded to in Dove. Another detail that completely reverses itself from Dove is that of the life of Jake Spoon. Far from a romantic rival with Gus for the heart of Clara Allen, Jake is a dippy young moron, afraid of any action, desperate to end his days as a Ranger alive. But much of the action here centers on a new character, Capt. Skull, the rangering Ranger captain who gives Gus and Call their first command by abandoning them and the Ranger troop in order to learn how to track by walking off with Famous Shoes. Skull is a classic McMurtry eccentric, and the only person whom really provides any suspense, as only the future of his life is unknown to us. Skull is witty and full of vim and vinegar. His battles, both mental and physical, are among the most engaging portions of the story. And the most revolting.
Certainly, the way McMurty takes liberties with characters that many love is often maddening, but when seperated from the other books, Comanche Moon stands on its own well. It is another gripping and unflinching look at an unromanticized American West, and it continues the! excellent development of the Indian characters McMurtry began in Dead Man's Walk. Buffalo Hump, Kicking Wolf and Blue Duck are fleshed out in a manner that is not often seen with Indians in most Western novels. Far from ciphers, they are realistic characters that cause you to see that Ranger-Indian fights are not as simple as Good vs. Evil. They are, rather, Man vs. Man, and Culture vs. Culture, and they are all the more heartbreaking because of it.
I don't know if McMurtry is getting lazy. I don't know if he simply doesn't give a damn about whether or not readers care. In the end, it really doesn't matter as he still can deliver page turners with the best of them. And by the the time you finish Comanche Moon, you realize that the changes in Gus and Call's history, changes that can make rereading Lonesome Dove jarring, are for the best. This is how he should have set up their pasts in Dove. It a richer, more poignant past for Gus and Call than what was alluded to in that Pulitzer Prize winning novel.
Finally, the audio presentation is top notch. Of course, how could it not be with the peerless Frank Muller as narrator?

This may be McMurtry's last chronicle of the old west. It is a fiction blessed by his compelling writing style, and cursed by his dark view of human nature. McMurtry intentionally details some of the most sadistic tortures to appear in popular fiction. These disquieting events make the reader subscribe to the cynical axiom, "the only good injun is a dead injun". At the same time one suspects that the "civilized" white population may have a veneer mask of its concern for a fellow man. McMurtry can probably never divorce himself from the production of stories. He has a gift of inventiveness, and the ability to tell the inventions in an appealing way. But the joy has left him. Better no more stories than a continuation of the exploration of darkness.

Commanche Moon was undoubtedly the best western book I have ever read, plus it was one of the best books I have ever read period. What I especially liked about the book was the way McMurtry characterized the Indians. He made them come alive as individuals within a specific culture and a certain historical time period. I also enjoyed the Texas Rangers, but not nearly as much as I did the Indians. It was obvious to me that McMurtry has done consideralbe research on Amerindians and he has used that research well in constructing the characters in his book. I was always excited when I started a chapter and saw it was going to be about one or more of the Indian characters. Many authors sterotype the Indians of the American West, making them too cruel or too noble, but McMurtry managed to portray them as total human beings and thereby created fascinating characters to read about. There were many other parts of the book that I enjoyed, but the author's characterization of the Amerindians was easily the best.

I was such a Lonesome Dove fan that I would probably read anything about the Old West from McMurtry...and I guess I have. This was a very enjoyable read for me as were all of this series. Of course, Lonesome Dove was the best, but I would rate this one second and "Walk" last...but all four were down my alley. The insight provided during the Comanche segments was right on target. Comanche reasoning and the way they looked at life seemed to be well captured by Mr. McMurtry

It sure seemed to me as if McMurtry and Simon & Schuster were merely completing some sort of contractual obligation to each other and emotional obligation to fans of the Lonesome Dove series with the publication of Comanche Moon.

Yeah, I enjoyed the book for 400-500 pages, before it degenerated into a progressively typo-ridden, rambling series of brief, occasionally poignant but mainly disconnected and even trite series of vignettes attempting to sum up the lives of the various characters.

