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The Haunted Mesa
The Navajo called them the Anasazi, the “ancient enemy,” and their abandoned cities haunt the canyons and plateaus of the Southwest. For centuries the sudden disappearance of these people baffled historians. Summoned to a dark desert plateau by a desperate letter from an old friend, renowned investigator Mike Raglan is drawn into a world of mystery, violence, and explosive revelations. Crossing a border beyond the laws of man and nature, he will learn of the astonishing world of the Anasazi and discover the most extraordinary frontier ever encountered.
426 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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3375 people want to read
About the author
Louis L'Amour
1,005 books3,384 followersLouis Dearborn L'Amour was an American novelist and short story writer. His books consisted primarily of Western novels, though he called his work "frontier stories". His most widely known Western fiction works include Last of the Breed, Hondo, Shalako, and the Sackett series. L'Amour also wrote historical fiction (The Walking Drum), science fiction (The Haunted Mesa), non-fiction (Frontier), and poetry and short-story collections. Many of his stories were made into films. His books remain popular and most have gone through multiple printings. At the time of his death, almost all of his 105 existing works (89 novels, 14 short-story collections, and two full-length works of nonfiction) were still in print, and he was "one of the world's most popular writers".
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 502 reviews
October 4, 2022
Mike Raglan a well known investigator and writer gets a strange message from a friend, an eccentric rich scientist, (aren't they all?) he needs help quickly , this begins then a weird adventure if you can believe it. So Raglan arrives in the southwest, famous four corners area (Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico) and no friend! Strange rumors abound that the Anasazi, the ancient cliff dwellers have been seen, they had disappeared centuries ago. Ghosts? Real, who knows the answer...Mike decides to visit the scientist unfinished house, oh never easy, located naturally on top of a haunted mesa no problem he'll go alone obvious to anyone else a bad idea . Unbelievably an unknown new world is discovered in the middle of nowhere which serves as a way for the plot to matriculate into a fun trip, a voyage of discovery maybe, nevertheless terror begins for the timid, however the rest safely home the opposite . The ancient Indians have survived, but the natives are restless as the saying goes., can the friends (now numbering five people, including a couple of beautiful women ) avoid destruction? Now this tranquil walk becomes a run in survival of the fittest as only they will know the steps which leads to salvation or the unfortunate others another dimension . An unusual novel for Mr. Louis L'Amour because it's not a western which proves he was a talented writer and should have penned more books in other genres , instead of the less than ten he did...nine to be precise...The real reason to read this is the beauty of the area the high, lonely plateau, its reddish colors used in many classic westerns which the eye cannot look away and the heart goes pumping faster, a feeling from a remoteness that chills the bones and causes the imagination to soar above the cloudless blue skies; what happen to the original mysterious people are they hidden in an unknown cave watching our strange civilization recklessly tumble down the steep slope?
December 22, 2021
Hard for me to write a negative review on a louis L'Amour book. But i read a hardcopy and had trouble getting motivated to read it, so it took two months. Putting me behind on this year's quota goals! I know being a fan that this was released the same year L'Amour died. not sure the story there. Was this his last work? was it released after his death? it defiantly needed an editor's touch. Was it released without being properly finished and edited? Was it supposed to be much longer? if you know i would love to hear it.
i thought it would be a sci-fi horror book but i was wrong more of a suspenseful sci-fi mystery. not scary at all! the haunted mesa place has something I'm very interested in the disappearance of the Anasazi. In This L'Amour has them escaping to another dimension they previously came from. the first half of the book is speculation of what the other dimension is like. During those 200 pages of speculation i jumped ahead and imagined more than L'Amour had written. Same thing happened with Piranesi although i think Piranesi had a more creative other dimension. Mike Raglan an expert in the weird and mysterious has to go and rescue his friend Erik Hokart from the other dimension. Once there he finds a crumbling society kinda like The Giver or any other over policed dystopian society. The society is no threat at all they could really be overtaken by any organized force from our world. like a Seal team or ranger squadron would have no problem! The society was a real disappointment. and left me with a feeling of overall disappointment!
i thought it would be a sci-fi horror book but i was wrong more of a suspenseful sci-fi mystery. not scary at all! the haunted mesa place has something I'm very interested in the disappearance of the Anasazi. In This L'Amour has them escaping to another dimension they previously came from. the first half of the book is speculation of what the other dimension is like. During those 200 pages of speculation i jumped ahead and imagined more than L'Amour had written. Same thing happened with Piranesi although i think Piranesi had a more creative other dimension. Mike Raglan an expert in the weird and mysterious has to go and rescue his friend Erik Hokart from the other dimension. Once there he finds a crumbling society kinda like The Giver or any other over policed dystopian society. The society is no threat at all they could really be overtaken by any organized force from our world. like a Seal team or ranger squadron would have no problem! The society was a real disappointment. and left me with a feeling of overall disappointment!
September 21, 2016
What the hell was that?
Okay, I have to take some of the blame. I was in the mood for an action packed, western, shoot-em up bang novel, so I went to what I thought was a sure thing in Louis L'Amour. My mistake was that I only took the time to browse the titles and make sure I didn't grab one I had already read. I did not read the intro... big mistake.
Nope, this book was not a shoot-em up bang... at least not in the old western gunslinger sense. Instead, I'll give you an idea of what I found: bigfoot, a writer who knows Karate, sci-fi, Kimono dragons, a mystery, alternate worlds, a scientist with connections to the FBI and CIA, a wereleapord, and people named, Xzpl#ww87XVKzz.
Okay, maybe you are a little more adventurously minded than I am, but if you are going to Louie for a Sackett style gunfight, don't say I didn't warn you.
April 2, 2015
To be honest, I felt like this book was just a hot mess. The short version of why I hated it: The narration was so awkward and circular and repetitive that I often had no idea where we were going with this, and nothing really happened in the first 300 pages. I couldn't figure out if the author was trying to squeeze in worldbuilding as a replacement for plot or what, but there wasn't even much of that. Basically the whole first three fourths of the book was protagonist Mike trying to decide whether and how to go rescue his friend Erik, who is presumably trapped in some alternate world populated by alien Indians, and the windows to said world do not operate by predictable physics, nor do its tenants operate by typical human logic.
