I love Westerns. As a child I would watch John Wayne movies, and later Th Man with No Name, with my dad. At this point of my life I'm a little embarrassed to say how much I still love the idea of the desert, the cowboy, all of it. I came into this book expecting at worst, a guilty pleasure, and at best, an all time favorite. By comparison to those, this book is very disappointing. Instead, this is a grim dark, and violent book without much purpose. It was neither guilty pleasure, nor instant classic. Instead, it became a trudge to get through. Granted there are some interesting points of the book, and I get that the violence and starkness is part of the point. But I don't think they add up to much...