Blood Meridian

A desolate landscape. No, not completely devoid of life. What little ride on the dusty terrain outlined in this epic anti-western are those with a certain fate. A fate outlined in blood, doom, and destruction.

A 14-year-old from Tennessee, with a “a taste for mindless violence,” runs away from home and sets off to Texas in 1833. “The Kid” eventually joins a scalping gang who are paid well for completing contract massacres across the land.

The Kid meets up with the seemingly enigmatic character called The Judge. The judge is all but a puzzle. He is calamity. He is a blight on the world. He is catastrophe incarnate. An intelligent and omnipresent force that does not seek conformity. He is savage for sure, but he understands humanity. Not unlike the mercenaries who are only participating in the debauchery for money. The Judge teaches with parables, with art, and with ethics. Is he a monster in disguise, a traveled man of integrity who has given in to moral corruption, or something supernatural? All is explored and more!

Told from the perspective of The Kid mainly, this gritty portrayal of the old west reins in a wide variety of themes. Everything from warfare and rituals to partisanship and the nature of evil is covered in great detail.

Conventions are thrown out the window. The Kid is shaped by his encounters throughout the book, but very rarely gives the reader the opportunity to relate to the wholesale decimation of the land. It's highly impersonal. And that is by design.

Blood Meridian is a tough read. Brutal, even. Not for the light-hearted.

Cormac McCarthy's writing is masterful. The scene setups and ability to hold the reader's attention are second to none. Here is a passage I thought was simply incredible: “The shadows of the smallest stones lay like pencil lines across the sand, and the shapes of the men and their mounts advanced elongate before them like strands of the night from which they'd ridden, like tentacles to bind them to the darkness yet to come. They rode with their heads down, faceless under their hats, like an army asleep on the march.”

It's a novel I will most certainly never forget. A new favorite. One I shall have to read several times to take in the magnitude of the narrative.