That's the really striking thing about it. The whole time it's built up how DANGEROUS this place is, with everyone and their mother bleating OH MY GOODNESS NO YOU CANNOT FIGHT THEM YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE GETTING INTO MIKE at every turn, only to have him actually go there and shoot things in the head and fight dudes who apparently are so unused to being fought that they don't know how to fight. Like, that's actually the plot. No one ever resists them, so they have gotten confident and just assume people won't resist if they say "no, stay in that prison." Mike punches them once and they just die or explode or fall over. And they're just all so shocked about this, because my goodness, why isn't he intimidated by our reputation? NO DON'T FIGHT THEM MIKE. Why not? And the villain seems to have absolutely no motivation. There are several groups and/or individuals cited as baddies for this book, but none of them seem to have any desires or motivations--certainly not any that have to do with kidnapping Mike's friend Erik (which is ostensibly the reason Mike has to go to this godforsaken place and kick some ass in the first place). Why? Why did the plot even happen?
Now, let me talk about Mike and his narration style. He's always gazing into his navel contemplating things in this obnoxious circular way, and everything had a question mark on it. Here's an example of the narration:
"We accept the fact that there may be other worlds out in space, but might there not be other worlds here? Other worlds, and other dimensions, coexistent with this? If there are other worlds parallel to ours, are all the doors closed? Or does one, here or there, stand ajar?"
Let me reiterate that this is NARRATION. It is not dialogue.
More:
"Where was Erik? Why had he not kept their appointment? Why had Erik chosen such a remote place? Had he been kept from that appointment? Was he dead? Injured? A prisoner? That was preposterous. Yet, was it?"
I'm not kidding. Stuff like that was literally on every page. And boy did I get sick of him wondering "Where was Erik?" Here, suffer through some more:
"That man now? The one he had found in his condo, stealing his book. Who was he? Why did he want the daybook? Did he want it for himself or was he sent by someone to find it?"
You see what I mean. And these are generally questions that the usual reader would be wondering; we don't need to be prompted to wonder. A dude breaks in to steal Mike's mystery package and yeah, we're gonna wonder who he was and what his motivation was. We don't need three or four mental soliloquies involving Mike pelting us with the question marks of his life.
But the dialogue was often worse. People would ramble on for multiple-paragraph whinges, in terribly stilted phrasing that read an awful lot like the narration, and they would literally just appear to Mike and start talking. A couple times someone just walked up to him in a restaurant and sat down and started pages and pages of conversation wherein they relayed plot-relevant details. They seriously felt like video game checkpoints; press A to talk to character, collect clue. Like, toward the end, when Mike was questioning the loyalties of his allies, he's having a coffee and in comes a guy he doesn't know. Who sits down in his booth, introduces himself, and just randomly starts talking about a guy they both know which makes Mike suspicious about whether his ally has been bought off. (Oh, and when Mike finds a book with notes from his friend Erik, the journal details composed by Erik are identical to L'amour's writing style--complete with question marks. There are like three chapters at the beginning involving Mike picking up the daybook, reading Erik's scribblings, and then stopping and whining about not knowing what's going on and flip-flopping on whether he wants to believe/help and then going back to the book.)
The conversations are not only poorly rendered but shockingly circular; the characters will discuss things they've already discussed, reiterate things they've established, and spell out absolutely obvious things. There's one where Mike meets a policeman who's investigating arson and he just slides into the booth and talks to him and they discuss that Mike had a guy break into his room to steal a package. Mike says the criminal "seemed like a professional." The police guy, eager to move the plot along, prompts Mike to explain what he means by "professional." So he rambles a while about what clues he thinks lead to the criminal being sent by someone else for the purpose and why he was probably really experienced, and then later in the same conversation the policeman again seems confused about why Mike thinks the breaker-inner was a professional. It's like an editor never read the book and said "Hey Louis, did you know you already made this more than clear? Like, on top of that, why would a police guy not know what that meant?"
And then we have the other-world Indian characters who come from the other side of this veil, or Third World or whatever he called it. They don't speak English there but an old guy from our world is apparently going around teaching noble savages how to speak English so that they can come here and talk to our hero in terrifyingly stilted pidgin English. Wow, it was incredibly bad. You know, one second the girl is saying "I no understand" and the next she is saying "He said our three dimensional world was fantasy, something we had become accustomed to and accepted as the all." What? He just doesn't seem to understand what it would sound like if someone only had a passing familiarity with English. And the Indian characters who didn't speak English very well had this really annoying tendency to preface "unfamiliar" words with "what you call." Things are "five of what you call miles away" and involve what you call science. Ughhhh.
And sometimes, Mike talks out loud to his dog for expository purposes. I just started saying "shoot me" out loud when that happened.
Now let me talk about the absurd plot and its repetitive, frustrating rendering. We get sudden detours into Mike's backstory sometimes, and most of it is irrelevant though I think it was trying to explain why he had certain skills. So Mike's an ex-carny, has been around the world to tons of exotic places, learned fighting styles and shooting skills, speaks several languages, and has written several books about weird stuff. Most of it is presented like "by the way, he did this, and that's why he has familiarity with that." We are told over and over again that his investigation of supernatural and magical happenings usually turn out to involve fraud and sleight-of-hand, but occasionally he runs into stuff that might be magic and he knows there's some mysterious stuff out there. Oooooh, creeeepy. I guess it was supposed to be for ambiance, and to play to the reader's presumed skepticism so we'll relate to Mike, but it's said over and over and over again how he's a skeptic but SOMETIMES NOPE and he's not sure if he believes it but SOMETIMES THINGS ARE WEIRD and yeah probably nothing's happening here but MAYBE ALIENS. Some waffling is expected. But tell us once and/or show us more. This was just like round and round and round the pointless pondering train.
But then. The pacing is just incredibly slow and involves Mike just going back and forth between the mesa where his friend disappeared and his own room, I guess. He'll go drive out to the mesa and think about things (WHERE *WAS* ERIK??), and then sometimes he'll "realize" things that make no sense. So do other characters. Like, there's this bit where Mike is reading his disappeared friend Erik's handwritten journal--the only clue to where he might've disappeared to--and Erik's describing a series of creepy experiences that involved him digging out a kiva and having various interactions with the supernatural. Erik sees a GLOWING RED marking appearing on his map. Erik also loses his pencil and it is REPLACED WITH A JAR. He randomly decides that the glowing red line "means" that a sinister spirit is looking for a way back into this world. But the snatching of his pencil and replacement with a weird jar is obviously just a spirit being mischievous--it's clearly a different entity doing THAT. And leaving him sunflowers. And stealing his sweater and bringing it back with another one with a sunflower on the tag. And kidnapping his dog and sending it back with sunflowers tucked into its collar. These are all friendly things. But the other mysterious happenings are bad entities. It's sinister. I just don't know why the characters are interpreting these things this way. Mike does it all the time--just figures out that someone's bad or good based on seemingly arbitrary things.
