The pen name Max Brand sounds like his novels should be way macho, and this one from 1919, probably his first, is. I just wish it was more interesting. The hero reminds me of a comic book superhero. He has the strength of several men and can win a fight even when ganged up on. He can fire a weapon unlike any other gunman, even shooting multiple silver dollars as they fall from the sky. Also, he seems to be able to talk to animals, both wild and domestic. Two of those animals, a wolf called Black Bart and a stallion called Satan, are the most interesting characters in the book. It was a bit weird to read sentence after sentence of "and then Satan did this; and then Satan did that." The story is a pretty standard revenge tale. A bandit named Jim Silent, who seems to never shut up, hurts Whistlin' Dan (the superhero protagonist), kidnaps his friends, and kills one of them. Whistlin' Dan sets out to kill Jim Silent. There are other baddies in the book, but none of them, including Jim Silent, are very interesting. The setting of the book was never clear to me. It is somewhere in some desert, in a time when people got around on horseback. Vague enough for you? Everywhere I've ever lived, females make up half the population, yet this book has only 2 female characters. I guess every western novel does not have to have Indians. This one doesn't, and the lack of Indians and women may or may not give you a clue to the setting. Either way, I never felt myself drawn in. To be fair, the book wasn't all bad. Only fans of the genre will find much enjoyment, though.
I enjoyed this book. I wasn't sure what to think of the main character, Whistlin' Dan. I was never sure what he was going to do but whatever he did always seemed true to his character. Whistlin' Dan was a very likable character but in a way I felt sorry for him and I always worried about him. I started to be concerned about how the book was going to end. If it ended badly, I was sure that I never wanted to read another Max Brand book again. The book did not end how I expected but the ending fit perfectly. On the downside, I had to work to keep the characters straight because sometimes they were referred to by their first name, sometimes by their last name, and by nicknames, too. I was surprised that the author spoke of werewolves and shape-shifting since these seem to be modern fads and this book was written many decades ago.
What do You think about The Untamed (1977)?
This was my first experience with Max Brand. I don't think I'll read more of his stuff. This was an unique spin on an archetypal story with a well developed hero. I have to give him high marks for that alone. Most heroes are less interesting than the villains. Brand worked as a cowboy early in his life, and that gives this book a more authentic quality, especially when he writes about horses. He and Zane Grey have an excellent gift for describing the landscape. Now, to the problems I have with this book. The biggest one is dialogue. Most of it sounds like these people learned their language from a book of Western cliches. Robert Parker's dialogue in his Westerns is far more convincing, though I sometimes wonder if the curse words used by Parker's characters were around at that time. I'm not sure if the author has a poor opinion of women or if the characters do. Perhaps both. There are only two women in this book, and one is the blonde blue eyed ingenue, and the other woman is the mother of one of the outlaws. Neither has much personality. They feel like stock characters. I'd recommend this book for anyone interested in popular fiction in the 20th century. It's clear this book has been influential, and it has a kind of pulp fiction excitement that helps move things along. Great book? Great writer? No, not at all. Worth a look? Yes, but not for everyone.
—Morris Nelms
Max Brand burst on the scene with this striking novel less than two decades after Wister’s The Virginian and just as Zane Grey was topping the bestseller lists. In those three writers one can trace the evolution of western storytelling from history into myth. Wister’s Wyoming and his cowboy characters were drawn from life, while Grey romanticized the desert Southwest and the heroes and villains he put there. Brand stripped away realism and romance in The Untamed and left pure myth—with even a touch of the supernatural. . .Read my review at my blog.
—Ron
