Blood Meridian
Or the Evening Redness in the West
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Narrated by:
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Richard Poe
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By:
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Cormac McCarthy
About this listen
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Critic reviews
Featured Article: The Best Western Audiobooks for Your Inner Outlaw
The now classic Western genre has shaped modern literature, film, and other forms of entertainment. Whether your story is taking you to space or to the wide-open plains of Utah, it’s likely pulling on the tropes and themes of a traditional Western. Our favorite audiobooks don’t just encompass old classics though—we’ve gathered a full breadth of work so that all fans of the genre can find everything from family-friendly listens to gritty adventure tales.
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Pull up them breeches, son
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nice book but the narrator could be better.
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Great story.
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Ceremony
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Worth a re-read
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Bad recording
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Contains the embryo of McCarthy's future greatness
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Monte Walsh
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Red Sorghum
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Best narrator I've ever heard!
- By Ty on 12-12-16
By: Mo Yan, and others
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The Bounty Hunters
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- Narrated by: Josh Clark
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
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The old Apache renegade Soldado Viejo is hiding out in Mexico, and the Arizona Department Adjutant has selected two men to hunt him down. One -- Dave Flynn -- knows war, the land, and the nature of his prey. The other is a kid lieutenant named Bowers. But there's a different kind of war happening in Soyopa. And if Flynn and his young associate choose the wrong allies -- and the wrong enemy -- they won't be getting out alive.
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The Bounty Hunters
- By Jean on 12-27-10
By: Elmore Leonard
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The Hamlet
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The Hamlet, the first novel of Faulkner's Snopes trilogy, is both an ironic take on classical tragedy and a mordant commentary on the grand pretensions of the antebellum South and the depths of its decay in the aftermath of war and Reconstruction. It tells of the advent and the rise of the Snopes family in Frenchman's Bend, a small town built on the ruins of a once-stately plantation.
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The Long, Hot Summer
- By W Perry Hall on 07-30-17
By: William Faulkner
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Deadwood Gulch
- By: Ralph Compton
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
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Deadwood Gulch stars bounty hunter Cas Everett, lightning fast on the draw and deadly as a nest of rattlers. When Cas returns home and finds his ma, pa, and siblings planted in fresh graves, he vows to call down the thunder on all those responsible.
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Good western
- By Richard on 01-02-08
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The Life and Times of Persimmon Wilson
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- By: Nancy Peacock
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
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Sitting in a jail cell on the eve of his hanging, April 1, 1875, freedman Persimmon "Persy" Wilson wants nothing more than to leave some record of the truth - his truth. He may be guilty but not of what he stands accused: the kidnapping and rape of his former master's wife. In 1860 Persy had been sold to Sweetmore, a Louisiana sugar plantation, alongside a striking light-skinned house slave named Chloe. Their deep and instant connection fueled a love affair and inspired plans to escape their owner, Master Wilson, who claimed Chloe as his concubine.
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Just so-so overall
- By Henwhisperer on 04-22-18
By: Nancy Peacock
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Walk In My Soul
- By: Lucia St. Clair Robson
- Narrated by: Laurie Klein
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
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Tiana was a Cherokee woman. She grew up learning the magic, spells, and nature religion of her people. Before Sam Houston became the father of Texas, he was a young man who had run away from his home in Tennessee to live among the Cherokee. He came to love Tiana. As the Cherokee would say, she walked in his soul. But Sam was a white man, and Tiana, a Cherokee. And the dreams each had for their land and their people were far apart.
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i honestly don't know what is going in this book
- By Bryntainia Holloway on 09-21-19
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Las autoridades mexicanas y del estado de Texas organizan una expedición paramilitar para acabar con el mayor número posible de indios. Es el Grupo Glanton, y tienen como líder espiritual al juez Holden, un ser violento y cruel. Nunca duerme, viola y asesina niños de ambos sexos y afirma que nunca morirá. Todo cambia cuando los carniceros de Glanton dejan de asesinar indios y empiezan a exterminar a los mexicanos que les pagan. Se instaura así la ley de la selva, el terreno moral donde la figura del juez se convierte en una especie de dios arbitrario.