The daybook. It contains written records of stuff that happened to Erik presumably less than a day before he disappeared, at which point he was pleading for Mike to "HELP US!!!! FOR GOD'S SAKE!!!!" but . . . he somehow managed to make arrangements for a messenger to get the book to Mike when he was already in mortal danger. Guess he just sat down while being kidnapped and wrote about it, then sent his companion off with the errand. I don't understand the timeline of this.
The cop. When a business is burned to the ground and a police guy is investigating, he comes to talk to Mike and the Indian girl from the other world, Kawasi. Just finds them in a cafe or whatever and starts questioning them. Later, Mike's in the desert and THE COP COMES OUT THERE AND FINDS HIM and just starts asking him more questions and even suggesting that maybe he suspects Mike of being involved with the arson while admitting that he's "reaching" and "fishing." Oh my goodness. A policeman isn't going to come follow you into the desert for VERY URGENT follow-up questioning and then ramble for a while about how you could possibly be guilty but not do anything to arrest you or take you back for questioning. And if they have more questions for you they're not going to keep letting you wander around knowing you might become a suspect only to find you like three more times to talk about the investigation. Who is this jackass and how did he even get a job?
The suspicious woman, Eden. Mike has her pegged from the beginning because he's ~so smart and observant~ so he noticed that she has his books on the shelf but hasn't read them and must have just bought them, and he just happens to have marked the book that got stolen from his hotel so he knows she's behind it. But she's literally not involved in anything that makes any sense. She sent someone to steal the book? Yeah, and, uh, so? It leads nowhere. Her big revelatory moment is that she admits to being a poison woman, which was supposed to be this thing where the male characters are cautioned to never sleep with these woman because their nether parts will poison them. Eden proceeds to never try to trap anyone with her vagina. Who cares if she's poison? And when confronted with info that links her to Erik's disappearance, all she does is tell Mike not to go rescue him and ramble a lot about how she's watched and controlled by her people and has no real power. Why did she try to mess with Mike in the first place? The whole thing was just absurd.
The banker. I mentioned before that a guy just walks up to Mike in a restaurant and tells him stuff he needs to know about someone who will double-cross him, but he also deposits two and a half pages of his own history in the banking industry. It is completely irrelevant to the plot. There are other things like this too, like when Mike is realistically considering the possibility that he might die or get trapped in the other world on his rescue mission so he's wrapping up affairs, and then he opens a bunch of his letters and TELLS US WHAT THEY'RE ABOUT. They're all irrelevant. (Or, I guess they're trying to show how talented and well-rounded Mike is because he's conversing with people around the globe about topics on which he is considered an authority, but seriously, WE DON'T CARE.)
Also, apparently these people do not live in our universe, and I'm not talking about the people from the other dimension. There's a bit where Mike says that if Erik hadn't left his notes behind, everyone would have just assumed he fell off a cliff. Are you for real? Wealthy and well-connected science guy disappears and leaves behind no body and no clue, but sure, people would just assume he got lost in the desert and fell off something and no one would have investigated. That isn't how things work at all.
Mike also makes a lot of assumptions about the other-worlders and what they understand, and they always turn out to be right. For instance, at one point he believes he is being watched, correctly targets which of the other restaurant patrons is watching him, and manages to sneak out without being seen because he has correctly surmised that the other-world guy doesn't understand how doors work. He knows nothing about their culture or their sophistication, but he just figures hey, a guy from another world probably thinks this whole back wall made of glass is solid, but I know there's a door! Hee hee! He's not watching that door, only the front door! WIN!! What? And this is exploited even more when it turns out everybody in the bad old other world doesn't expect Mike to be able to fight. They just come after him and expect to stop him, but he gives them a couple good punches and they go down. Every single person he fights, with the exception of the final bad guy, goes down with a couple punches or a bullet. And it's repeatedly expressed that it's because no one resists them in their world and they aren't expecting a tough guy like our hero. I just . . . what? Why do you have a bunch of guards and armies but they don't actually fight? What do they DO? Mike's idea to FIGHT THEM is REVOLUTIONARY and NO ONE'S EVER THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE OMG. Kawasi and her people say they have only just "defended" when the bad guys come for them, but what does that mean? They stand in front of their houses and don't do anything or what? Mike's idea to FIGHT THEM is repeatedly portrayed as incredibly, shockingly original and radical, but there's no real explanation for how they got complacent except that they just kinda did.
And then, I just want to say there are so many disconnects with actual storytelling and with reality. Like, okay, if you find your friend in a mysterious stone dungeon right out of cartoons (with blocks that can be pressed to trigger sliding stone doors and everything), and he complains that the villains starved him, what do you do? Give him some of your trail mix? Or ignore the poor bastard until the third time he says he can't go on because he's too weak, THEN give him some food? Because the latter is what Mike did. I thought he must not have any food with him because Erik kept complaining that he was weak and starved, and then he pulls out the trail mix and I'm like WHY DIDN'T YOU DO THIS BEFORE? And it's more than 300 pages in before Mike suggests he might suddenly love Kawasi. The narration even acknowledges that they've spent no time together and that he didn't even know if he trusted her for most of that time, but suddenly their love is so important and he has to rescue her too and propose to take her back to his world and just suddenly start calling her "honey." Whaaaa. There's no warmth to it and no suggestion that Kawasi viewed him that way, but I guess he needed a girl to save. Sigh.
And finally, one more complaint about narration. There's this weird redundant storytelling style that makes me think an editor never saw the manuscript. Example:
"At a glance he realized the ruins were ancient, older than anything he had ever seen, anywhere. Mike Raglan had looked upon many ruins, but his first impression of this one was one of extreme age."
That happened constantly. Observation, followed by observation reiterated. Plus the narration had this maddening tendency to point out condescendingly obvious things. Here's one example:
"It was never easy for one people to understand another when their cultural backgrounds differ too drastically."
