So, at the end of the last volume, we found ourselves filled with deep and terrible misgivings for the future of our vulnerable band. Turns out I had nothing to worry about! Absolutely nothing bad happens to anyone in this book. All journeys are brief and easy. All sojourns safe and comfortable. All dilemmas resolved with wisdom, all heart's desire fulfilled, all children grow strong and beautiful and above average, all disputes settled with civilised words over cups of hot tea. The buffalo roam, the Mexicans prosper, the Indians thrive, the Europeans bring peace and plenty wherever they settle.

All amazingly unexpected developments in a Larry McMurtry novel! One would, perhaps, have anticipated further hardship and cruelties to plague our adventurers, to have the heart torn out of the novel and out of the reader in one flat, brief page of devastating mortality right at the dead centre of the book, from which there can only be long, lingering, spiraling fall towards an ending. Even that's not enough, and random horror begets an explosion of bloody, vengeful, sin-killing violence that lays grief on grief. Or it would if McMurtry had written more or less true to form and not produced the passages of bucolic bliss and happiness, instead of delivering the surviving frail and ravaged community of people, united in sharing a brimful of human suffering, to a more or less safe end, forever altered by their experiences of America in her birth-pangs and a landscape in its death-throes.

Lalalala. ( )

Lovely picture of people in the 1830's. An adventure to read . He makes you feel like you could be there.
Story keeps you reading on and on. ( )

Final installment of the Berrybinder narratives, a moderately interesting western which has become something of a cash grab by the author, akin to King's Gunslinger novellas. ( )

The story of the Berrybender family, a traditional British family who is transported to the frontier West by the patriarch for a hunting and sightseeing expedition. Along the way, they run into Sin Killer, an Indial fighter and frontiersman, who immediately falls in love with one of the Berrybender girls. The story follows the Berrybender's arduous trek through the rugged landscape. The story is filled with rich and strong-minded characters, all crashing into one another.

I enjoyed the opening novel the most, while the others seemed to fall back onto a redundant story line a few times. Also, the characters do not connect easily with the reader in some cases. And the ending novel in the series left me a little disappointed in the resolution. But, I am a McMurtry fan and his wit and ability to create raucous and unusual situations was ever present. There were quite a few laugh out loud moments. ( )

Folly and Glory is part-four of a four-part series chronically the adventures of the aristocratic, English Berrybender family exploring the American West in the 1830's on a steamship on the Missouri River. Lord Berrybender is accompanied by his gluttonous wife and six of his 14 legitimate children. The series is historical fiction in that it incorporates actual people such as Kit Carson and Jim Bridges, yet the tales are so fanciful that history is left in the dust.

Outrageous is the best general characterization of these stories. The adventures and their characters seem larger than life and more colorful than neon. Not for the faint of heart, unexpected, random, senseless and disturbing atrocities, injuries, and deaths litter these tales, with a side of lots of “rutting.” The majority of the initial primary characters do not survive to see book four4 of the series.

Yet, the stories grabbed me. I went through the series like popcorn, wanting to see what amazing events would occur to the crazy Berrybenders and their growing entourage. The series is intense, rollercoastering through every facet of human emotion and many aspects of abnormal psychology. Nothing dull in these books. The frequent connections to actual historical persons and events keep the tales interesting and grounded, despite the continuum of bizarre incidents. Not for everyone, but I liked it. ( )