This was given to me as a gift, and I wanted to give the person that gave it to me feedback so I went ahead and finished it in one sitting immediately after receiving it. I was a bit skeptical, I love the western setting but this guy wrote like 500 of these books and they're all kind of short so I worried it was more of a quantity over quality thing. That still might be the case, but I enjoyed this book. It's a pretty basic tale about a young man who gets left on his own early in life in the late 19th century and has to forge a living in the chaotic, often hostile West. He's a likable enough guy, if a bit bland, and he predictably learns early on that he's good at shooting people to death. This leads to all kinds of fun situations.The thing about L'Amour's writing that I think people respond to is its simplicity, both in its technique and content. The book is short and moves along quickly with his sparse paragraphs, but he instills just enough detail to make it interesting and occasionally educational. It's just a reliable way to decompress your brain; pretty much everything is black and white and you know the bad guys are going to get shot within 5 pages of meeting them. If that seems like a fun time to you, you will probably like this book (and the other 499). I'm not gonna rush out to find the next L'Amour book but I'm sure I'll read more in the future. I think my idea of the perfect western is somewhere in between this and Blood Meridian; something gritty, vivid, and absorbing but still fun and not as psychically violating as the aforementioned book.
Not having been a Western reader, I thought I'd try a few, and I am finding the ones I've read similar. "To Tame a Land" seems to be an excellent example. What seems the same?- The hero of the story has a difficult childhood. He can take that in any direction, for good or evil, and in this one, as in most I suspect, he chooses the good path. But the good path isn't the good path that, say a preacher chooses. No "turn the other cheek" in this one. Instead it is a practical path. So some people die at the hands of our hero, but we are assured they are very evil people. - In the West, you can tell the very evil people by the way they look. You can also tell the gunfighters by their looks as well. Same with crazy people.- The hero approaches life as a series of decisions. At times he thinks about how to solve a problem. I've seen this kind of verbiage in other Westerns as well. It's as if Western authors are writing books that are intended to instruct. - The hero is smart. In this one, he's reading Plutarch, and he actually researches his bad guys, which involves reading! Makes the reader feel a kinship with the hero gunslinger very early in the book. Add in the location similarities (duh), the girl (duh), the relationship with sidekicks, the relationship with horses (touching), and a profit motive (almost as important as justice, but not quite), and you have a lot of similarities. L'Amour keeps the story going with action and some suspense throughout, with a basic Western story. Nice job.
What do You think about To Tame A Land (2007)?
An engaging fictional biography of Rye Tyler, a fourteen year old traveling to California in a wagon train with his father, a widower. When the wagon breaks down, they are left behind and are attacked by Indians who kill his father. Rye is on his own but fends well for himself in the rugged west. Befriended by an older father figure, he learns how to shoot, track, live off the land, etc. At sixteen, Tyler strikes out on his own, armed with survival skills. L'Amour creates a gripping tale. I enjoy reading L'Amour. His books generally have a strong moral tone to them and, for me, are light diversionary reading.
—Craig
If you are gonna read one book from Louis L'Amour, read this one.I haven't read others yet, but I am certainly going to, and I was glad I started with this book.The story is a typical western one, boy grows up a gunslinger, ends up the best in the West. However there is a lot of depth to the character. He doesn't kill simply because he enjoys it or because he wants to be better than others. He kills because he have to, in order to survive. The plot is really good and I read it all in a day. (Which I don't usually do much)If you like western themed books, you will love this.If you have ever played Red Dead Redemption, I am sure you will have the game at the back of your head, while you are reading this. 10/10
—Anders Petersen
My dad loves all his books and I read over a hundred while staving off the night terrors when growing up.It is a strange fact about the old west, Indians, and the genocidal take over of the land now called the United States that fiction writing about them is often taken for truth (see Ward Churchill's Fantasies of the Master Race). The back of almost every L'amour novel lauds his knowledge of "how it really was" and the fact that he could've been one of the tough, honorable, lonely fighting men he wrote about. This is complete crap. L'amour was a seller of fantasy, of lies, and of ideals that white men like to think they possess. He uses Indians simultaneously as "noble warriors" and "bloodthirsty savages" and justifies the take over of their land with the old "their time was passing..." illogic--as if there wasn't an agent behind their passing. Reading one of his novels, one gets the feeling he never did any research required of historical novels. Details are always vague. Little reference is made to historical events, ways of doing things, or period details that would lend credence to his imaginings. His stories could just as easily been set on Mars for all the research that shows through his writing. But Americans are already disposed to believing all this romantic Old West bullshit, so you don't have to try very hard. When a writer taps into our national myths, they don't have to be accurate or true, because most of our national myths are lies already believed.
—Ryan Mishap