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Akash Choudry wants a love for all time, not an arranged marriage. Still, under the weight of parental hopes, he agrees to one. He and Jaya marry in a cloud of colour and spice in Bombay. Their marriage has barely begun when Akash embarks on an affair. Jaya can’t contemplate sharing her husband with another woman, or looking past his indiscretions as her mother suggests. Cornered by sexual politics, she takes her fate into her own hands in the form of a lit match.
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Stunning
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What listeners say about Blood Meridian
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Joe
- 01-24-14
What more can be said?
Every list I examine of Best Books of the 20th century, Scariest Books, and Best American Books have Blood Meridian on them. And the book deserves each accolade. The word dystopian barely describes the desolate and baseless landscape these characters inhabit. It will thrill you, terrify you, excite you, and oftentimes depresses you, but you will never be bored.
This is the novel of a hired band of mercenaries who head into the southern states and through Mexico, hunting the native Indians. The land is lawless and without any moral code to speak of. Our main character is a nameless kid who has been on his own since his early teenage years. He strikes up with the band and survives amidst the chaos and depravity.
You haven't read any other book like this and it's time you did. The plot is unreal, the characters strange, and the narration is dead on - if you'll pardon the pun.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Michael
- 02-11-13
The Hobbesian natural condition of mankind
If you could sum up Blood Meridian in three words, what would they be?
Brilliant, poetic, violent.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Blood Meridian?
"The kid" and the expriest hide in the rocks, hoping to not be discovered by the monsterously brutal Judge Holden who has been trailing them. "The kid" has not one, but two opportunities to surprise and kill Judge Holden. It is the only point in the novel when I wanted a character to commit an act of violence. Despite the urgings of the expriest Tobin, "the kid'" passes on both opportunities. He lives to regret it.
What does Richard Poe bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Richard Poe's narration is, as always, outstanding. I can imagine myself giving up on a challenging book like this without a great narrator to pull me along.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
No. As much as I admire Cormac McCarthy's brilliant, powerful and often lyrical prose, I needed occasional breaks from the unending depictions of violence and brutality.
Any additional comments?
I have ambivalent feelings about this novel. The writing itself is brilliant. For that alone, the book merits five stars. However, this is, after all, a fairly nasty story about a marauding band of white scalphunters killing and taking scalps throughout northern Mexico and the southwest United States circa 1849.
I struggled at times to find a point to these depictions of violence, If the point is simply to deromantisize the Old West, it is, pardon me, overkill. However, I think that McCarthy may have had something bigger in mind, At one point in the novel, the despicable Judge Holden disapprovingly tells the other scalphunters the following: "Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak." I suppose that McCarthy's point is that without the rule of law, we would find ourselves in what Thomas Hobbes referred to as the 'natural condition of mankind' where it's every man for himself without regard to others. Maybe I need to reread Hobbes' Leviathon in order to better appreciate the themes of Blood Meridian.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Stephen
- 07-03-07
Entertaining Historical Listen
They say McCarthy's knowledge of history is excellent. If this book is an indication, our western history was really tough on those that went through it. This book is the most gruesome one I have encountered. Not as good as McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, but well worth the entertaining listen.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Lipton101
- 10-02-22
Terrifyingly beautiful
As the last words rang out, hairs on my arm stood on end. This is a book of duality. Terrifying and brutal with prose painted and beautiful. Be warned, the violence is unthinkable. But the story itself; it’s thought provoking nature is undeniable.
Judge Holden. Look him up. Perhaps the most terrible villain ever committed to page or film lives within these words. Beware his presence. Behold the grace of which his existence is captured.
This is truly a 5 star novel
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- Dennis
- 09-11-18
Disappointed.
