I forgot to review this right after I was done, so my memory is a bit fuzzy on the details. But overall, though an enjoyable book, Cities is quite brief compared to the first two in the trilogy, which seems an odd way to end the story. I enjoyed every word of every page but felt there ought to have been more -- not a bad complaint to have, as far as complaints go. The ending was very dramatic and satisfying. A good book in a very good trilogy, just not precisely what I was expecting, especially after The Crossing. ( )

It's been a while since I've read good fiction, and it seems I've read some stinkers of late.

But I went back to McCarthy and was welcomed back to his violent Texas border town world with open arms.

John Grady and Billy Parham were each the focus in their respective narratives about them, The Crossing and All The Pretty Horses, and here's where they story ends, or what comes to be of these two cowboys.

They're together on a ranch, working as hands, and John Grady falls in love with a young Mexican prostitute, and this sets the back drop of what happens in the novel.

It's rare to laugh out loud at a book, but I did this several times while reading the exchanges between the two main characters and the other ranch hands. There' s a love between them, for what they do and what they are, and you can see in the wording.

As much as I laughed at the dialogue, these books are never an easy pill to swallow with Cormac, as he takes you to places you don't want to go, and people die who you don't want to die. But isn't that a way to show how powerful his writing is?

In other stories, in most pop fiction, I'm not going to lose sleep over who is killed and who is let to live, but McCarthy connects you with his characters, with their flesh, weaknesses and flaws, and also with their more honorable sides. He makes you give a hang.

John Grady Cole wanted to take a girl who was in trouble, and give her a good life, not even mentioning that he loved her, and that is such a good sentiment and a powerful gesture. Everyone was against it but her and him, and he goes for it anyway.

This wasn't my favorite out of the Border trilogy. Most would pick All The Pretty Horses, but my heart places The Crossing above the rest.

That being said, this is a great read, and I highly recommend picking it up if you are a fan of modern day Westerns (set in the 30's or 40's), or if you are a fan of McCarthy. ( )

The heroes of the two previous novels in Cormac McCarthy's border trilogy return together in this one. John Grady Cole (from All the pretty horses) is still a young man whereas Billy Parham (The Crossing) is somewhat older--both working on a ranch near the New Mexico-Mexico border near the border cities of El Paso and Ciudad Jaurez.

The story's main thread is developed around Cole's falling in love with a teenage Mexican prostitute--Magdalena and his attempting to bring her back over the border to marry her. Her Mexican brothel keepers/protectors have much different ideas about someone(thing) they consider their property. As in the previous two novels of this trilogy the novels denouement revolves around the clash between two different cultures living right on each others doorsteps. John recruits Billy Parham to act as a kind of go between between himself and the brothelkeepers (Eduardo and Tiburcio) but they're only interested in discouraging this liason. John then turns to an older Mexican he's met--a blind man but he cannot help him. He is in love though and cannot be stopped from the course he is on which only leads us to the books tragic and bloody climax.

Though not quite as good as The Crossing--this is a simpler and shorter story and it plays to McCarthy's strengths as a writer. A little less concentrated in style than other works of his--the prose is clearer and more lucid. McCarthy is very economical in his dialogue and is one if not just about the best writer of action scenes in the United States today. Many writers would have turned this kind of material into a tearjerker but McCarthy maintains a very tight control over his story and the vision of where to go with it. The whole series is very enjoyable and well worth reading --at least IMO and I expect that within the next couple of years I may have read all his books. I look very much forward to his next. ( )

3697. Cities of the Plain Volume Three The Border Trilogy, by Cormac McCarthy (read 10 Feb 2003) I read volume one of this trilogy, All the Pretty Horses, on 21 Sept 1996, with some appreciation so I read on 27 Dec 1996 volume two, The Crossing. I so disliked that I said I need not read anything further, but now I have read the final volume. This was more readable than The Crossing, with some exciting parts, e.g., a roundup of sheep-killing dogs and a vicious bloody knife fight. There is a pretentious abstruse Epilogue, but except for that the book is not bad reading. The Spanish dialogue, untranslated, annoys--would it have been so terrible to have footnotes translate it? And it would be nice to have standard punctuation, but I suppose that is asking too much... ( )