After hearing numerous people rave about The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and with the approaching theatrical release of the movie based on the book, I felt compelled to go out and buy a copy. In my personal reading experience of The Road, I enjoyed the novel, yet nowhere near as much as I did upon reflecting on it a few weeks after the fact. I say that this reflection is important because Blood Meridian had almost the exact same impression on me.

As I've had a large amount of time to myself over Christmas holidays, reading Blood Meridian is far from ideal Christmas reading. Blood Meridian will turn off some readers within the first 30 pages of the novel. By far this novel is the most violent novel I have ever read. For those who thought The Road expelled a violent content to a point where it disturbs the read, I can guarantee you Blood Meridian is much worse.

This novel is very much about violence and its passing through generations; how it is impossible to be stopped. Yet, along with exploring this theme, the novel is riddled with frequent literary allusions to Herman Melville's Moby Dick, poetry of William Wordsworth, the Bible and Paradise Lost. To fully appreciate how great Blood Meridian is, after reading the novel I would suggest going out and looking at essays and trying to identify these allusions and how they contribute to what McCarthy is trying to say.

From the comments and reviews that I briefly reading concerning Blood Meridian some people have complained about the run-on sentences. While, I can understand that these are difficult to read, this is so important for the allusions to the Old Testament, where it is written in many "and"s found in Hebrew.

At times, Blood Meridian is difficult to read, even boring, but in the end I found it to be a rewarding experience and a truly amazing novel. Also, the last 100 pages of this book are great (far from boring).

Blood Meridian - essential read.

This is one of the most difficult, but also most awe-inspiring novels I've ever read. If you are at all averse to violence then I would suggest looking elsewhere; indeed this book truly revels in what can only be described as "spectacular" violence. And that is what the book is about, at its core: the capacity for violence which resides within mankind. If nothing else it dispels the notion that there was any true "conquering of the West".

As some reviewers have said, this book is not for everyone. McCarthy's writing style is unmistakable: long sentences joined by "and"s and many unfamiliar and arcane words. But his way with words is so masterful and the sound of his prose so beautiful that I find myself completely drawn into the world of the novel.

If you're accustomed to having a quick-moving plot you will probably be bored by this novel; the plot is not the main focus here. As for the ending, it's certainly not spelled out at all and open to interpretation by the reader.

Which is why the novel is so brilliant; it's not something to be read and comprehended and placed on a shelf , but rather the themes and questions posed by the novel stay with you in a way that is rare for most modern works of fiction. With all this mind, if you are still interested in reading this book I promise you will be disappointed.

Repetitive, difficult vocabulary, extremely long run-on sentences and after all that, an unsatisfying ending. I was left wondering what the point was. I recommend reading The Road instead.

A genius at his best!