Reviews for Redeye: A Western

The average rating for Redeye: A Western based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-05-13 00:00:00 Stanley Mar 1857's horrific Mountain Meadows Massacre - - was mentioned in some detail in Mark Twain's Roughing It, and reading that made me want to learn more on the subject. I remember reading about the incident for the first time in Edgerton's book and decided to open this one again. Turns out, this is not really about the day when Brigham Young ordered an attack on a wagon train, but instead about the fictitious Eagle City Shootout of 1892. Most of the novel is concerned with introducing the players in the later event, among them a school-marmish single gal, a British archeologist, a man hilariously attempting to perfect mortuary science and an old bounty hunter who uses his dog, Redeye, as a weapon. While still a worthwhile read, this was not nearly as good as I'd remembered, so, YOINK, there goes a star. One plus - in yet another example of how one book leads to another, the addenda has made me add Jack London's 1915 novel The Star Rover to my to-read list. It never ends . . . and that makes me so, so happy.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-04-05 00:00:00 Andrew Crystal An offbeat Western to say the least, though definitely in line with my personal interests. Redeye is a novel that explores the voices of various individuals that find themselves in Mumford Rock at the time of an archaeological discovery on Mesa Largo. The cast is large and every character gives their account of events with appropriate grammar and manner of speaking. There is Cobb Pittman, a ruthless bounty hunter with a raw eye condition and a thirst for vengeance following the Mountain Meadows Massacre. He is accompanied by Redeye, a pitbull cross with an equally mean streak that Pittman struggles to keep under control. There is also Star Copeland, a young civilised Christian woman bombarded with proposals, and Bumpy Copeland, an adoptive cowboy son who is rough around the edges but quite innocent. Other significant characters include an idealistic Englishman named Andrew Collier, a dubious Mormon ferryman known as Bishop Thorpe, two ambitious idiotic businessman called Bill Blankenship and P.J. Copeland and two bickering Native Americans along for the ride, known as Mudfoot and Lobo. There is a lot going on in this novel, most of it absurd. There are exploding Chinamen, a mummified baby being nursed by a traumatised elderly matriarch, guides bickering in their mother tongue about who has the bigger appendage and a shootout on a tourist trail. One thing that strikes me most about Edgerton's approach to Redeye is how subtly he reveals the desperation in his White characters, colonial types revealed as ridiculous by their offhand dehumanisation and insane aspirations. While you can't root for all of these characters, there is a definite schadenfreude in reading about their various marches into disaster. It has been a while since I read a book that used multiple first-person narration but it does work here. Edgerton has an ear for speech patterns and no two narrators sound exactly the same. Also he has clearly done his research into Mormonism in the West, which I found rather educational. I enjoyed Redeye though most of the characters were fairly despicable. If you're drawn to Western tales that reveal the peculiar state of the Wild West, then this will likely amuse you as it did me.