You don't say.
I had an incredibly difficult time finishing this book. The dialogue was staged and unrealistic; the Indian characters are portrayed as noble savages and mystics; the pacing is plodding and makes all the parts that are supposed to be exciting seem drawn out and tortured; and the book is both conceptually simplistic and executionally convoluted. It seemed like L'amour had a bunch of "cool" ideas about the Anasazi myths and some various Navajo folk traditions that he wanted to develop into a story, but when you write a story about your friend vanishing into an unknown other world, there should probably be some reason the bad guys are holding the prisoner and some compelling reason for the hero to help, and for this there's just nothing here. Pages and pages of the protagonist flolloping around in his head wondering what's going on and talking to people about how spooky it is, with absolutely no authentic character development and no driving force behind the plot or any of the relationships portrayed. I definitely would not have read past page 50 if this wasn't a book assigned by my book club, and I don't like to review books I haven't finished anyway. I'm honestly confused as to how anyone finds this book readable, to say nothing of finding it fun. Maybe there's a warmth people associate with the genre or some tropes I'm missing, because I experienced absolutely no connection with this and frequently felt like I was reading the unfinished first draft manuscript of an ambitious high school kid who'd just read a book about the Navajo and got enraptured, so it's just sort of shocking to me that this is the work of an extremely successful, established, experienced author. I don't know what happened here.
That's the really striking thing about it. The whole time it's built up how DANGEROUS this place is, with everyone and their mother bleating OH MY GOODNESS NO YOU CANNOT FIGHT THEM YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE GETTING INTO MIKE at every turn, only to have him actually go there and shoot things in the head and fight dudes who apparently are so unused to being fought that they don't know how to fight. Like, that's actually the plot. No one ever resists them, so they have gotten confident and just assume people won't resist if they say "no, stay in that prison." Mike punches them once and they just die or explode or fall over. And they're just all so shocked about this, because my goodness, why isn't he intimidated by our reputation? NO DON'T FIGHT THEM MIKE. Why not? And the villain seems to have absolutely no motivation. There are several groups and/or individuals cited as baddies for this book, but none of them seem to have any desires or motivations--certainly not any that have to do with kidnapping Mike's friend Erik (which is ostensibly the reason Mike has to go to this godforsaken place and kick some ass in the first place). Why? Why did the plot even happen?
Now, let me talk about Mike and his narration style. He's always gazing into his navel contemplating things in this obnoxious circular way, and everything had a question mark on it. Here's an example of the narration:
"We accept the fact that there may be other worlds out in space, but might there not be other worlds here? Other worlds, and other dimensions, coexistent with this? If there are other worlds parallel to ours, are all the doors closed? Or does one, here or there, stand ajar?"
Let me reiterate that this is NARRATION. It is not dialogue.
More:
"Where was Erik? Why had he not kept their appointment? Why had Erik chosen such a remote place? Had he been kept from that appointment? Was he dead? Injured? A prisoner? That was preposterous. Yet, was it?"
I'm not kidding. Stuff like that was literally on every page. And boy did I get sick of him wondering "Where was Erik?" Here, suffer through some more:
"That man now? The one he had found in his condo, stealing his book. Who was he? Why did he want the daybook? Did he want it for himself or was he sent by someone to find it?"
You see what I mean. And these are generally questions that the usual reader would be wondering; we don't need to be prompted to wonder. A dude breaks in to steal Mike's mystery package and yeah, we're gonna wonder who he was and what his motivation was. We don't need three or four mental soliloquies involving Mike pelting us with the question marks of his life.
But the dialogue was often worse. People would ramble on for multiple-paragraph whinges, in terribly stilted phrasing that read an awful lot like the narration, and they would literally just appear to Mike and start talking. A couple times someone just walked up to him in a restaurant and sat down and started pages and pages of conversation wherein they relayed plot-relevant details. They seriously felt like video game checkpoints; press A to talk to character, collect clue. Like, toward the end, when Mike was questioning the loyalties of his allies, he's having a coffee and in comes a guy he doesn't know. Who sits down in his booth, introduces himself, and just randomly starts talking about a guy they both know which makes Mike suspicious about whether his ally has been bought off. (Oh, and when Mike finds a book with notes from his friend Erik, the journal details composed by Erik are identical to L'amour's writing style--complete with question marks. There are like three chapters at the beginning involving Mike picking up the daybook, reading Erik's scribblings, and then stopping and whining about not knowing what's going on and flip-flopping on whether he wants to believe/help and then going back to the book.)
The conversations are not only poorly rendered but shockingly circular; the characters will discuss things they've already discussed, reiterate things they've established, and spell out absolutely obvious things. There's one where Mike meets a policeman who's investigating arson and he just slides into the booth and talks to him and they discuss that Mike had a guy break into his room to steal a package. Mike says the criminal "seemed like a professional." The police guy, eager to move the plot along, prompts Mike to explain what he means by "professional." So he rambles a while about what clues he thinks lead to the criminal being sent by someone else for the purpose and why he was probably really experienced, and then later in the same conversation the policeman again seems confused about why Mike thinks the breaker-inner was a professional. It's like an editor never read the book and said "Hey Louis, did you know you already made this more than clear? Like, on top of that, why would a police guy not know what that meant?"
And then we have the other-world Indian characters who come from the other side of this veil, or Third World or whatever he called it. They don't speak English there but an old guy from our world is apparently going around teaching noble savages how to speak English so that they can come here and talk to our hero in terrifyingly stilted pidgin English. Wow, it was incredibly bad. You know, one second the girl is saying "I no understand" and the next she is saying "He said our three dimensional world was fantasy, something we had become accustomed to and accepted as the all." What? He just doesn't seem to understand what it would sound like if someone only had a passing familiarity with English. And the Indian characters who didn't speak English very well had this really annoying tendency to preface "unfamiliar" words with "what you call." Things are "five of what you call miles away" and involve what you call science. Ughhhh.
And sometimes, Mike talks out loud to his dog for expository purposes. I just started saying "shoot me" out loud when that happened.
