Lonesome Dove
Non-spoiler thoughts: First Western novel I've ever read and possibly I've set myself up for disappoint with future ones since this was really, REALLY good. Great characters, great prose, great atmosphere, great tension. 4.5 out of 5 stars.
Spoiler thoughts below:
What is sticking with me most right now is how ambiguous the ending is for most of the characters. What does Call end up doing with himself, does Newt run the ranch successfully/get over his daddy issues, does Lorena move past her depression etc, etc. Really only the dead characters are left with a real sense of closure, everyone else is left in place trying to pick up some kind of pieces of their life before they let it burn them up like Xavier in the inn. Very good and satisfying despite the extreme lack of finality.
I love the way Gus and Call are polar opposites who make each other's problems worse while still being close friends. And I love that neither of them ever changes and that there are consequences to that lack of change. Gus finally gets himself killed with his carelessness when he had every opportunity for a happy life that he claims to want so much and Call ruins every relationship he has left with his inability to get over himself or be vulnerable in any way. That kick in the teeth where you think he'll finally say something and then just leaves Newt in the cold is perfect.
I love the never escaping dread that the landscape they travel through almost feels post apocalyptic for all its beauty with the lingering on the emptiness left behind by the decimation of the tribes and the buffalo (to say nothing of the many literal buffalo bone grounds they pass through). Gives an overwhelming feeling of loss to the setting and fits with the question the characters ask themselves of what the heck they're doing going more and more into it and what it says about them.
Also such great tension from all these these would be enforcers of order being both little more than vigilantes and also shameless thieves themselves. I cracked up at Newt's brief moment of "wait...aren't we stealing horses from the Mexicans? Weird the Captain always shows no mercy to horse thieves. Guess that's different.... anyway!" It was a very funny moment of the more modern sensibilities of the author poking through with the characters feeling out of their own time.
Minor Complaints:
I think the manuscript could have used one more run-through because there were some really blatant continuity errors. None major, but always jarring. The number of murder victims of the Suggs gang, Clara's first born son is suddenly her third born son. Weirdest was one within three pages of each other regarding Clara's tucked away money:
"p. 592 The first of the money she spent was on the two-storey frame house they had built three years before..." p. 595 "She wouldn't give it up or let him use it no matter how poor they were...she wouldn't even use the money on the house, although she had wanted the house."
The circumstances that led to Lorena's kidnapping were very contrived and I could feel the author behind the scenes more than I should have. He tries to dismiss it as Gus' flaw of not taking danger seriously, but he both took it too seriously and too little for either to make sense. This is an outlaw that he himself is uncertain he could kill one on one. What exactly was the point of assigning Newt as a bodyguard? How did he imagine this playing out if Newt had been in camp?
Danger of a large rotating cast, some are more interesting than others. I never cared about Roscoe's Three Stooges routine and July's self pity started out kind of tragic but went on so long I got really sick of whenever we switched back to him.