Customer Reviews

Last of the Breed

5 star:		(80)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

The late Louis L'Amour wrote mostly Westerns--specifically about the 'Old West'--for which he is justly famous. I may have read them all, but I hope not. I hope there are a few more out there, somewhere.

This book, however, is different. This is the kind of authentically detailed story that is his hallmark, but it is more modern. It is about U.S. Air Force Major Joe Mack, whose forbears were Sioux Indian. When his experimental aircraft is forced down in the USSR, he is captured, and no one but he and his captors know he is a prisoner. He escapes a prison camp, and is forced to survive the Siberian wilderness in an effort to make it to the Bering Strait, which he will have to cross to get back home. He is pursued relentlessly by a Yakut scout who knows the land intimately. Joe Mack must think like a Sioux to escape.

Louis Dearborn L'Amour (originally Lamoore) lived the lives that he portrayed. He was a roustabout, merchant seaman, boxer, cowboy, logger, miner, and an army officer during WWII in tank destroyers. He was shipwrecked in the West Indies, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, and circled the earth on merchant ships. He wrote a hundred books, and had more million copy best-sellers than any other author. I was personally desolated by his death. What a glorious man! He was a true troubadour in the original sense.

Joseph H. Pierre
Author of The Road to Damascus: Our Journey Through Eternity

This is a good story, deserving neither the overly fulsome praise nor the sour dismissals found in some of the reviews here. I've read it a couple of times over the years, and for many years it was the only L'Amour book I'd read. It's a good survival adventure tale, very servicably written.
Here's a tip: for those who liked this story, check out Dersu Uzala, a Kurosawa movie set in Siberia; the protagonist is an old Siberian hunter and trapper, and you'll get a real flavor of the country and way of life described by L'Amour in Last of the Breed.

Louis L'Amour has never been one of my favourite authors because most of his books are Westerns but "Last of the Breed" is an exception to my rule simply because it isn't a Western. This is a brilliant novel that is both suspenseful and creative and it is a real shame that a sequel was never done.

Set during the hostilities between the Soviet Union and the USA Joseph "Joe Mack" Makatozi is a man trapped in enemy territory. He is a downed test Pilot who has been captured by the Russians and is seemingly at their mercy in the inhospitable landscape called Siberia; the only inhabited cold Hell in existence.

However Joe Mack isn't your ordinary test pilot. He is part Sioux and in his blood is the will to survive a savage land that was once home to his ancestors. He escapes his prison with the goal of crossing Siberia and making his way across the Bering Straits and into America, something that has not been done by modern man.

Joe Mack finds himself slowly merging with the wilderness, forced to rely on his ancestral abilities to survive the killing cold and elude the constant danger of his determined Soviet pursuers, including a man who is to become his nemesis, a Siberian Native Yakut tracker called Alekhin who knows that in order to trap his quarry he must think and act like a Sioux.

As we follow Joe Mack across the deadly landscape we become aware that he is changing, he is becoming what his ancestors once were thousands of years ago, trackers, hunters, killers, but ultimately survivors.

It is a slow transformation, and along the way we watch him struggle to hold onto his humanity, finding love in the guise of a woman who helps him and a fragile but brief friendship with a crippled furrier but all the time he is in the cruel wilderness Joe Mack is changing into something that can never revert back to what it once was.

He hungers for revenge against Alekhin and the jovial but brutal Soviet Commander who imprisoned him and the book ends on an eerie haunting note when the Soviet Commander receives the scalp of Alekhin and a gentle warning from the wilderness that he will be next...

This is a truly magnificent book about a man's ability to transcend his environment and upbringing and descend into savagery in order to survive.

Once you start reading this book you won't be able to put it down, this is no run of the mill pot boiler about the noble savage. There nothing remotely noble about Joe Mack, but you find yourself admiring him for his ability to survive against all the odds.

Louis L'Armour is an author of rare quality. His words seem to flow straight from the heart of the wilderness. He can place his readers in the midst of heated gun-fight, or on the icy arctic tundra. He can describe a situation with skill that few authors have mastered.

Out on the cold, desolate plains of Siberia there stood a boy, filled and surrounded by the incredible writing of a man who is close to the ways of the wild. This boy stood watching a Soiux warrior in his journey home. This boy was me. When I read Last of the Breed by Louis L'Amoure, I experienced a feeling I had never felt before. It was a feeling of lonliness, comfort, joy and sorrow. I could feel the cold that Major Joe Mack felt. I could feel his hunger as well as my own as I feverishly read through the last minutes of class before the bell rang for me to go to lunch.

This is a book of capture and escape, a cat and mouse game between a man and his enemies. It has a quality about it that makes you want to keep reading, yet not want to know what imminent danger lies around the next rock, or hillside, or bend in the stream. I loved this book from beginning to end and have read several times as I hope you will too. If you enjoy the outdoors, suspense, survival, or if are just a Louis L'Amour fan, I highly suggest you give this book a try.

