SAVAGE WILDERNESS

Rating:
Summary: An American history buff's unexpected find
Review: American history books devote little space and attention to the Frech and Indian war. Coyle's panoramic backdrop for relating the story of this war along the colonial frontier from Lake George, NY to Ft. Dusquene (the eventual site of Pittsburg, PA) captures the historic essence of this, the last of the great colonial wars. Coyle deftly intertwines the exploits of four main characters - a French army officer, a colonial soldier of the Virginia militia, an Indian ally of the French, and a British army officer - to show: the basic French motive to simply lay claim to all of the unsettled areas of North America; the inept effort by ill-equipped and ill-trained colonial militia to oust the French and their Indian allies from their western frontier; the major role of the Indians in inflicting the worst rout ever experienced by a white force in the new world; and the ill-suited battle tactics of the regular English army in the dense forests of the frontier. Only the French decision not to continue

Rating:
Summary: What to say..... (3.5 stars)
Review: First, it is really just less then a four star book. Coyle must have done a tremendous amount of research for this one. Some of the settings and characters are truly well done. This time period in America (prior to the Revolutionary War) is not real familiar to a lot of folks. This book presents this time very well. It is part history lesson, part action/romance.

At times Coyle was a little long winded when setting up the next scene. But, if you pay attention, you will learn something new about the history of the United States. George Washington make several appearence as a young man in the Colonial Militia. Times were hard back then. Especially on the frontier. The frontier extended all the way out to the Ohio River Valley. A lot of the middle of the book takes place in what they called the Wilderness.

I can reccommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Coyle ventures further into the past
Review: Harold Coyle is one of the followers-on of Tom Clancy. He's done a series of reasonably well-recieved books based on modern potential conflicts. What sets him apart is that one of his main characters in several of the books is female, and she's relatively believable. He's made it so that it's concievable that a woman could be a good officer at the infantry level, which is an accomplishment.
However, Coyle has taken a different tack the last several years. He's been writing historical novels, and though in some ways they're good, he's gotten away from his strenghts. He did two novels on the Civil War (Look Away and Until the End) which rested on a tenuous and predictable plot device: one brother winds up in the Confederate army, the other in the Union one...it was a bit much.
Here, he ventures into the French and Indian wars. He has four main characters, a British officer, a Scotsman who's been transported as a prisoner to Virginia and earned his freedom there, a French artillery officer who is a follower of Rousseau and Voltaire, and an American Indian, who's allied with the French because it gives him a chance to kill whites. The plot device used to connect the characters is that two of them met at Culloden in 1745 (the British officer and the Scotsman). This only sort of works; there's no reason for the other two people to be in the story at all. They see each other on the battlefield (the Frenchman and the Indian have a conflict going on, over when it's reasonable to kill prisoners), but other than that there's no interaction at all between the characters. So the story meanders along, not really anything more than an excuse to hang a recounting of the French and Indian war onto several plot devices. Don't get me wrong: I have no objection to the history itself, it's just that the wooden love scenes in the middle sort of detract from the overall effect. There are parts of the war that get much treatment, because the characters are there, and other parts that get scant or no treatment, because they aren't... Lastly, you're left hanging, waiting for the Revolutionary war sequel, knowing that the colonials will be rebels, wondering what the British officer will do (he marries a wealthy New Yorker towards the end of the book), and wondering completely what's happening to the Indians. It's been four years, and Coyle's written other books, which are modern again. Maybe the sequel was going to be more of the same, and the publisher told him to return to what he's good at.

Rating:
Summary: What happened to the ending?
Review: Having read (and enjoyed) several of the author's previous books - particularly the Civil War duology - I looked forward to this novel. After an interesting start & middle, which appeared to be building up to an excellent climax, the story just appeared to fizzle out. OK, we found out (sort of) what happened to the French & British officers and the Scottish refugee, but the Indian brothers seemed to disappear into thin air, and the latter elements of the campaigns and battles where only covered in a sketchy manner. It felt like we were being prepared for a sequel; is this the case?

Rating:
Summary: An entertaining epic . . .
Review: I agree absolutely with everything Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Bliss had to say below. So why do I write this letter? After viewing all the reviews, I found no one felt to correct Coyle's mistakes when it came to the Scottish personal and clan names. May I start my long list? First, McPherson is wrong. It should be MacPherson. I know that sounds picky, but it's true. Most everyone can tell an Irish name from a Scotish one right? Wrong. It is quite difficult. Except when it comes down to Mc and Mac. Mac is "Son of" in Gaelic. At least a slight abbreviation. Mc is the same thing. It's from the Scottish immigrants during the Hanoverian slaughter after the disaster of the Second Jacobite Rebellion, and when Henry VIII of England decided to make Ireland protestant. He failed. All HE succeeded in doing was starting a 500 year plus civil war that's still raging across Northern Ireland. I'm going off track now. MacPherson would be Scottish and McPherson would be Irish. Again, a mistake there. In Look Away and Until the End, I believed the use of Mc in the name. One reason: Mis-spelling due to passage of time. However, it seems I was mistaken. Now, a thing to do with the first chapter. Culloden. Actually, two things. I'll just spill out the unimportant one, shall I? He spelt Stewart wrong when referring to the clan. Stuart is the spelling of the name the Scottish monarchs whom reigned over England and Scotland used. Stewart is the clan name. The original spelling of the monarchs' name was the same, but was changed due to the passage of time and to English historians. However, no one bothered to change the name of the clan. The MacPherson name was not at the tail of the Stewart caln, but at the head of another clan. The MacPherson clan! Big surprise isn't it? Furthermore, The Stewart are Lowlanders and Islanders. Not Highlanders. MacPhersons were, though. I've been searching for an awful long time trying to find a MacPike, but there isn't one! I wouldn't know about the Irish, but if there isn't a Scottish version, there probably won't be an Irish McPike. At least, he got the Dutch name Van der Hoff correct. Almost. It should be van der Hoff. You don't capitolize the van even if it is the first word of the name. Try it out. Which looks better to the trained eye: Katherine van der Hoff Katherine Van der Hoff Well? It's up to you to decide. With all the cock-ups to due with name so far, when Katherine van der Hoff came into view, I thought, "Oh no, he's gonna make this one a German." I have a destincted feeling Mr. Coyle is using name examples of people he's met, and not researching them. A shame, an important part of a historical fiction novel are the names use. In case you're wondering why I took such vigor in trying to get the facts straight, I'm desended from a very long list of clans MacEmen Reviresco MacGregor 'S rioghal mo dhream Wallace Pro libertate Stewart Virescit vulnere virtus Armstrong Invictus Maneo And I'm very proud of my heritage aswell. Benn