Others have described the incredibly sloppy proofreading job on this book, involving typographical errors and repeated portions of dialogue. What a mess! What lack of respect for the reading public! And the editors failed to correct the author's numerous mental lapses, among them:

* Ranger Lee Hitch is shaggy-haired and Stove Jones is bald, but several pages later, when they line up for haircuts in the town of Lonesome Dove, Lee Hitch is bald and Stove Jones is shaggy-haired.

* Inez Scull complains that she dropped her buggy whip, then just a few paragraphs later, she begins to beat Gus with her buggy whip.

* Call grows bored with the rangers' conversation and walks away, then somehow contributes a comment to the same conversation.

Have I missed anything?

I greatly enjoyed the Lonesome Dove series, but would rank this book fourth in quality.

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.

How could Mr. McMurtry improve this book so that it could ever live up to the standards of his novel Lonesome Dove? He just couldn't. That's why I gave this book four stars. Not because it was a lesser novel, just that Lonesome Dove was so great NOTHING could/will ever be able to compete. I loved Comanche Moon. It's so completely gritty and raw, I was on the edge of my seat always with Gus and Call. Mr. McMurtry's description, his talent for the written word will run the gammut of all your emotions in one breath. Oh this book is a deffinite must read. You'll miss out on alot if you don't.

This book is divided into 3 parts, the first two of which cover a series of events resulting in Gus and Call's completion of their first mission as captains. Book 3 begins several years later and meanders through a wrap up of sorts, with one last adventure at the end. This kind of creates a splotchy pattern where the stories don't have a central connecting point and tend to kind of drift.

Most will read this book because it covers the time before "Lonesome Dove" when Gus and Call and the boys are Texas Rangers. As it is though, Gus and Call's roles in the story are not satisfying and really seem kind of pointless. We never see them win any great battles or do much to earn the fame alluded to in Lonesome Dove, nor do we get much info on how they developed their great skills as displayed in Lonesome Dove. Their relationships with Maggie and Clara are basically what would have been expected by someone who's read Lonesome Dove, and Gus's 2 marriages are hardly touched on. The few good nuggets come from a handful of conversations between the two, which take a very different tone than those of "Lonesome Dove," and help to explain how they ended up spending so much of their lives together.

The other major characters of the story, however, are everything they should be. The Stories of Inish Scull, Kicking Wolf, Ahumado, Buffalo Hump, Blue Duck, and Famous Shoes are well written and insightful. The Indians are particularly compelling, and I found myself siding with Buffalo Hump and Kicking Wolf as often as I did with the Texans.

Overall, Gus and Call could almost have been written out of the story. It would have been slimmer and it would have been easier to focus on the real stars of the story. The ultimate result is a story that has wonderful high points but breaks apart because it spends too much time covering repetitive side stories for the sake of mentioning certain people's names.

I love Gus and Woodrow. They are without a doubt two of my favorite characters of all time. This is why I was somewhat let down by "Comanche Moon". True, "Dead Man's Walk" was far from a great book but at least it dedicated a whole book to such a small period of time in the lives of two such rich characters. In "Comanche Moon", I get the feeling that McMurtry was writing it just to get it out of the way. Now I'm not saying that he should write ONLY books featuring the characters from "Lonesome Dove", but come on. In the space of one book, he covered what seemed like ten or fifteen years. How can the readers be expected to grow more attached to the characters if we have to whip through their lives so fast. Whoosh, Maggie is pregnant. Whoosh, Newt's born. Woosh, Maggie dies. I was feeling like I was getting whiplash.

Before writing a review, I enjoy browsing previous reviews of the same book. With as many opinions expressed with Comanche Moon, a majority of folks enjoyed this book. What kept me coming back were the characters. Now, I've read how McMurtry's characters were weak but I didn't see that. Every day after work and on weekends, I anxiously picked up where I left off, to see what adventure lay ahead. This is an easy book to unwind. Very enjoyable...

This was the best book in the series besides Lonesome Dove. Maybe because it saw the characters really evolving into what they would become in Lonesome Dove. It might deserve 5 stars, but I wouldn't feel right giving it the same rating as Lonesome Dove, as they are not in the same class.
McMurty has written a great series, but it might be hurt by the fact that the best book by far was the first. In any case, this was a good book and definitely worth reading.

