In the Rogue Blood

The bloody tale of two brothers, separated by war and circumstance, at the time of the Mexican-American war.
Now, neither of them is very nice, even by the standards of the day - like those scenes in various versions of the OK Corral story where the townsfolk are making previously lawless Tombstone into a decent place to live, and then the Cowboys come and shoot the place up - but their picaresque stories are at least entertaining if you don't mind an endless litany of physical and often sexual violence. Genital mutilations about, whores with sores, horses and everyone - it seems - trying to rob each other so half the time Our Antiheroes' assaults are on someone practically as heinous as them. The San Patricios' story is a fascinating one and to this day there are Mexicans with surnames like Quinn (cf. the actor Anthony Quinn) and O'Reilly (mathematician Eugenia Oreilly, e..g.).
Is it a Blood Meridian fanfic, at least in parts? There are certain scenes where I can imagine Cormac sending Blake a note saying, Write your own damn novel. But it's much more personal than Blood Meridian, more along the lines of McCarthy's Border Trilogy. It didn't read like a very long novel and in these days of ebooks it's harder to tell how long a book really is, but it was satisfying.
I never lost interest in it; only had to look up one Spanish word (the term for 'pigsty'); and found the characters and the setting kept my interest.

The bloody tale of two brothers, separated by war and circumstance, at the time of the Mexican-American war.
Now, neither of them is very nice, even by the standards of the day - like those scenes in various versions of the OK Corral story where the townsfolk are making previously lawless Tombstone into a decent place to live, and then the Cowboys come and shoot the place up - but their picaresque stories are at least entertaining if you don't mind an endless litany of physical and often sexual violence. Genital mutilations about, whores with sores, horses and everyone - it seems - trying to rob each other so half the time Our Antiheroes' assaults are on someone practically as heinous as them. The San Patricios' story is a fascinating one and to this day there are Mexicans with surnames like Quinn (cf. the actor Anthony Quinn) and O'Reilly (mathematician Eugenia Oreilly, e..g.).
Is it a Blood Meridian fanfic, at least in parts? There are certain scenes where I can imagine Cormac sending Blake a note saying, Write your own damn novel. But it's much more personal than Blood Meridian, more along the lines of McCarthy's Border Trilogy. It didn't read like a very long novel and in these days of ebooks it's harder to tell how long a book really is, but it was satisfying.
I never lost interest in it; only had to look up one Spanish word (the term for 'pigsty'); and found the characters and the setting