Now let me talk about the absurd plot and its repetitive, frustrating rendering. We get sudden detours into Mike's backstory sometimes, and most of it is irrelevant though I think it was trying to explain why he had certain skills. So Mike's an ex-carny, has been around the world to tons of exotic places, learned fighting styles and shooting skills, speaks several languages, and has written several books about weird stuff. Most of it is presented like "by the way, he did this, and that's why he has familiarity with that." We are told over and over again that his investigation of supernatural and magical happenings usually turn out to involve fraud and sleight-of-hand, but occasionally he runs into stuff that might be magic and he knows there's some mysterious stuff out there. Oooooh, creeeepy. I guess it was supposed to be for ambiance, and to play to the reader's presumed skepticism so we'll relate to Mike, but it's said over and over and over again how he's a skeptic but SOMETIMES NOPE and he's not sure if he believes it but SOMETIMES THINGS ARE WEIRD and yeah probably nothing's happening here but MAYBE ALIENS. Some waffling is expected. But tell us once and/or show us more. This was just like round and round and round the pointless pondering train.
But then. The pacing is just incredibly slow and involves Mike just going back and forth between the mesa where his friend disappeared and his own room, I guess. He'll go drive out to the mesa and think about things (WHERE *WAS* ERIK??), and then sometimes he'll "realize" things that make no sense. So do other characters. Like, there's this bit where Mike is reading his disappeared friend Erik's handwritten journal--the only clue to where he might've disappeared to--and Erik's describing a series of creepy experiences that involved him digging out a kiva and having various interactions with the supernatural. Erik sees a GLOWING RED marking appearing on his map. Erik also loses his pencil and it is REPLACED WITH A JAR. He randomly decides that the glowing red line "means" that a sinister spirit is looking for a way back into this world. But the snatching of his pencil and replacement with a weird jar is obviously just a spirit being mischievous--it's clearly a different entity doing THAT. And leaving him sunflowers. And stealing his sweater and bringing it back with another one with a sunflower on the tag. And kidnapping his dog and sending it back with sunflowers tucked into its collar. These are all friendly things. But the other mysterious happenings are bad entities. It's sinister. I just don't know why the characters are interpreting these things this way. Mike does it all the time--just figures out that someone's bad or good based on seemingly arbitrary things.
The daybook. It contains written records of stuff that happened to Erik presumably less than a day before he disappeared, at which point he was pleading for Mike to "HELP US!!!! FOR GOD'S SAKE!!!!" but . . . he somehow managed to make arrangements for a messenger to get the book to Mike when he was already in mortal danger. Guess he just sat down while being kidnapped and wrote about it, then sent his companion off with the errand. I don't understand the timeline of this.
The cop. When a business is burned to the ground and a police guy is investigating, he comes to talk to Mike and the Indian girl from the other world, Kawasi. Just finds them in a cafe or whatever and starts questioning them. Later, Mike's in the desert and THE COP COMES OUT THERE AND FINDS HIM and just starts asking him more questions and even suggesting that maybe he suspects Mike of being involved with the arson while admitting that he's "reaching" and "fishing." Oh my goodness. A policeman isn't going to come follow you into the desert for VERY URGENT follow-up questioning and then ramble for a while about how you could possibly be guilty but not do anything to arrest you or take you back for questioning. And if they have more questions for you they're not going to keep letting you wander around knowing you might become a suspect only to find you like three more times to talk about the investigation. Who is this jackass and how did he even get a job?
The suspicious woman, Eden. Mike has her pegged from the beginning because he's ~so smart and observant~ so he noticed that she has his books on the shelf but hasn't read them and must have just bought them, and he just happens to have marked the book that got stolen from his hotel so he knows she's behind it. But she's literally not involved in anything that makes any sense. She sent someone to steal the book? Yeah, and, uh, so? It leads nowhere. Her big revelatory moment is that she admits to being a poison woman, which was supposed to be this thing where the male characters are cautioned to never sleep with these woman because their nether parts will poison them. Eden proceeds to never try to trap anyone with her vagina. Who cares if she's poison? And when confronted with info that links her to Erik's disappearance, all she does is tell Mike not to go rescue him and ramble a lot about how she's watched and controlled by her people and has no real power. Why did she try to mess with Mike in the first place? The whole thing was just absurd.
The banker. I mentioned before that a guy just walks up to Mike in a restaurant and tells him stuff he needs to know about someone who will double-cross him, but he also deposits two and a half pages of his own history in the banking industry. It is completely irrelevant to the plot. There are other things like this too, like when Mike is realistically considering the possibility that he might die or get trapped in the other world on his rescue mission so he's wrapping up affairs, and then he opens a bunch of his letters and TELLS US WHAT THEY'RE ABOUT. They're all irrelevant. (Or, I guess they're trying to show how talented and well-rounded Mike is because he's conversing with people around the globe about topics on which he is considered an authority, but seriously, WE DON'T CARE.)
Also, apparently these people do not live in our universe, and I'm not talking about the people from the other dimension. There's a bit where Mike says that if Erik hadn't left his notes behind, everyone would have just assumed he fell off a cliff. Are you for real? Wealthy and well-connected science guy disappears and leaves behind no body and no clue, but sure, people would just assume he got lost in the desert and fell off something and no one would have investigated. That isn't how things work at all.
Mike also makes a lot of assumptions about the other-worlders and what they understand, and they always turn out to be right. For instance, at one point he believes he is being watched, correctly targets which of the other restaurant patrons is watching him, and manages to sneak out without being seen because he has correctly surmised that the other-world guy doesn't understand how doors work. He knows nothing about their culture or their sophistication, but he just figures hey, a guy from another world probably thinks this whole back wall made of glass is solid, but I know there's a door! Hee hee! He's not watching that door, only the front door! WIN!! What? And this is exploited even more when it turns out everybody in the bad old other world doesn't expect Mike to be able to fight. They just come after him and expect to stop him, but he gives them a couple good punches and they go down. Every single person he fights, with the exception of the final bad guy, goes down with a couple punches or a bullet. And it's repeatedly expressed that it's because no one resists them in their world and they aren't expecting a tough guy like our hero. I just . . . what? Why do you have a bunch of guards and armies but they don't actually fight? What do they DO? Mike's idea to FIGHT THEM is REVOLUTIONARY and NO ONE'S EVER THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE OMG. Kawasi and her people say they have only just "defended" when the bad guys come for them, but what does that mean? They stand in front of their houses and don't do anything or what? Mike's idea to FIGHT THEM is repeatedly portrayed as incredibly, shockingly original and radical, but there's no real explanation for how they got complacent except that they just kinda did.
