People of the Moon, Michael and Kathleen Gear

People of the Moon by W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear is another book in their "North America's Forgotten Past" series that looks at Native American communities.  As mentioned in a previous post, this book has been awaiting its turn to see the light.

Started: 9/1/2014

Completed: 6/18/2015

Recommended: Mildly

Recommended By: Part of a series

Review:

I have enjoyed the "People of" series.  The beginning (with some archaeologist facing opposition of some sort to whatever has been found or to the act of archaeology at all) is almost always slow and so it was hard for me to get started on this book (as it has been for the others in the series).

The plot here is decent, although, frankly, gory.  I'm sure that this story needed to be told and it is an ugly story.  That said, I would prefer to read less gore these days.  That is my personal preference and it made this book difficult to read.  The Gear's seem to want to focus on that in this book, although they pursued their normal love story in the book as well.  The story is good and moves along pretty well.  The preachy material is kept to a minimum, but stands on its own as enough to inform about some of the nature of the native peoples who inhabit this novel.

I can mildly recommend this book to anyone who has wondered what it must have been like to climb into your home via a ladder in the roof.  I've wondered and this book doesn't go to great lengths to detail that component, but it does come up as a normal part of the lives of the people and that alone was interesting to me.

People of the Lakes, Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear

People of the Lakes by Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear is a novel of the pre-columbian people in the Americas.  This couple has written a huge number of books about American Indians and their forebears.  I think that the first one of their books in this category that I read was People of the Mist and I read it many years before I started this blog.  Later, I noticed a bunch of the "People" books for sale at a library sale and picked them up.  I think that I've read one or two others and have a decent size pile remaining in the basement that will likely make this blog at some point.

Started:  9/25/2012

Completed: 10/31/2012

Recommendation: Mildly recommended

Recommended By: Part of a series

Words I looked up:

cadging -- begging or getting by begging

syncretically -- reconciliation or fusion of differing systems of belief, as in philosophy or religion, especially when success is partial or the result is heterogeneous.

Review:

This story feels like a modern Indian myth:  the story of the mask of Many-Colored Crow.  It feels modern to me because a love story is intertwined with the sexual tension typical of a modern drama and less typical of an Indian myth.  That may not be fair (I'm not familiar with a ton of Indian myths, but of those with which I'm familiar sexual tension is markedly absent).  It feels like an Indian myth because the Gods play a role, though they are periphery players who none the less seem to be driving the action.  In the other books by these authors, the stories have felt like cultural explorations.  In this tome the cultural issues seem to take a back seat to the action embedded in the story.

The primary love story has an undercurrent driven by the love between friends that pervades this novel in both positive and negative ways.  To my taste, these authors are better suited at describing the culture then they are at crafting a love story, so the love story seems stilted and almost comical in some ways (misunderstood actions and such).

The mask itself, becomes a character in the story rather then a symbol and the story is oddly punctuated by its role.  This drifting in and out of what is a main character in the story is disconcerting and troubling particularly as the story progresses.  To the reader, this interaction interferes with the effort to suspend disbelief and while it seems reasonable that the characters in the story would imbue the mask with a certain (if alien) humanity, it is difficult as a reader to experience that aspect of the mask directly.  It is oddly disconcerting and feels "wrong."

The story is gripping and drags the reader along as any good race story should.  The large number of plot lines that converge near the end of the book (as expected throughout) cause momentary confusion as the reader inhabits each plot line intimately and the transitions are both frequent and abrupt.  There was one excellent transition between plots in the book and I remember admiring the finesse with which it was built and enjoying that moment.  Otherwise, the prose was unremarkable and actually felt awkward at times.  The plot lines intermixed and rubbed against each other without jarring.  The combining of the plot lines was largely expected and the effort to join them felt very rushed, but, in fairness, that could be intended.

I would mildly recommend this book because, in the end, it is a good story.  It would be strongly recommended if the story was more inherently one of the people it is intended to portray (this story could quite simply be moved to any people at any time).  I had read this book in part to understand the prehistoric Indian culture a little better and feel that I got little understanding.  Again, that may be fair--we don't have a lot beyond burial plots with which to interpret these people.  The book is a daunting 800 or so pages which had most of the family gasping, but don't be put off by the size.