By now I am thinking that I will just read this book until I learn all of his survival skills, because, well, I don’t know, maybe someday I will be mauled by a bear and need to know how to survive. Or maybe I will need to know how to kill a rattlesnake when I don’t have a rifle in my hands. First and last time I ever had to kill rattlesnake I had a shotgun. First and last time I ever ate a rattlesnake I was at a Texas rattlesnake roundup. All I can tell you is that the meat is tough. If you get old and lose all of your teeth, don’t expect to gum this meat. Won’t happen. So, I did this totally proper like. I read the book first. Untainted by the movie and then went to see the movie. The book was good. It was interesting and had great characters. The writing was ok. Perhaps, I've read too many good Western/Frontier novels ( Blood Meridian, Butcher's Crossing, etc.], so a 3.5 star book isn't going to thrill me. It read like an older, slightly wiser awkward brother to My Side of the Mountain, Deathwatch, and seriously The Princess Bride). My big two beefs with the novel were the prose (again good, just not great) and the ending (meh).

Tribal chiefs, with the help of a young warrior called Crazy Horse, concocted a precisely coordinated plan to lure soldiers from the fort into an ambush from which they could not possibly escape.So there’s always room for a different approach to what would appear to be a well-worn narrative. The way we experience something makes a big difference to what we think of it. As we are given more and more options about how we’re going to watch, read, and listen to things, it’s worth finding out not only which format best suits that story, but which best suits you. After this recharge, Glass comes across a destroyed Arikara village, where he finds an old, blind woman. He makes her a meal, and she dies the next morning. As he builds her a funeral pyre, he's approached by a group of Sioux warriors—traditional enemies of the Arikara. Their leader, Yellow Horse, brings Glass to a medicine man, who heals Glass's infected wounds. Afterwards, Yellow Horse escorts Glass to Fort Brazeau. And this stuff really happened?! Oh my God! Are you kidding me?! Punk. no way man. Punke, whatever. That's unreal. Fitzgerald and Bridger had acted deliberately, robbed him of the few possessions he might have used to save himself. And in stealing from him this opportunity, they had killed him. Murdered him, as surely as a knife in the heart or a bullet in the brain. Murdered him, except he would not die. Would not die, he vowed, because he would live to kill his killers.” (p. 94)

Would have liked some more conflict between the Indians. Whenever the story turned to them I would get a little bit bored. They had none of the inter-personal interactions that the soldiers had. They made us many promises, more than I can remember. But they kept but one. Then promised to take our land...then took it." Red Cloud I need to requisition more provisions from St. Louis," said Kiowa. "I'll send a courier downstream tomorrow by canoe. He can carry a dispatch from you to your syndicate. You can reassure them before rumors about Colonel Leavenworth's debacle take root." Through fully formed, flawed characters, this fictional account stays true to historic fact, using spare but impactful writing to deliver a history lesson about the impending extirpation of Native Indians in a burgeoning America during the late 1800s. Heartbreaking in so many ways…The Indian characters are not drawn much better. Punke clearly went out of his way to present the Indians sympathetically and sensitively, which is well-intentioned. He tries so hard, however, that he is almost condescending. Crazy Horse, for example, does not have a single thought – or say a single word – that doesn’t involve the white people encroaching into the Powder River Country. Undoubtedly, Crazy Horse had these concerns. Yet I am confident in saying that he had other thoughts as well. Instead of humanizing Crazy Horse, he is transformed into a gloomy prophet uttering portents of doom. Not flesh-and-blood but a symbol, as lifelike as his half-finished monument in South Dakota. Although this true story has been told many times over the years, The Revenant perfectly captures it for modern audiences. Author Michael Punke has written several other historical novels, but he's perhaps best known as an American ambassador to the World Trade Organization. Unfortunately, this high-ranking political position means that Punke isn't authorized to speak to the press about his book, so we have no insight into his perspective. (Seriously, we're not joking about this one.)

A captivating tale of a singular individual . . . Authenticity is exactly what The Revenant provides, in abundance.” — The Denver Post There was no time to hunt for tinder, even if there had been enough light to see. He decided to cut kindling with his hatchet, then hope that another shot of gunpowder would be enough to start the blaze. For an instant he worried about conserving his powder. Least of my problems. He drove the hatchet into the end of a short log to seat the blade, then pounded up and down to split the wood. The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge is a 2002 novel by American author Michael Punke, based on a series of events in the life of American frontiersman Hugh Glass in 1823 Missouri Territory. [1] The word " revenant" means someone who has risen from the grave to terrorize the living. This novel is wonderfully told by multiple points of view between the soliders and the Native Americans of the events which unfolded many months before the actual battle (December 21, 1866), and is very descriptive (enough so, that your imagination can really take over and you see exactly what's happening in your mind).There’s also the fact that whichever way you choose to go with first will affect how you feel about the other versions. Watch the film first, and you might find the book a bit slow and ponderous. Listen to the audiobook first, and the film might not match up to the images you’ve created in your own head. This is why I love historical fiction – books like this. Everyone has heard of Crazy Horse (and I’d even been introduced to this real-life hero through Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee years ago in an undergrad lit class). And yet, I knew (or recalled) so little of this historic figure’s bravery. I realize that it is a morality play the whole time, but with all the action and nail-biting tension, it doesn't "feel" like one until the ending- which I won't ruin for you, except to say that it was very lame.