Shalako

Rating:
Summary: Straightforward Western action, L'Amour-style.
Review: During his lifetime, Louis L'Amour wrote countless books, short stories, essays and articles. His name is synonymous with the Western genre, and for good reason: he could take the simplest plot and make it compelling by simple virtue of his storytelling skills. The novel SHALAKO is a perfect case in point.

There's not much to SHALAKO in terms of story, really. The title character is a loner, a man of the West with a mysterious past, and one who sticks his neck out for no man. But he can't help but become a hero when he encounters a group of clueless European travelers touring Apache country in search of a few thrills. The caravan's been marked by an Apache war party and has troubles in the form of dishonest hirelings, as well. Without Shalako, the travelers only have a quick death at the hands of Apache warriors to look forward to, assuming they survive a mutiny by their own men.

L'Amour had a way of evoking a "you are there" sense of the wilderness in his writing. SHALAKO takes place in the blasted Arizona desert, where water and food are scarce to nonexistent. Page after page contain little details about plants and animals in the area, and the skills necessarily to survive when the West was untamed. Even when the gunfire stops and there's no dialogue to be read, the reader is drawn into the scene by the easy authenticity of L'Amour's words.

Despite SHALAKO's strengths, however, it does suffer from a little too much simplicity when it comes to drawing its characters. SHALAKO is a slender volume, and the eponymous hero is a mystery for most of its length, only to make a lengthy speech dumping the details of his past in the last few pages. The European travelers, wealthy and foolish, are also drawn in broad strokes, and though a couple of them begin to show some depth by the end of the novel, they're really little more than paper-thin.

It's possible that L'Amour was going for a story as lean and spare as Shalako himself, and therefore he didn't allow for much digression. But there are a suprising number of characters, and sometimes one wishes that L'Amour would slow down just a bit to spend some time with them. One character, the Apache loner and deadly warrior Quick Killer, deserves much more space than he receives, especially since its his relentless stalking of the heroes that drives the final quarter of the book.

L'Amour leans on clich? a bit, as well: there's the inevitable dust storm that strikes at the most inopportune moment, the "forbidden" romance when one of the wealthy European women falls for the laconic Shalako, and the cavalry even arrives to save the day at the end. Which isn't to say that SHALAKO is silly, or poorly written; if anyone knew his way around the clich?s of the genre, it was Louis L'Amour, and one is willing to forgive the weaknesses of the book thanks to its numerous strengths.

There's been a tendency in recent years to reimagine the Western as a vehicle for historical and anthropological examination. A novel like SHALAKO, written in 1962, predates all that deconstructionist nonsense and delivers a Western story that is, and only wishes to be, a Western story. There are no deep meditations on the role of the white man in destroying Native American culture or any of that. With SHALAKO, L'Amour wanted to entertain, and he was definitely successful in that.

Rating:
Summary: Straightforward Western action, L'Amour-style.
Review: During his lifetime, Louis L'Amour wrote countless books, short stories, essays and articles. His name is synonymous with the Western genre, and for good reason: he could take the simplest plot and make it compelling by simple virtue of his storytelling skills. The novel SHALAKO is a perfect case in point.

There's not much to SHALAKO in terms of story, really. The title character is a loner, a man of the West with a mysterious past, and one who sticks his neck out for no man. But he can't help but become a hero when he encounters a group of clueless European travelers touring Apache country in search of a few thrills. The caravan's been marked by an Apache war party and has troubles in the form of dishonest hirelings, as well. Without Shalako, the travelers only have a quick death at the hands of Apache warriors to look forward to, assuming they survive a mutiny by their own men.

L'Amour had a way of evoking a "you are there" sense of the wilderness in his writing. SHALAKO takes place in the blasted Arizona desert, where water and food are scarce to nonexistent. Page after page contain little details about plants and animals in the area, and the skills necessarily to survive when the West was untamed. Even when the gunfire stops and there's no dialogue to be read, the reader is drawn into the scene by the easy authenticity of L'Amour's words.

Despite SHALAKO's strengths, however, it does suffer from a little too much simplicity when it comes to drawing its characters. SHALAKO is a slender volume, and the eponymous hero is a mystery for most of its length, only to make a lengthy speech dumping the details of his past in the last few pages. The European travelers, wealthy and foolish, are also drawn in broad strokes, and though a couple of them begin to show some depth by the end of the novel, they're really little more than paper-thin.

It's possible that L'Amour was going for a story as lean and spare as Shalako himself, and therefore he didn't allow for much digression. But there are a suprising number of characters, and sometimes one wishes that L'Amour would slow down just a bit to spend some time with them. One character, the Apache loner and deadly warrior Quick Killer, deserves much more space than he receives, especially since its his relentless stalking of the heroes that drives the final quarter of the book.

L'Amour leans on cliché a bit, as well: there's the inevitable dust storm that strikes at the most inopportune moment, the "forbidden" romance when one of the wealthy European women falls for the laconic Shalako, and the cavalry even arrives to save the day at the end. Which isn't to say that SHALAKO is silly, or poorly written; if anyone knew his way around the clichés of the genre, it was Louis L'Amour, and one is willing to forgive the weaknesses of the book thanks to its numerous strengths.

There's been a tendency in recent years to reimagine the Western as a vehicle for historical and anthropological examination. A novel like SHALAKO, written in 1962, predates all that deconstructionist nonsense and delivers a Western story that is, and only wishes to be, a Western story. There are no deep meditations on the role of the white man in destroying Native American culture or any of that. With SHALAKO, L'Amour wanted to entertain, and he was definitely successful in that.

Rating:
Summary: A Damn Fine Book
Review: I was more than a little surprised to find that no one had reviewed this book. While it may not be L'Amour's best (I'm down for HONDO on that one), it's still a great piece of writing! Shalako is a loner who is mobving through Apache country at the time of Chato's uprising and hapens upon a rather foolish bunch of (mostly) European hunters and... Well, I don't want to spoil it at all. Let's just say that this book moves fast and hard, with nary a word misplaced or unneeded. This is a novel full of rich imagination, breath-taking visions, and all-out adventure. I highly reccomend Shalako to any Western fan.

Rating:
Summary: A Damn Fine Book
Review: I was more than a little surprised to find that no one had reviewed this book. While it may not be L'Amour's best (I'm down for HONDO on that one), it's still a great piece of writing! Shalako is a loner who is mobving through Apache country at the time of Chato's uprising and hapens upon a rather foolish bunch of (mostly) European hunters and... Well, I don't want to spoil it at all. Let's just say that this book moves fast and hard, with nary a word misplaced or unneeded. This is a novel full of rich imagination, breath-taking visions, and all-out adventure. I highly reccomend Shalako to any Western fan.

Rating:
Summary: Typical good Louis L'Amour - fun story
Review: This story hits the ground running and never stops. The story takes place over just a couple days. The hero Shalako is out riding the countryside when he comes across a beautiful woman, Irina. Irina is with a group of tenderfoots who are in the way of Apaches on the warpath. Skalako ends up helping Irina and her friends survive the Apaches, and other troubles.

"Skalako" is a well told story. Louis L'Amour learned his craft well. If you enjoy a good western, this is a good one to read.