Customer Reviews

Rivers West (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Jean Daniel Talon, descendent of a pirate leaves his home in Quebec to make his fortune. He is a shipwright by trade and carries his tools with him to the bustling new town of Pittsburgh to get work. He has been rejected by his long time sweetheart who has chosen a richer man in his stead. Instead of languishing for love he moves on, but finds a man brutally murdered. In the mans dying gasps he brings Talon into a plot which turns out to be something to do with annexing Louisiana. This is all set in the time of teh Louisiana Purchase when Louisiana was an awful lot more than the small state it now is in the south, this was a sizeable chunk of land going right into the middle of the United States.

Talon meets up with Jambe de Bois, a one legged man who is mysterious about his past but proves reliable to Jean. He also meets up with the annoyingly independent Tabitha Marjoribanks who insists on treating him as a common servant and being rather distasteful to him. she is in search of her brother Charles who has gone missing.

They all travel together as far as Pittsburgh, it becomes apparent to them that they are being followed with evil intentions in mind and must take side trails to avoid being robbed or worse. Even in Pittsburgh Jean finds himself badly assaulted and cast adrift - luckily he is picked up by a man and his daughter who are also looking for Charles Marjoribanks.

Macklem who is being sought by many people and is the centre of the plot has managed to envigle his way onto Tabitha Marjoribanks steam boat in search of her brother. It seems that she deliberately allowed him to captain the boat although the reason is not really explained. Anyway, it all comes to a head and Jean has a bit of fisticuffs with Macklem, whom he betters - and then for some reason Tabitha Marjoribanks decides she rather likes after rejecting him for the entire book up to the last page.

I really enjoyed the adventuring derring-do of the story but the actual tale was implausible and the ending kind of inexplicable.

Even novels with great plots need second drafts. "Rivers West" starts out so promisingly it almost hurts reading the last 70 pages, when author Louis L'Amour becomes so obviously disengaged with his creation it becomes a matter of "last to leave turn off the lights."

It's 1821, and from the Quebec coast a young shipwright named Jean Talon lights off for Pittsburgh and what he hears are fresh opportunities making boats for the great rivers of the American West. Crossing a corduroy road at night, he discovers a dying British officer, recently stabbed, who tells him of a very bad man, one Jean later learns has plans to steal the fruit of the Louisiana Purchase from the new American republic. Before he can make up his mind about much of anything, events conspire to plunge Jean into the heart of the plot.

Right from the beginning, when L'Amour sets the scene with his description of "a ghost trail, a dark trail, a trail endlessly winding" to its atypically-set time and place (at least 50 years earlier and 1000 miles eastward of the usual setting for a L'Amour western), you get the feeling that the author was out to try something different. Using the idea of someone planning to steal the West away from the nascent United States draws your interest, even if the actual method of doing so is never explained. You forgive a lot with L'Amour, because you want what his readers might call the good parts, strangers becoming friends amid the sagebrush, fights to the death, and reminders of a simpler time. So when Jean is quickly befriended by a cheesy pirate character with a pegleg and "Argh matey" dialogue, you enjoy the Walter Scott spirit more than you mind the implausibility.

But the plot oddities keep coming, like friends and enemies Jean instantly recognizes without explanation. Worst of all is the female heroine, whose thorough obnoxiousness around the hero is explained away by one of his buddies suchways: "If you're going to have steam in the kettle, you've got to have fire in the stove."

The sketchiness of L'Amour's narrative gets in the way of your enjoyment most. He takes little time to fill in plot points that seem promising. There's a very cool steamboat that resembles a "great black serpent" on which the villain rides, but little is done with it, or for that matter, with the villain. At several points, Jean is cut off from his friends, episodes L'Amour too obviously uses to fast-forward the plot. There's a scene where Talon is befriended by some Omaha, but it goes nowhere except to show L'Amour's readers that he realized he was writing in 1975, when respecting Indians was expected of Western authors.

There are good moments here, particular in the scene-setting first half, and a reader with a fertile imagination can use it as a casting-off point for his or her own daydreamt adventures. L'Amour had a fine imagination, too, and it deserved better exercise than he gave it here.

This is not one of my favorite L'Amour books, but it is a very good book. As another reviewer has said, the story is implausible, but that, to me, is no detraction; the story is well told and generally entertaining. What else can you wish?

Just finished reading this re-release today and went back to read that River's West was first copyrighted in 1975. It made me wonder too if the original release was probably a little too soon for L'Amour and maybe the rest of us fans as well. The book has most of the makings of a good read but falls short in character development and storyline; like a work in progress that wasn't quite done and maybe rushed to market. For me the book makes one too many leaps of plotline in a rushed and hurried sort of way and made me wonder why some of the characters were tossed in with little more than brief introductions and left to wallow.
The sad part for me was that it has great potential because with Louis L'Amour you always learn something in the process, whether it's history, settings, weapons, Indian or cowboy culture, or whatever...but that being said, I came away disappointed with this novel. It fell a little short of what I came to enjoy from one of nation's foremost historical fiction authors.

Jean Daniel Talon, descendent of a pirate leaves his home in Quebec to make his fortune. He is a shipwright by trade and carries his tools with him to the bustling new town of Pittsburgh to get work. He has been rejected by his long time sweetheart who has chosen a richer man in his stead. Instead of languishing for love he moves on, but finds a man brutally murdered. In the mans dying gasps he brings Talon into a plot which turns out to be something to do with annexing Louisiana. This is all set in the time of teh Louisiana Purchase when Louisiana was an awful lot more than the small state it now is in the south, this was a sizeable chunk of land going right into the middle of the United States.

Talon meets up with Jambe de Bois, a one legged man who is mysterious about his past but proves reliable to Jean. He also meets up with the annoyingly independent Tabitha Marjoribanks who insists on treating him as a common servant and being rather distasteful to him. she is in search of her brother Charles who has gone missing.

They all travel together as far as Pittsburgh, it becomes apparent to them that they are being followed with evil intentions in mind and must take side trails to avoid being robbed or worse. Even in Pittsburgh Jean finds himself badly assaulted and cast adrift - luckily he is picked up by a man and his daughter who are also looking for Charles Marjoribanks.

Macklem who is being sought by many people and is the centre of the plot has managed to envigle his way onto Tabitha Marjoribanks steam boat in search of her brother. It seems that she deliberately allowed him to captain the boat although the reason is not really explained. Anyway, it all comes to a head and Jean has a bit of fisticuffs with Macklem, whom he betters - and then for some reason Tabitha Marjoribanks decides she rather likes after rejecting him for the entire book up to the last page.

I really enjoyed the adventuring derring-do of the story but the actual tale was implausible and the ending kind of inexplicable.

I liked this book. It was like a mystery at the begining wandering who the killer was and who Jean Talon could trust and who he couldn't.

The setting takes place in louisiana purchase. The main character was a evil guy named Jean Talon. The story was a western story were the west was a open country. And a small town named louisiana purchase was getting takin over by a evil man namedjean Talon, that wants to take the town. And have it become his kingdom.

The setting takes place in Louisiana purchase. The main character was a evil guy named Jean Talon. The story was a western story were the west was a open country. And a small town named louisiana purchase was getting takin over by a evil man named jean Talon, that wants to take the town. And have it become his kingdom.