I had a hard time following this book. it was full of violence, in fact unnecessary violence. Sure, the early West was tough but balance the violence with a great story. I found this to be only a fair to good story. The central character, the Judge, was totally annoying and rambled on and on to the point where I was hoping he would be shot or run down by a herd of wild and crazed goats. narrator was very good but for me what I will remember most about the book is that it didn't end soon enough.
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- Jeff Koeppen
- 08-01-23
The Most Violent Fiction Book I've Ever Read
Wow. This was the most violent and disturbing fiction book I've ever read. I've read violent books before but nothing like this. Human depravity was the constant thread in this book, and it was all described so thoroughly and completely with McCarthy's fantastic prose that it was hard for me to not look away (or hit the "stop" button) despite it being so often dark and disgusting.
Set in the 1840s in Texas, Mexico, the American Southwest, and California, the story follows the main character, a fourteen year-old boy referred to as the "Kid" who flees his troubled life in Tennessee and ends up with joining some bounty hunters in Texas who collect Indian scalps. Basically, they ride through the desert and ruthlessly slaughter anyone they come across - Indians, settlers, other wanderers. Villages are burned. Scalps are collected and ears are collected and displayed on necklaces. Scalps are turned in for money in towns, and the group enjoys a drunken (often violent visit) for a few days in these towns before setting off again. On their rides no life is spared - innocent men, women and children and butchered without a second thought, and animals are stolen or killed to be eaten, or sometimes tortured or just shot and left to die. There was even a scene where one of the gang grabbed two babies and violently killed them in a disgusting fashion. And all of this is described in great detail. It was shocking. I almost drove off the road a few times.
The antagonist (the worst of the antagonists I should say) is a fellow named the Judge. Described as giant bald hulk, this guy is a psychotic murderer and rapist; however, he is also highly educated and extremely intelligent and teaches the gang of knuckle-draggers about the Bible, astronomy, evolution, the natural world, and general philosophy. He takes notes and draws interesting things in a notebook. While he and the Kid often separate and go their own ways, sometimes fleeing from Indian attacks, he always seems to find his way back to the kid and in the middle of the plot.
Also described in great detail were the Mexican and American Southwestern settings and the brutal climate, and these seemed like characters themselves. There was never enough water and day-to-day survival was sometimes difficult especially after suffering wounds during attacks or being attacked by Indians.
There is a lot of Spanish spoken in this novel and I think I missed out on a lot because I didn't understand any of it.
This is certainly a Western, but spends it's time on the dark side of life in the West. The gang is ruthless, viscous, and covered in dust and dried blood most of the time, and on the verge of starvation and dehydration regularly. All the dark facets of humanity are display in this well-written but disturbing novel.
I'm going to give this four stars. It's like nothing I've ever read and is so well written that it will live in your head but at times too over the top for me. There is a part at the end about a family and their pet dancing bear that almost did me in.
I've got some more McCarthy on my shelves and I can't wait to read it.
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- Hans Ritter
- 06-23-23
An American Classic
Inscrutable, apocalyptic and genocidal. McCormick at his apex. This classic American novel is read with gusto and verve. Amazing.
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- Doff
- 09-09-19
Good story, CHAPTER BEGINNINGS.
The book itself is pure McCarthy. A whole lot of awful stuff happens and is met with apathy by the characters. He did a good job of writing "in the shoes" of an 1800's settler type. Descriptions are both vague yet specific. My only complaint, for this reading, is the chapter overviews. They led to broken concentration and spoilers. The narrator did a fine job.
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Story
- Klowbi
- 06-16-23
Just okay
I probably would’ve liked it more if the narrator didn’t make so many mouth sounds that kept grossing me out. Couldn’t get over that lol
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Gary
- 10-31-18
A captivating and disturbing story
Beautifully written. Magnificently narrated. Tough to listen to. Though I'd seen the movie based on McCarthy's novel, No Country for Old Men, that didn't prepare me for the frequency, amplitude and sheer senselessness of the violence in this book. As much as I appreciated his craft, I was relieved when it was over.
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