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I have to admit that I didn't particularly enjoy Cold Mountain.
Having read it almost 10 years ago I can't remember exactly why I took agin it,
but I think it was to do with the pacing - it just seemed to take an awfully long
time for anything to happen. So it was with a certain degree of
trepidation that I picked up Thirteen Moons - but what a surprise, things
seemed to be setting themselves up for a ripping good, action filled yarn - 12-year-old orphan
boy sent out West to the Appalachian mountain region as a bound boy, finds a
father figure in a Cherokee chief, becomes an honorary member of the Cherokee Nation, gets
involved with the Indian wars, the Civil War, and all the politics of the time -
this is good stuff! Frazier's descriptions of the
fledgling Washington City, and his vignettes of the key players of the time are
exceptionally well done, and his descriptions of the Cherokee Nation and the politics of the
time made me realize that the situation was far more complex than I had realized - for example, many, if not most, Cherokee by that
time had given up their traditional ways, some had intermarried with Europeans and taken
up farming, some were landowners and a few owned slaves - indeed, in many cases the "ignorant savages" were indistinguishable
from the settlers so eager to displace them.
However, my interest waned during the second half of the book, when
things started to bog down - I turned the pages faster and faster, not because it
was such a gripping read, but simply in the hope of finding something that would
grip! Another frustration lies in the lack of clarity over what is fiction and
what is real - Frazier
goes out of his way to state that Thirteen Moons is entirely fictional and that those
seeking historical or geographical fact should look elsewhere; but then he
goes on to say that Will Cooper is not William Holland Thomas, "though they do
share some DNA" - which, of course, sets any remotely inquisitive reader off to
look up
William Holland Thomas's life, which in so many respects follows the same
path as Frazier's fictional hero - so it seems a little odd that Frazier would
so determinedly claim no no factual basis when he's obviously borrowed so
liberally from the life of Thomas.
However, thankfully, BookBrowse is about much more than one person's opinion (in
fact, if you've been reading these ezines for a few years, you may recollect
that BookBrowse's opinion was strictly absent from the ezines!), so let's hear
what the big-name media reviewers have to say about it....
The reviewer for Publishers Weekly can't get enough of it, giving it the
ultimate review rating of a "boxed review". The Washington Post opines that
Thirteen Moons will be putting a lot of people to sleep and Library
Journal writes it off as "tiresome". Interestingly, Booklist
found the first quarter of the book hard going but thought it picked up pace
after that when "finally, the characters are able to step out from behind this
blanket of particulars and incidentals and make the story work."; and the
often-critical Kirkus Reviews considers it "a great gift to all of us".
As always, you can get a feel for which side of the fence you might come down
on by browsing an excerpt at BookBrowse.
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in October 2006, and has been updated for the August 2007 edition. Click here to go to this issue.
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