And then, I just want to say there are so many disconnects with actual storytelling and with reality. Like, okay, if you find your friend in a mysterious stone dungeon right out of cartoons (with blocks that can be pressed to trigger sliding stone doors and everything), and he complains that the villains starved him, what do you do? Give him some of your trail mix? Or ignore the poor bastard until the third time he says he can't go on because he's too weak, THEN give him some food? Because the latter is what Mike did. I thought he must not have any food with him because Erik kept complaining that he was weak and starved, and then he pulls out the trail mix and I'm like WHY DIDN'T YOU DO THIS BEFORE? And it's more than 300 pages in before Mike suggests he might suddenly love Kawasi. The narration even acknowledges that they've spent no time together and that he didn't even know if he trusted her for most of that time, but suddenly their love is so important and he has to rescue her too and propose to take her back to his world and just suddenly start calling her "honey." Whaaaa. There's no warmth to it and no suggestion that Kawasi viewed him that way, but I guess he needed a girl to save. Sigh.
And finally, one more complaint about narration. There's this weird redundant storytelling style that makes me think an editor never saw the manuscript. Example:
"At a glance he realized the ruins were ancient, older than anything he had ever seen, anywhere. Mike Raglan had looked upon many ruins, but his first impression of this one was one of extreme age."
That happened constantly. Observation, followed by observation reiterated. Plus the narration had this maddening tendency to point out condescendingly obvious things. Here's one example:
"It was never easy for one people to understand another when their cultural backgrounds differ too drastically."
You don't say.
I had an incredibly difficult time finishing this book. The dialogue was staged and unrealistic; the Indian characters are portrayed as noble savages and mystics; the pacing is plodding and makes all the parts that are supposed to be exciting seem drawn out and tortured; and the book is both conceptually simplistic and executionally convoluted. It seemed like L'amour had a bunch of "cool" ideas about the Anasazi myths and some various Navajo folk traditions that he wanted to develop into a story, but when you write a story about your friend vanishing into an unknown other world, there should probably be some reason the bad guys are holding the prisoner and some compelling reason for the hero to help, and for this there's just nothing here. Pages and pages of the protagonist flolloping around in his head wondering what's going on and talking to people about how spooky it is, with absolutely no authentic character development and no driving force behind the plot or any of the relationships portrayed. I definitely would not have read past page 50 if this wasn't a book assigned by my book club, and I don't like to review books I haven't finished anyway. I'm honestly confused as to how anyone finds this book readable, to say nothing of finding it fun. Maybe there's a warmth people associate with the genre or some tropes I'm missing, because I experienced absolutely no connection with this and frequently felt like I was reading the unfinished first draft manuscript of an ambitious high school kid who'd just read a book about the Navajo and got enraptured, so it's just sort of shocking to me that this is the work of an extremely successful, established, experienced author. I don't know what happened here.
October 23, 2020
This is my first time reading L'Amour. I should say TRYING to read him. I didn't get far.
For one thing, he's in no rush to get his story underway, a trait shares with Max Brand.
On the plus side he employs uncomplicated language and short sentences. Now and then he gives us a longer passage. The problem is he goes on too long with the shorts and the longs are too far apart. A steady diet of these short sentences and their short words quickly grows tiresome.
Another complaint is he uses a limited vocabulary. Those same short words are oft repeated, many times in the same sentence or paragraph. There are a number of spots where a Thesaurus might have been consulted.
Haunted Mesa's plot isn't especially original; countless western writers have utilized it and it's been featured in movies starring Gene Autry, Hoot Gibson, Ken Maynard.
Overall I was disappointed.
I wish I had liked this. Westerns offer a rich field for all sort of genre settings and I like seeing them employed. The TV series Wild Wild West did a good job of mixing things. While Haunted Mesa isn't a western per se, the atmosphere is not far removed.
I was chiefly turned off by L'Amour's style. It wasn't for me. But as he has twelve gazillion followers spanning three solar systems I'm doubt anything I say will damage his reputation.
For one thing, he's in no rush to get his story underway, a trait shares with Max Brand.
On the plus side he employs uncomplicated language and short sentences. Now and then he gives us a longer passage. The problem is he goes on too long with the shorts and the longs are too far apart. A steady diet of these short sentences and their short words quickly grows tiresome.
Another complaint is he uses a limited vocabulary. Those same short words are oft repeated, many times in the same sentence or paragraph. There are a number of spots where a Thesaurus might have been consulted.
Haunted Mesa's plot isn't especially original; countless western writers have utilized it and it's been featured in movies starring Gene Autry, Hoot Gibson, Ken Maynard.
Overall I was disappointed.
I wish I had liked this. Westerns offer a rich field for all sort of genre settings and I like seeing them employed. The TV series Wild Wild West did a good job of mixing things. While Haunted Mesa isn't a western per se, the atmosphere is not far removed.
I was chiefly turned off by L'Amour's style. It wasn't for me. But as he has twelve gazillion followers spanning three solar systems I'm doubt anything I say will damage his reputation.
April 11, 2009
I thought that Louis L'Amour was a hack author - just turning out 'formula' Westerns, but when I read this book, I found that he is a very good author and very engaging. I have read many more of his novels and enjoyed them.
May 25, 2011
The Haunted Mesa is a book consisting of approximately 250 pages of a man trying to decide when and how to save his friend in another world and less than 100 pages of him actually doing it. Not one of the worst books I've ever read, but one that is disappointingly mediocre. Especially given the fact that I had read it as a child and had fond memories of it. I have read all of Louis L'amour's books, every single one of them between 4th and 6th grade and he was my all time favorite author during that time period. As an adult, I plan on re-reading them. Hopefully, the rest of them won't fall as flat on its face as this one did.
May 19, 2009
oh my god! how can a book about a lost race of indians from another dimension be this mindnumbingly boring? I think I actually got dumber as I read this book.
So a guy is building a house on a mesa in Utah/Arizona, and he manages to get himself kidnapped by indians from another dimension, who turn out to be related to the anasazi, an advanced civilization of native americans who lived in that area a thousand or so years ago. Now the Anasazi actually existed in real life, but they didn't disappear. They were the ancestors of the current pueblo indians. But in this book, they came from another dimension that got 'evil' all of a sudden, and then later decided that the southwest was too drought-y and filled with mean indians like navajos, so they went back to the other dimension, but the 'evil' was still there, living in a Oz/Wrinkle in Time/Logan's Run-style authoritarian citadel-like city. So they hid in the mountains. But the Oz indians still persecute them sometimes. And the Oz indians kidnapped this guy. So this other guy has to go get him.