This is an action-packed book about Major Joe Makatozi and his fight for survival. Captured by Russians, Joe "Mack" must escape and flee into the Siberian wilderness. With nearly half the Russian army in hot pursuit, he reverts back to the ways of his Indian ancestors. The longer he spends in the wilderness, the more he begins to become a Sioux. However, Joe Mack has to evade Alekhin, a legendary tracker who is also a native. To escape Russia, Joe Mack knows he must cross the Bering Strait, the same path his ancestors took many years before. Also, he must endure a harsh Siberian winter. If you want to find out how Joe Mack deals with these hardships, you better read the book for yourself.

Loius L'Amour's book, "Last of the Breed" is one of his more longer novels, but it is also one of his better novels. The story follows U.S. air force test pilot Joe Mack as he gets forced down over Russia in the 1980's. He is sent to a prison camp to be interrogated, but he escapes before Colonel Zamatev, who is in charge of the prison, can interrogate him. The Soviets think they can easily capture the American, but they soon find out that is is a Souix indian knows how to live off the land.
The story follows Joe Mack as he travels thousands of miles from central Russia to the Bering Strait. Along the way, Joe must hunt game with the bow he made, and use the animal furs to make clothing to survive the cold. He must do all this while also watching his back for the soldiers who are following him trying to recapture him. Besides the soldiers, there is also a Yakut named Alekhin who is an expert tracker, and who follows him throughout the story.
As Joe covers mile after mile, he becomes more and more like his Souix ancestors. Joe comes to realize that he was born out of time, and that he belongs 200 years earlier with the rest of the Souix people.
"Last of the Breed" is so well written that you feel like you are actually wading though the snow in Siberia with Joe as you read the book. By reading the book you learn about how Indians survived in cold weather, how they hunted game, and how they survived. The whole story is not just about Joe. The book follows a man and his daughter that Joe meets who are trying to escape from Russia. The book paints a good picture of what life was like in Communist Russia.
I would recommend this book to anyone who likes Loius L'Amour books, or anyone who likes a good adventure novel. This book has plenty of suprises and a very intriging ending that will keep you thinking.

Major Joe "Mack" Makatozi, a full blooded Sioux and skilled experimental pilot is captured and sent to a top-secret prison camp in the depths of Siberia when his aircraft is forced down over a hostile cold war Russia. His escape over the wire and his flight into the hostile environment of winter Siberia triggers a nation wide manhunt spearheaded by the commandant of the camp, Colonel Arkady Zamatev (who is all too aware of the harsh "career-limiting" results of mistakes in Communist Russia) and Alekhin, a skilled and ruthless Yakut tracker who has never yet failed to reel in an escapee, more often dead than alive.

Initially confident that they can corral their man in short order, Zamatev and Alekhin fail to realize how quickly Mack's indomitable Sioux spirit, his lust for life and his astounding survival skills, learned during his upbringing as a Sioux warrior, will come to the surface and allow him to evade capture over a two year period. Hunting with a handmade bow and arrows, preparation of emergency camps, astonishing hair's breadth escapes, lethal traps set to confound the small army on his trail, construction of leather breeches and moccasins in the field, fire-starting, extreme cold weather survival skills, fording of rivers, cross-country navigation and much, much more are described with an exciting sense of realism and adventure that never falls into the trap of portraying Mack as invincible.

The ending is a grim one that is based on Mack's historical sense of native justice and retribution against his tormenter, Alekhin, and provides a very satisfying completion to Last of the Breed as a stand alone novel. But his sworn revenge against Zamatev and his relationship with Natalya Baronas, a Russian peasant he met in his flight to the Bering Strait remain open and unresolved. Sadly, the obvious plans for a sequel will never come to fruition as L'Amour has passed away.

Nay-sayers and detractors will point out that L'Amour ignored some pretty obvious tools that would have likely resulted in Mack's almost certain re-capture - dogs, infrared thermography and high resolution satellite imagery are three possibilities that come to mind immediately. But then we wouldn't have had a perfectly delightful, fast-paced, exciting adventure to read, would we? Detractors be damned - it was a great story! Read it, live a little and enjoy.

Having read nearly all of Louie L'Amour, I mark LAST OF THE BREED as one of my favorites. He steps out of his traditional "old west" setting and takes you on an incredible journey across Russia. This is one book I could not put down. L'Amour takes you there and makes you feel the adventure.

Although the setting is far from where you would expect a L'Amour book to be.... THE LAST OF THE BREED is just what you would expect from such a fine author. The story is riveting and he combines every aspect of what a great book should have in this fantastic story of a man born out of time.

I am a great fan of Louis Lamour, and this is one of the best. I would love to see it made into a movie. It ended like there might be a follow on, of course, that can't be since Louie is gone. GREAT BOOK!!