Bloody Kansas by Chuck Martin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

‘Bloody Kansas’ seems to me to be more real than many westerns I’ve read. The language is not literate, nor direct. Many characters are not sure of themselves, many confused and many conflicted. Older characters are realizing their age but not much brighter than anyone else. I think this best portrays those that headed west. The majority of westerns have all the characters sound like they just left a Toastmasters meeting. The characters in this book likely never saw a school room. Which was true at that time.

AS much as I really like the stories and characters in the Johnstone Clan books, this seemed to me far more accurate. There are no brilliant geniuses in this tale. Plenty who think they are and get caught in it. There are characters who work to be a bad or good guy and cave during the book as situations bend them. It’s hard to say there is a good guy in the book, though there is a focus on a central character.

For all of this I would give this book five stars. The trouble is plugging all this in and making a coherent story. That’s where this stumbles. The author seems to have worked so hard to relate an illiterate group, that it is sometimes hard to follow the story. The constant mention of everyone’s nickname also makes reading difficult as the names don’t role off the tongue or mind. But, wouldn’t that be typical in the wild and illiterate west?

I think this book has bad ratings due to there being a questionable good guy or bad guy. I thinks it makes it more realistic.

Bottom line: I recommend this book.
I’ll start here adding a rating from 10, which makes more sense than Goodreads 5: 6 out of 10

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