L'Amour has probably enough ideas here for about a quarter of a book. But a quarter of a book does not a book make. So for the first 3/4 of the book, literally, the main character drives around debating about whether he should go to this other dimension. "What would be there? Would it be a world like ours? Who would I see? Could I save him? Should I go? Who should I tell? Can I bring my dog? What will the temperature be? What kind of weapons will they have? Should I just say screw it and go home? Should I pretend this never happened? Who will save this guy if I do that? Maybe I could go back to the diner and talk to the cop guy who doesn't believe in other-dimension indians?" This is well over half the book. I encourage readers of this book to read the first three chapters or so and then skip to the last quarter of the book. You will miss nothing.
So a guy is building a house on a mesa in Utah/Arizona, and he manages to get himself kidnapped by indians from another dimension, who turn out to be related to the anasazi, an advanced civilization of native americans who lived in that area a thousand or so years ago. Now the Anasazi actually existed in real life, but they didn't disappear. They were the ancestors of the current pueblo indians. But in this book, they came from another dimension that got 'evil' all of a sudden, and then later decided that the southwest was too drought-y and filled with mean indians like navajos, so they went back to the other dimension, but the 'evil' was still there, living in a Oz/Wrinkle in Time/Logan's Run-style authoritarian citadel-like city. So they hid in the mountains. But the Oz indians still persecute them sometimes. And the Oz indians kidnapped this guy. So this other guy has to go get him.
L'Amour has probably enough ideas here for about a quarter of a book. But a quarter of a book does not a book make. So for the first 3/4 of the book, literally, the main character drives around debating about whether he should go to this other dimension. "What would be there? Would it be a world like ours? Who would I see? Could I save him? Should I go? Who should I tell? Can I bring my dog? What will the temperature be? What kind of weapons will they have? Should I just say screw it and go home? Should I pretend this never happened? Who will save this guy if I do that? Maybe I could go back to the diner and talk to the cop guy who doesn't believe in other-dimension indians?" This is well over half the book. I encourage readers of this book to read the first three chapters or so and then skip to the last quarter of the book. You will miss nothing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 6, 2010
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. You hear him go over the few facts he has in his head and then he explains these facts to someone else and then he goes over them in his head again, and again. He keeps repeating that he’s scared, that he doesn’t know what he has gotten himself into or why, that he could just turn around and go home. He keeps asking the same unanswerable questions. The same things in much the same words over and over again until you could almost recite the passages yourself. Introspection is fine but in this case I don’t think we needed 250 pages of it. When there is no new information or new insights it starts to get monotonous. 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 anyway. He did make that point. Endlessly. It did pick up in the last 100 pages or so when thinking led 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.
February 3, 2018
So this book was mentioned in another book as being “a document of evidence” about the existence of alternate universes. I also glanced upon another review on GoodReads and I think what the book was about was stated very clearly in that review’s first sentence. “What the hell did I just read?”. I was left with the same impression. This book was one of L’Amour’s bestsellers, but my guess is that was related more to curiosity rather than to it being a great read. There was an opening mystery and a disappearance. Followed by many repeated questions and aimless wanderings. An alternate world appeared and an ancient people resurfaced. Two old timers fall in love with ancient “younger” women from another dimension. Many ancient Indian gods appear. There’s even a cameo by Bigfoot. All in all this book was a hot mess.
March 12, 2009
I thought this would be a western book so I didn't pick it up for awhile, then took it on vacation to Bandelier in New Mexico. Could not have picked a better book for this vacation. It is a good read about portals between worlds and the Anasazi indians who guard them.
May 3, 2016
"Το στοιχειωμένο οροπέδιο", εκδόσεις Bell.
Δέκατο πέμπτο βιβλίο του Λουίς Λ'Αμούρ που διαβάζω και έχουμε να κάνουμε μ'ένα αρκετά διαφορετικό βιβλίο σε σχέση με τα προηγούμενα του συγγραφέα. Πρώτα-πρώτα η ιστορία διαδραματίζεται σε σύγχρονη εποχή, κάποια χρονιά κατά την δεκαετία του '80, και όχι τον 19ο αιώνα όπως τα περισσότερα γουέστερν του. Δεύτερον και σημαντικότερον, υπάρχει έντονο το στοιχείο του υπερφυσικού και του Φανταστικού στην όλη ιστορία, και νομίζω ότι είναι η πρώτη και μοναδική τέτοια προσπάθεια του συγγραφέα, κάτι σίγουρα αξιοσημείωτο.
Ο Μάικ Ράγκλαν, φημισμένος ερευνητής παραφυσικών φαινομένων, δέχεται ένα μήνυμα από τον φίλο του, τον Έρικ Χόκαρτ, ο οποίος του ζητάει βοήθεια. Οι δυο τους ήταν να συναντηθούν σ'ένα απόμακρο σημείο της ερήμου ανάμεσα στην Γιούτα και το Κολοράντο, όμως ο Χόκαρτ δεν εμφανίστηκε ποτέ. Κάποια παράξενα γεγονότα κάνουν τον Ράγκλαν να επιστρέψει σπίτι του, όπου τον περιμένει το ημερολόγιο του φίλου του. Εκεί θα διαβάσει πολλά περίεργα πράγματα. Με τα λίγα στοιχεία που έχει στην κατοχή του, ο Ράγκλαν θ'αρχίσει να ψάχνει τον φίλο του σ'ένα οροπέδιο, ένα "μέσα", για το οποίο λέγονται πολλές ιστορίες με υπερφυσικές προεκτάσεις. Ο Ράγκλαν θα γνωρίσει και μια νεαρή Ινδιάνα, την Καβάσι, που λέει ότι προέρχεται από έναν παράλληλο κόσμο...