Comanche Moon is a prequel to Lonesome Dove, and the sequel to Dead Man's Walk. Strong characters populate this sprawling tale of the Texas Rangers and the violence of the times. An enjoyable read from a talented storyteller. Not being completely consistent with the series and a few loose ends kept McMurtry from getting my "5th Star."

I read Comanche Moon after having read Dead Man's Walk and Lonesome Dove. Comanche Moon seems closer to the mark than Dead Man's Walk, but still falls short of the standard set by Lonesome Dove. Gus and Call are developed more fully than was the case in DMW and that is good. We are told that they are well respected and admired, but it is never clear why. The only successful missions are the rescue of Inish Scull and the break up of Blue Duck's gang of renegades, otherwise it is not clear why they are regarded as heroes. That notwithstanding, the description of the contest of wills between Inish and Ahumado is very compelling and is worth the time spent on this book. Overall, a pretty good read but not everything I had hoped for.

Simon & Schuster -- I would have proofread this book FOR FREE, and I'm sure other McMurtry fans would have volunteered as well. Why all the typographical errors? I still enjoyed the book, feeling that McMurtry wasn't as pessimistic as he'd been in Dead Man's Walk and Streets of Laredo. Still can't compare to Lonesome Dove, but what can? I think all readers would have appreciated a better proofreading job.

I've listened to hundreds of audio books, but this is one of my all time favorites. Frank Muller is, if not the best, then the top 1% of audio book readers. The combination of an extremely powerful story and frank muller makes this one of my favorite audio books of all time. I've listened to other McMurtry books, but none were as incredibly written or phenomenally narrated as this story.
Note to McMurtry: Continue this powerful style of constant action and drama. Be sure to have Frank Muller read all your work from now on. He *is* the best.

An outstanding read. The book, style, and story we hoped we'd get from Larry McMurtry after the Pulitzer Prize winner. Head and shoulders above Streets of Laredo, and better than Dead Man's Walk, Comanche Moon actually re-creates the characters Call and McCray and fills in the huge expanse of time between their near death at the hands of Buffalo Hump and the departure for the Rio Grand. Very satisfying reading, and a novel truly worthy of the classic characters McMurtry created previously. DO NOT MISS THIS ONE !

Comanche Moon is a typical Mc Murtry novel. More or less entertaining but with a totally predictable plot, a disdain for historical facts and some sadomasochism added for seasoning the mediocre tale. As other McMurray books, this novel presents the same improbable white men characters, combined with murderous, ignorant and sadists Indians and the ever present detail of tortures that the author seems to particularly enjoy. Regarding inaccurate historical facts, many have been pointed out in prior reviews; let me add just another one. The Mexican bandit "Ahumado" is described as a Mayan Indian, a race unlikely to be found in the north border of Mexico in the mid 1800's. Mayans happen to live a few thousand miles down south in Yucatan and Guatemala. A slight blunder, but what the heck!, an Indian is an Indian no matter where he comes from!. The most surprising thing, however, is the number of readers that granted four and even five stars to this book. Some of them, they even took the trouble of writing lengthy and professional sounding reviews populated with magnificent words to praise the writing skills of McMurtry. Give me a break! I suppose this people will no hesitate to give an Oscar to Madonna for her acting!

Just finished Comanche Moon, a colorful tale of wild adventure out in the old west. A few really great characters in this book. Cowboys, Indians, Bandits, Whores....the wild west of the 1800's. I'm just a huge fan of this genre, looking forward to more of the same.

Like most reviews, I liked the book and was sad the great Gus and Call saga had finally come to an end. Of the four books, this ties with Dead Man's Walk. The best, by far, is Lonesome Dove and then Streets of Laredo. Because of the following these books have generated, I hope McMurtry writes another novel about one of the Lonesome Dove characters.

Forget about plot and character development and read McMurtry's books for the dialog. It isn't that this book is lacking in plot or colorful characters, it has both. But it is the dialog that makes it a pleasure to read.

