Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

Blood Meridian is a challenging read. McCarthy's unconventional style – minimal punctuation, unclear speakers – can be frustrating. Certain characters, like the "idiot," seem to lack purpose, and overall character development feels minimal. The gang's aimless journeys and overly detailed descriptions of the landscape can be tedious. Despite this, the novel is strangely compelling, particularly the enigmatic Judge. However, the ending proved unsatisfying. While I appreciate McCarthy's skill, his style may not suit me.

The language is archaic because the novel is set in the 1850's. But it is also frequently obtuse. The lack of quotation marks is just silly pretentiousness. I've been to the desert many times and I doubt anyone could survive the ordeals "the Kid" endures. About half way through the novel I was expecting these guys to get cut down in a crossfire of shotgun blasts. Never happened. Had to wait for the Indians to do it. It would have happened much sooner in real life. The novel never builds to anything. It's just a series of random savagery until it ends. There is no character development. One page the kid's 16 the next he's 28. The Judge promises to be an interesting character.In the hands of a less self important author, he might have been. But his speeches, though fascinating, never add up to anything.He never emerges from the author's needlessly difficult language. Especially the author's mania for the word and. The novel is shot though with run on sentences that sound moronic when read aloud. All told I'm mystified that anyone thinks this is a great book. It shows tremendous promise. The dialogue is often perfect. Not good. Perfect. The Judge's speeches sound beautiful read aloud - though terrifying also. When the author can tear himself away from his thesaurus, and fight off his addiction to the word and, his descriptive passages are so good the setting becomes all but touchable. Give this thing a good editing, develop the characters, give it a story arc that builds suspense and you'll have a book worth reading.

Simply an astounding work of fiction by a master prose stylist. I could've done without some of the more heavy-handed Old Testament symbology, and it does get tiring, having to look up every third word. But there's no denying the power behind all that verbosity.