What do You think about The Daybreakers (1984)?
I have only read a few Western novels before, although I have read a couple by L'Amour. This is a solid genre novel with a plot that kept me reading, even though I am not a big reader in this genre. The characters are well drawn and seem realistic for the most part, and the main character, also the narrator, has his strengths and limitations. Tyrel Sackett, the protagonist and narrator, is a young guy with spit in his soul that manages to cause us to like him for his honesty and integrity despite his embracing of wild ways of the west. L'Amour did a great job in this. However, the first-person point of view, while endearing, also brings a few limitations to this novel. Sometimes, in an effort to make this cowboy a salt of the earth type of fellow, L'Amour has him say things that sound a bit thick-headed, even for a thick-headed fellow. Also, the character repeats ideas a number of times to the point that I think L'Amour could have benefited from a bit more editing before the final copy came out. However, the novel overall is strong. It takes us back to a time (1867 and following) in New Mexico and other states nearby in an authentic way and this setting is neither distracting nor paltry, but manages to illuminate and surround the characters and plot in a believable and escapist illusion we as readers benefit from.
—Adam Powers
I really like Louis L'Amour books. I picked this one up from a yard sale and laughed my way through a lot of it. I was amazed by how comically L'Amour voiced the narrator. He came up with some of the best ways to describe things the way a back-woods boy from Tennessee would have, and I love that kind of ingenuity in authors.This is the story of two brothers who have to leave Tennessee and make their way in the wild west. They hire on as cowboys and do that for a while, then settle in Santa Fe, where they each met girls they'd like to marry. However, there are some rough riders in the area, making things a bit too rough for the rest of the settlers and they call on the Sacketts to clean up the place. Of course, they can. They are REAL men.L'Amour writes well and it's obvious he had done a lot of research. He writes about the West like he lived it and it was just the way things were. I must admit, I eat it up.
—Mandi Ellsworth
“Sandy was grabbing iron when I swung my gun on him and thumbed my hammer twice so it sounded like one shot and he went backwards off his horse like he’d been hit with an axe.”Two Tennessee sodbusters (farmers) fall in with cowboys, but “there’s nothing that binds men together like sweat and gunsmoke.” The Sackett brothers prove that they are made of iron and rawhide: Ty is shy, tight-lipped, and fast on the draw; Orrin spreads his gift of wit, blarney and bonhomie. Yet, it is Ty who tells this first-person account.Tom Sunday, the ramrod (boss) of the cattle drive, reads “Bleak House” and Plutarch around the campfire and teaches the illiterate Sacketts to read and philosophize. With the gifts of literacy and landscape, the ridge runners' world burst wide open to become a world without end or limit. “No trees, only the far and endless grass, always whispering its own soft stories.” After gathering a herd of free range cattle of their own and fast-hammering their guns against rustlers, the trailmates settle in New Mexico shortly after statehood and stumble into conflict between the Spanish (who have lived there here for hundreds of years on Spanish land grants) and the new Anglos (who want to deprive them of their land). This presents a conflict of interest for Orrin whose new father-in-law is the ringleader of the Settlers seeking to use gunfighters to intimidate the old families while Ty falls in love with the daughter of a Mexican landowner. An even bigger problem develops when Tom Sunday drinks to drown grievances against his proteges. Orrin becomes a politician and Ty becomes sheriff in Mora, near Santa Fe. Together they work to implement the democracy that they read about in Tom Sunday’s books, but, sometimes, in the transition from frontier violence to civilized peace,“there is no court but a six-shooter court, and the armed are the presiding judge.” A man should make peace with his times, but some will never make it in civilian life-- they’re just not trimmed for it. July 23, 2013******”Daybreakers” was the first Sackett novel written by Louis L’Amour in 1960. For those wanting the traditional wetern, I think that "The Daybreakers" or "Sackett" (about older brother, William Tell Sackett) would be the best places in the series to start rather than #1, which goes back to England in 16th Century. The Sackett miniseries on TV from 1979 was based on the two books I recommend and review. I link my review of Sacketts, which I preferred to Daybreakers http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
—Steve Sckenda
