Customer Comments

What an amazing work. What an enjoyable read. I first read this book online, on a website that I cannot remember but was a sort of proto-reddit. I was enthralled from the first installment and blown away as I read through it. The story has stayed with me, and many years later I purchased the hard copy from an on-demand printer so I could read it as often as I wished. Williams takes one fantastic premise (which I found quite easy to accept), and then follows the exponentially unfurling consequences to the very end of what might happen. This book is about something that transcends humans, but it is largely told from a human's point of view. The theme of this book is not new, but I have never seen it handled as well or as believably as Roger Williams has done. This is not an easy book. It is a page turner, it is not extremely long, but it provokes the reader. It forces you to think hard about what you take for granted, to reassess why things are or are not the way we like them to be, and to consider all the alternatives.

I hesitated to start reading this book because I've never enjoyed westerns. But the writing in Blood Meridian hooked me. The story is a dark Bildungsroman with a tragic conclusion. The action is rendered in graphic prose that feels like poetry. The story, the atmosphere, the writing style, the mystery of "where is this book going?" -- all transcend the western genre, which is probably why this book is almost never found in the "western" section of bookstores. In fact, where it belongs is in the "classics" section, because McCarthy produced a masterpiece with Blood Meridian.

The reason I love reading A Game of Thrones is its characters. George R. R. Martin's characters are authentic. If taken out of their fantasy setting they would be equally at home as your next-door neighbor or co-worker or the guy you see at the bus stop every day. Even the bad guys (mostly) have likeable traits. His characters live in a world that pays homage to other well-known fantasies in a way that is nostalgic rather than derivative. Martin amazingly combines several very popular sub-genres (zombies, dragon-taming, spy thrillers) into one coherent tale that is exciting, suspenseful and, well, fun. Thank goodness there are three (scratch that) four more books following this one.