Dead Man's Walk - Larry McMurtry

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⭐9/10

This is the third book in the Lonesome Dove series, and much like the second, I think it's awesome but falls short of the original. It's again a pretty thick novel, but one I went through somewhat quickly (for me) because I find these super readable and propulsive despite being pretty slow paced. 

This one goes back in time to when Call and Gus, the two main characters of Lonesome Dove, were just young men beginning their lives as Texas Rangers. This is a minor spoiler, but in this one they are young and foolish and sign up for a campaign that was damned from the beginning, so it ends up turning into more of a survival story as they try to cross the plains with no resources, fighting off enemies and terrors of all sorts. It's super compelling! I love survival stories, and this one (like most of McMurtry's works) was inspired by a true story. 

I guess one minor complaint I'd have is that McMurtry is intense about his realism, and that commitment often leads to a real sense of weight and danger. Nobody is ever truly safe. However, since this is prequel, you know some (such as the main characters) are safe and so some of the tension is gone, especially in a book with such fraught circumstances. Other than that, I can't say I have a lot of negatives besides the fact that this becomes a LOT of suffering and it can be tiresome to read.

By now I've read well over 2000 pages of McMurtry, so I've really gotten to know his patterns by now. I feel like I could read this guy forever because he's truly talented both as a storyteller and a putting nice sentences together, but also a little of the magic starts to fade. What felt so new and interesting during Lonesome Dove now feels a little more routine. Again that's mostly fine, and I always love his insight into the inner workings of the minds of these rough cowboys from centuries past. It feels so authentic without glorifying or vilifying them, and is perhaps my favorite quality of his. I would say the exploration of this type of masculinity is not as strong in this entry, but I appreciated this new take. The foolish romanticism of adventure, the futility of dying for dumb causes, taking dumb orders. It's all smart and pretty effective. 

I feel like I haven't properly sold this book. It was awesome to read, and reading it in cowboy country during my Montana vacation added a nice element. Love these books, and I look forward to finishing the series next summer. 

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