The Haunted Mesa

As a new fan of western literature (and media in general) I was so, so excited to start reading Louis L'Amour. So all fools me I accidentally chose the singular NON Western book. And one of his Lost Treasures too.
As a result, this review may be entirely unfair. I'm rating what may be an unfinished book, script or just a stitched together collection of notes.

I did not like this book one bit.
I never Enjoy being harsh on books but this one took effort to avoid a DNF.

Every other page, if not every other page, has an obnoxious amount of MC questions. 'What do they mean by evil?' 'What is Eric doing?'. Not just are these questions repeated, but actual lines. Within one page I saw the exact same dialogue repeated in very minutely different show more ways.
It got exhausting. I genuinely found myself rolling my eyes.

There are a ridiculous amount of contradictions. Mike saying he didn't have any friends on one page yet another he gets many letters from friends. A man approaching and saying he is not a man of many words, and yet has 3 pages of dialogue.
And then the convenient plot advancements... Such as when a lady who was taken by guards appears immediately after being mentioned for the first time. Then doesn't explain why she's there. How she escaped or why.
The main character escapes the main climax after being knocked out and his friends explain his dog came through and saved him. After at least 50 pages of figuring how to resolve said conflict.

Plots are left unresolved. Like Kawasis village. Or the archivist.

My main gripe though is how flat the characters felt. For the first 200 pages Mike does nothing but go to and from the mesa, repeating over and over things that the readers know. Mike himself is skilled at most everything, and so there were no stakes. I knew he was going to get through everything! He never faced any conflict himself. No difficulty. He acted like he knew more about the people in the Third Dimension than they did themselves. And this wasnt contested. There was no explanation as to how he felt.

His reuniting with Erik (the main plot might I add) was lackluster. Neither seemed particularly glad to meet each other again and though Erik was starving, Mike did nothing to help this. He even goes on ahead.
Dialogue is stilted and every character has the same voice. There is zero emotion- just action. And even then, 200 pages of debating?

I struggled. I really did. I really really really wanted to like this book. I finished it even so I could give it a fair shot. If you want to read Louis L'Amour. Please don't read this one. Find one of his westerns. Which I'm about to do now. show less

Not his best. The story is very repetitive, as the main character (Mike Raglan) dithers and dithers and wonders and wonders about what he should do, and whether there is another world, and if so what is it like. Never mind that he has a young woman RIGHT THERE who comes from the other side and who could tell him a great deal about it, and show him the way if he ever thought to ask her. The premise was interesting, but not the execution.

There is maybe a novella worth of story buried under the re-repetitive speculation and re-retelling of Anasazi lore, and all of a short story's worth of character. But even then it isn't much of a story and no development of character and all sorts of bits and pieces which would have been interesting if they had been put to good use are stuck on like straw on dung. A mess.

Explaining what happened to the Anasazi is an interesting concept and adding the fantastical elements made it more interesting still. Unfortunately the book itself wasn’t very interesting. It started out mysterious and kind of spooky but then it settled into a rut. Mike Raglan goes to save a friend from some unknown danger and he has to think about it a lot. He repeats the few facts that he has over and over, along with all his fears and reservations and all the unanswerable questions he has. Everything is repeated so many times and in almost the exact same words until I felt I was stuck in a loop. I think L’Amour wanted to make a point that Mike was just an ordinary man who got scared like the rest of us but did what had to be done show more anyway. So I understand why L’Amour would have Mike voice his fears and insecurities. Introspection is fine but it just went on too long. There was no new information or new insights and it started to get monotonous. It did pick up in the last 100 pages or so when all of that thinking finally led Mike to a decision and then some actual action. The concept was good and the characters were fine but I think if 100 pages of Mike’s repetitive thoughts were cut out it would have been a better book. show less

Louis L'Amour is famous for his Westerns. However, he wrote quite a few books that were definatly NOT westerns. This is one that is not a western. It sounds like one and even takes place in the SW US.

This is the one forray of his that I read that bordered on the supernatural. I think it would be more closly fit into Sci-Fi either way it is a step outside of his more common writing.

Basically there seems to a hole in the fabric of space/time that opens and closes in relation to certain astrological events. This hole opens up into another world simililar in make up to ours and has a very different people. They seem to know about us but we are clueless about them. I put this on a short list for excellent Louis L'Amour fiction.

This is the only book in the science fiction genre that Louis L'amour ever wrote... so far as I am aware. It deals with the Anasazi and provides one answer to the burning question among many as to where they went. Basic to the story is that there are methods of getting from one universe or world to another that do not necessarily require any kind of artifact. Jim Butcher calls them "ways", Stephen King calls them "thinnies". I generally call them "wormholes". The idea is also referenced by Lovecraft, Burroughs and likely others I am unaware of. By whatever they are called, they are a sort of portal to another world. Do they exist? I dunno. I am not really a big fan of the Western genre, though I have generally liked Louis L'Amour's show more work. This one perhaps has a few rough spots, which I can forgive. Louis L'Amour was getting on in years by 1987, and in fact, he died the very next year. During his life, he did much more than I am ever likely to do. This is my favorite Louis L'Amour novel. If you like Jim Butcher's stuff or Stephen King's, you will like this one. show less

I've read this book about three times since the 80's... I like the parallel dimension twist on the Anasazi disappearance, and the way L'Amour tied in some of the archaeological theory then prevalent.
The story bogged down quite a bit in the middle, and I felt the main character, Mike Raglan, was a little disorganized and too introspective. For someone with so much experience in researching strange and unexplained events, he spent a lot of time running back and forth between the mesa and town.
Still, the book is a good read.