Rating:
Summary: Savage Reading
Review: Once again this Harold Coyle starts with lots of promise but quickly fades into mediocrity. There are too many characters and all the various plot lines suffer accordingly. We are given glimpses of the French Indian War but that is all. With 125 pages to go and 3 more years of war the author suddenly drops two characters and their plot lines and races through the remaining acts of the war to conquer New France. The fight on the Plains of Abraham before the gates of Quebec is a mere after thought. The campaigns against Louisbourg are totally overlooked. We get to read about the after effects of raiding parties but we don't get to see any raids. At one point the author describes a scene of canabalism performed on captive white settlers by a character who up to this point had been anything but a "savage". In my opinion, while the novel covers a historical period I believe it is a bad representation of both the British and Native Indians. At one point the author has two characters postulating a future revolt in the America's against the British. While the roots of America's revolution can indeed be found in the French Indian War, the feeling of resentment did not come to the fore till after the conclusion of the war when Britain set about making the colonies pay for their defence. This novel had great potential but is sadly lacking in the end result.

Rating:
Summary: History does indeed tend to repeat itself.
Review: This is my introduction to Harold W. Coyle's writing because of my earlier readings of the colonial life in America. The Prologue and Chapter 1 could have been omitted, as they were at an earlier time and not American in any way. It would have been better to start with Chapter 2 as the background info could have been incorporated into the intros.

He admits that his assistant did all the detailed research for this volume. Why, then does he take credit for the entire book?I can't see much documented or which needs to be so. I kept wondering what had been research and what from his imagination.

There was a discrepancy at the very beginning in his rendition of the Native American who was converted to Christianity. Is it true that they regard any person not Indian as 'white'? That's strange, to say the least.

We endured such savage blood-thirsty cruelty in this account of a useless war. But, most of them are -- as they occur. It is the consequences some years on down the road which make them neccesary at that time.

I was most frustrated with this writer's use of prepositions at the end of long, rambling sentences. Maybe he knows what he has in mind, but it gets lost along the way.

Rating:
Summary: History does indeed tend to repeat itself.
Review: This is my introduction to Harold W. Coyle's writing because of my earlier readings of the colonial life in America. The Prologue and Chapter 1 could have been omitted, as they were at an earlier time and not American in any way. It would have been better to start with Chapter 2 as the background info could have been incorporated into the intros.

He admits that his assistant did all the detailed research for this volume. Why, then does he take credit for the entire book?I can't see much documented or which needs to be so. I kept wondering what had been research and what from his imagination.

There was a discrepancy at the very beginning in his rendition of the Native American who was converted to Christianity. Is it true that they regard any person not Indian as 'white'? That's strange, to say the least.

We endured such savage blood-thirsty cruelty in this account of a useless war. But, most of them are -- as they occur. It is the consequences some years on down the road which make them neccesary at that time.

I was most frustrated with this writer's use of prepositions at the end of long, rambling sentences. Maybe he knows what he has in mind, but it gets lost along the way.

Rating:
Summary: What about the Savages?
Review: This was an interesting book, as it told the story of several men during the French and Indian War. A British officer,a French officer, a Scot who fought as an enlisted British soldier and a Caughnawaga native. The story was well told and historically accurate and each character blossomed during the story, especially the native. But as I finished the book each was the fate of his own destiny, except the native. He completely vanished from the ending. I was very disappointed due to the fact that most of the beginning of the book focused so much on him. Even with that fact it is a fine book to enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining but incomplete
Review: While I enjoyed this book much more than Coyle's Civil War books - perhaps because I knew less of this history so was not as critical - I still feel that he is not totally comfortable with historical fiction. Apart from some obvious anachronisms, what seems most strained in this book is Coyle's effort to present fully rounded and believable native American characters. Unfortunately, as drawn, these characters have the stilted 'noble redman' quality that American Indians are frequently stereotyped with - even the 'bad' ones.

Still, Coyle's story is entertaining and his characters are, for the most part, engaging. I would have preferred more follow through - a more clear rounding out of the story so that one had some sense of what had happened to all the main characters. It seemed like a lot was left unresolved (so there can be a sequel?).

In any event, as Coyle continues down the path of historical fiction, each book seems to be better than the one before.