I enjoyed reading this book - with a few caveats - but the
ending was very disappointing. I'm going to talk about the issues, so
take this as a spoiler alert.
The book was written getting on for 200 years ago and so it reads as very old fashioned to modern tastes. Just to take a couple of examples. There is very little dialogue. We are often told by the narrator what a person said rather than reading the actual dialogue. And the paragraphs can be very long. One paragraph ran for a page and a half. This is a part with the style back then. There is loads of descriptive writing, some of which is very good. We get lots of writing about the landscape, the clothing, the physical appearance of the people and so forth. Before radio and TV, I guess people wanted to read this sort of thing. After all, most readers would not have visited the New York forests and would not have seen them on tv or movies, so this sort of descriptive writing was needed. Today it can drag on a bit and get in the way of the story.
That said, it is a good action tale that jogs along quite nicely with enough incident to keep the reader happy. And the author really does recreate the forests and frontier society of the time very well. I'm no expert on the Huron, Iroquois or the Delaware tribes, but the descriptions of their society and lifestyles are at least credible and fascinating. Assuming the author knows what he is talking about it is a real education.
But I did have a few issues with the book.
Take the character of Hetty. When we first meet her the narrator tells us that she is "feeble-minded", and at least a dozen times we are reminded that she is "simple" or "not normal". Well, fair enough in the terminology of the time I suppose. But at no point in her dialogue or actions does she come across as being "feeble-minded". She carries on conversations perfectly well and carries out all sorts of activities on her own without any problems.
There is also a lot of inconsistency in the way events of the tale. An example of this is the size of the Huron raiding party. At one point Harry and Hutter set off to ambush it. There are only two of them, so we must assume that there are not many Huron warriors. A few chapters later the Huron camp is described and it is now clear that there are around 60 or 70 warriors. Later still there seem to be only 20 or 30 warriors. What is going on? Maybe the raiding party splits up and then recombines, but we are not told that.
But my real problem is with the ending.
It is almost as if the author had planned a longer book, but then lost interest and decided to wrap it up in as few pages as possible. He uses a crass deus ex machina to achieve this. But even on its own terms, it does not really work.
The fascinating battle of wits between Hawkeye and the leader of the Hurons had been developing for over half the novel. Clearly the two were developing a respect for each other's gifts and skills that looked as if it might develop into a way of resolving the conflict. No chance. The Huron chief is shot dead.
Similarly the slowly developing mystery of the origins of the two Hutton girls is never really resolved. We learn snippets as we go along that point to the suspicion that their mother [Who dies before the story begins] came from a grand and wealthy family in New York City before falling from grace and ending up married to a backwoodsman like Hutter. Again, this might have developed further to resolve the issue of what was going to happen to the girls after their father is killed. No chance. Hetty gets shot dead and Judith walks off up a path and out of the book. I could go on, but you get the idea. There are lots of loose ends left dangling.
What had been an enjoyable adventure story with a number of subplots twisting and turning along the way ended very unsatisfactorily.
A shame.
The book was written getting on for 200 years ago and so it reads as very old fashioned to modern tastes. Just to take a couple of examples. There is very little dialogue. We are often told by the narrator what a person said rather than reading the actual dialogue. And the paragraphs can be very long. One paragraph ran for a page and a half. This is a part with the style back then. There is loads of descriptive writing, some of which is very good. We get lots of writing about the landscape, the clothing, the physical appearance of the people and so forth. Before radio and TV, I guess people wanted to read this sort of thing. After all, most readers would not have visited the New York forests and would not have seen them on tv or movies, so this sort of descriptive writing was needed. Today it can drag on a bit and get in the way of the story.
That said, it is a good action tale that jogs along quite nicely with enough incident to keep the reader happy. And the author really does recreate the forests and frontier society of the time very well. I'm no expert on the Huron, Iroquois or the Delaware tribes, but the descriptions of their society and lifestyles are at least credible and fascinating. Assuming the author knows what he is talking about it is a real education.
But I did have a few issues with the book.
Take the character of Hetty. When we first meet her the narrator tells us that she is "feeble-minded", and at least a dozen times we are reminded that she is "simple" or "not normal". Well, fair enough in the terminology of the time I suppose. But at no point in her dialogue or actions does she come across as being "feeble-minded". She carries on conversations perfectly well and carries out all sorts of activities on her own without any problems.
There is also a lot of inconsistency in the way events of the tale. An example of this is the size of the Huron raiding party. At one point Harry and Hutter set off to ambush it. There are only two of them, so we must assume that there are not many Huron warriors. A few chapters later the Huron camp is described and it is now clear that there are around 60 or 70 warriors. Later still there seem to be only 20 or 30 warriors. What is going on? Maybe the raiding party splits up and then recombines, but we are not told that.
But my real problem is with the ending.
It is almost as if the author had planned a longer book, but then lost interest and decided to wrap it up in as few pages as possible. He uses a crass deus ex machina to achieve this. But even on its own terms, it does not really work.
The fascinating battle of wits between Hawkeye and the leader of the Hurons had been developing for over half the novel. Clearly the two were developing a respect for each other's gifts and skills that looked as if it might develop into a way of resolving the conflict. No chance. The Huron chief is shot dead.
Similarly the slowly developing mystery of the origins of the two Hutton girls is never really resolved. We learn snippets as we go along that point to the suspicion that their mother [Who dies before the story begins] came from a grand and wealthy family in New York City before falling from grace and ending up married to a backwoodsman like Hutter. Again, this might have developed further to resolve the issue of what was going to happen to the girls after their father is killed. No chance. Hetty gets shot dead and Judith walks off up a path and out of the book. I could go on, but you get the idea. There are lots of loose ends left dangling.
What had been an enjoyable adventure story with a number of subplots twisting and turning along the way ended very unsatisfactorily.
A shame.
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