Once again, McMurtry is not to be outdone with his representation of the Wild, Wild West. This story is at times implausible, but still a fascinating story. One major complaint is that his story lines do not correlate with other novels. There are many details described in this story that contradict details described in Lonsome Dove. It is frustrating that an author that takes the time to create characters we grow to love, would not take the time to make certain his story line is correct. Still a great read, and a strong recommendation.

I have read all of his epic west books. I laughed to tears, almost cried at the sad moments... the emotions were rampant. At the last page you take the book in your hands, caress it and then say "Wow, that was heady!" Larry fails to disappoint. Rest assured that he delivers first class material.. always. Definitely worth 5 (or more if allowed) stars!

Not only a great western, but also a fantastic horror book.

When I considered some of the scenes involving the evil characters of the book I didn't know where to put it in my

book collection.

I my mind, a good book makes you sorry when you finish it. Sorry in the sense that you want to learn more. I wasn't sorry when I finished "Moon" because McMurtry did a good job in filling in a lot of questions naturally raised in Lonesome Dove. The list of rich characters grows deeper with this book and the reader can truly feel what the West must have been like. This book brings the whole series together and is a keeper. An ultimate male bonding adventure.

Larry McMurtry has redeemed himself for the fiasco that is "Streets of Laredo" with the second prequel to the original "Lonesome Dove". The characters are presented as true to the vision of the lives of Texas Rangers on the frontier and at the same time developed the supporting cast to a far greater extent than any previously seen before. The story is well-paced and brings the story of Call and McCrae to a satisfying conclusion.

If Lonesome Dove was required reading in school, (like Romeo and Juliet), the library couldn't print cards fast enough for students coming back for more Larry McMurtry. The book is that good. It is the best I have ever read, and I have read quite a few. If you plan to build your own book collection, this should be the first hardback to buy and keep in a special place.

I wish I had read the book before I saw the movie. So much more realism in the book. The characters seem to jump out of the pages and become real. I cant wait to get back to reading after I have stopped. I want to finish this so I can get to the next book.

I love reading books by Larry McMurtry. I read all of the Lonesome Dove books and this one is very good too. Too bad it had to end. I'm sorry to say that the TV movie that came out about Camanche Moon was just terrible. Read the book........

Certainly the second best of the four Lonesome Dove books. As reported elsewhere, the typos are distracting, and the research sloppy, but all in all a decent story. I would have loved an translation of Scull's Greek writing

The story picks up about 15 years after Dead Man's Walk and ends about 10 years before Lonesome Dove. Great story, great characters, but it just didn't have the great ending McMurtry usually delivers.

I loved Lonesome Dove. I also enjoyed the sequals(and prequals). I found that I could hardly put Comanche Moon down. It is a good book but be forewarned if you are a stickler for details, you may be disappointed. There are too many inconsistencies.

An excellent book. If you're a Lonesome Dove fan, you have to read this book. This gives excellent insight on the earlier years before and leading up to the move to Lonesome Dove for some of the most memorable characters ever. A must read.

A friend thought I would enjoy this book since I enjoy reading so much. I did read it though every time I turned a page I wondered why I bothered.Such foolishness is a disgrace.About the best thing about the book is that no one has to read it.

Arguably the second best of the Lonesome Dove books. As a stand-alone novel, it pales next to Lonesome Dove, but for us fans, it is a wonderful trip into the past, learning about the events and people that made Call and Gus into the characters we know from Lonesome Dove. I cried at the end, not because the book touched me, but because I never get to read another Lonesome Dove book.
If the Lonesome Dove books are the only Larry McMurty that you have ever read, try "Texasville" or "Some Can Whistle" McMurtry is unequalled when it comes to creating incredibly eccentric and entertaining characters that are still completely believable.

I have read all of mcmurty's books. He is the type of author that you hate for the story to end. His writing style is so very easy to follow as well as relaxing. In Commanche Moon, Gus, Call are their old usual selves as well as Pea Eye. I truly wish this saga could go on forever. I am an african-american female so it may be surprising to some that our culture also enjoy the old west.

I read Dead Man's Walk first, and was disappointment that it didn't build up the characters more. Then I read Comanche Moon, which did. I loved it. It does have some violence, I am talking some really EEWWW stuff, :), but it belonged in the story. I loved it and then read the "Lonesome Dove books in order. Buy it!