It manages the fine trick of being both an original take on the western while also being a recognizably, full-throated western. Elements of some of the traditional western story lines are combined to great effect. There's the "you shot my pa" story; the "revenge soaked western" story; there's the "prodigal western son returns home to reclaim what's his" story. While Merrigan may be aware of the traditional western story elements, he only wants to flirt and dance with them, not be married to and limited by them because they are all small parts of a larger whole.
And the whole is a bloody, violent, and harsh story (as stories in the west should be).
Stray observations:
-Hal the bounty hunter is like a Tarantino character (which is meant as a compliment).
-More Qa'un!
Synopsis:
Set in post-apocalyptic 1876, THE BROKEN COUNTRY tracks the scabrous exploits of the outlaws Cyrus and Galina Van. The pair kidnaps a naïve, young scion and head west in pursuit of gold, glory, and respect. Along the trail they met Atlante Ames, a mapper who euthanized her own father and now seeks her twin brother, himself gone outlaw in the ravaged West. In cold pursuit rides the implacable bounty hunter Hal, who takes scalps in the name of Jesus Christ and the science of phrenology, and the contemplative Buddhist assassin Qa'un, paying off the bloodprice he owes Hal … bounty by bloody bounty. Cyrus and Galina's hard road west comes to a head in a dynamite-tossing, six-gun-blazing shootout at the old train depot in Laramie. A dark journey to a time when wagon trains have retreated and the Old West is haunted by bonepickers and starving tribes, THE BROKEN COUNTRY: BEING THE SCABROUS EXPLOITS OF CYRUS & GALINA VAN, HELLBENT WEST DURING THE EIGHTH YEAR OF THE HARROWS, 1876; WITH AN ACCOUNT OF MAPPERS, BOUNTY HUNTERS, A TATAR, AND THE SCIENCE OF PHRENOLOGY is unlike any other book you will read this year.
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