Έχουμε να κάνουμε με μια πολύ ενδιαφέρουσα, χορταστική και καλογραμμένη περιπέτεια, που συνδυάζει επιτυχημένα το γουέστερν και την δράση με το υπερφυσικό. Ο Λ'Αμούρ είναι πραγματικά αξεπέραστος όσον αφορά τις περιγραφές των όμορφων τοπίων της Άγριας Δύσης καθώς και των σκηνών δράσης, και στο βιβλίο αυτό δείχνει μεγάλο μέρος των δυνατοτήτων του. Όμως νομίζω ότι τα κατάφερε αρκετά καλά και με το υπερφυσικό κομμάτι, που είχε να κάνει μ'έναν παράλληλο κόσμο και την μυθολογία των Ινδιάνων Ανασάζι. Με όλες τις περιγραφές και τις αναφορές γύρω από τους Ανασάζι και τα μέρη στα οποία έζησαν, μου κίνησε για τα καλά το ενδιαφέρον και μ'έκανε να ψάξω σχετικά στο ίντερνετ.
Γενικά πρόκειται για ένα ακόμα πολύ ωραίο και καλογραμμένο βιβλίο του μεγάλου αυτού συγγραφέα, διπλάσιο σε μέγεθος συγκριτικά με τα γουέστερν του που έχω διαβάσει, το οποίο προσφέρει δράση, μυστήριο, φαντασία και πολλές όμορφες εικόνες από άγρια τοπία. Σίγουρα το βιβλίο δεν είναι άριστο, υπάρχουν ίσως κάποια αναπάντητα ερωτήματα στην πλοκή και σε μερικά σημεία αργεί κάπως, στο σύνολό του όμως είναι ένα άκρως ψυχαγωγικό και ενδιαφέρον μυθιστόρημα, ό,τι πρέπει για να περάσει γρήγορα και ευχάριστα η ώρα.
Δέκατο πέμπτο βιβλίο του Λουίς Λ'Αμούρ που διαβάζω και έχουμε να κάνουμε μ'ένα αρκετά διαφορετικό βιβλίο σε σχέση με τα προηγούμενα του συγγραφέα. Πρώτα-πρώτα η ιστορία διαδραματίζεται σε σύγχρονη εποχή, κάποια χρονιά κατά την δεκαετία του '80, και όχι τον 19ο αιώνα όπως τα περισσότερα γουέστερν του. Δεύτερον και σημαντικότερον, υπάρχει έντονο το στοιχείο του υπερφυσικού και του Φανταστικού στην όλη ιστορία, και νομίζω ότι είναι η πρώτη και μοναδική τέτοια προσπάθεια του συγγραφέα, κάτι σίγουρα αξιοσημείωτο.
Ο Μάικ Ράγκλαν, φημισμένος ερευνητής παραφυσικών φαινομένων, δέχεται ένα μήνυμα από τον φίλο του, τον Έρικ Χόκαρτ, ο οποίος του ζητάει βοήθεια. Οι δυο τους ήταν να συναντηθούν σ'ένα απόμακρο σημείο της ερήμου ανάμεσα στην Γιούτα και το Κολοράντο, όμως ο Χόκαρτ δεν εμφανίστηκε ποτέ. Κάποια παράξενα γεγονότα κάνουν τον Ράγκλαν να επιστρέψει σπίτι του, όπου τον περιμένει το ημερολόγιο του φίλου του. Εκεί θα διαβάσει πολλά περίεργα πράγματα. Με τα λίγα στοιχεία που έχει στην κατοχή του, ο Ράγκλαν θ'αρχίσει να ψάχνει τον φίλο του σ'ένα οροπέδιο, ένα "μέσα", για το οποίο λέγονται πολλές ιστορίες με υπερφυσικές προεκτάσεις. Ο Ράγκλαν θα γνωρίσει και μια νεαρή Ινδιάνα, την Καβάσι, που λέει ότι προέρχεται από έναν παράλληλο κόσμο...
Έχουμε να κάνουμε με μια πολύ ενδιαφέρουσα, χορταστική και καλογραμμένη περιπέτεια, που συνδυάζει επιτυχημένα το γουέστερν και την δράση με το υπερφυσικό. Ο Λ'Αμούρ είναι πραγματικά αξεπέραστος όσον αφορά τις περιγραφές των όμορφων τοπίων της Άγριας Δύσης καθώς και των σκηνών δράσης, και στο βιβλίο αυτό δείχνει μεγάλο μέρος των δυνατοτήτων του. Όμως νομίζω ότι τα κατάφερε αρκετά καλά και με το υπερφυσικό κομμάτι, που είχε να κάνει μ'έναν παράλληλο κόσμο και την μυθολογία των Ινδιάνων Ανασάζι. Με όλες τις περιγραφές και τις αναφορές γύρω από τους Ανασάζι και τα μέρη στα οποία έζησαν, μου κίνησε για τα καλά το ενδιαφέρον και μ'έκανε να ψάξω σχετικά στο ίντερνετ.
Γενικά πρόκειται για ένα ακόμα πολύ ωραίο και καλογραμμένο βιβλίο του μεγάλου αυτού συγγραφέα, διπλάσιο σε μέγεθος συγκριτικά με τα γουέστερν του που έχω διαβάσει, το οποίο προσφέρει δράση, μυστήριο, φαντασία και πολλές όμορφες εικόνες από άγρια τοπία. Σίγουρα το βιβλίο δεν είναι άριστο, υπάρχουν ίσως κάποια αναπάντητα ερωτήματα στην πλοκή και σε μερικά σημεία αργεί κάπως, στο σύνολό του όμως είναι ένα άκρως ψυχαγωγικό και ενδιαφέρον μυθιστόρημα, ό,τι πρέπει για να περάσει γρήγορα και ευχάριστα η ώρα.
December 28, 2012
How can I diss such a great author as Louis L'Amour? I really went back and forth between a 2 star rating and a 4 star rating, so settled with 3 stars. I loved the story. He is a master in telling a great and interesting tale, and it is rich with history, so how can someone that has over 120 books and over 300 million books in print be so careless about details especially in the first 300 pages? The last 100 pages were thrilling. I don't want to give anything away, however the first 3/4's of the book is mostly spent in the mind of the hero while drinking coffee in whole in the wall cafes. The author repeats the same history several times in much of the same way, and then makes blatant errors regarding his dog on many occasions. At least three times people are able to walk right up on them while asleep or camping out in the desert and the dog does nothing, after having been built up early in the book as a huge aggressive guard dog that no one could approach. In the entire book the dog is fed two cans of dog food and one cracker, is often forgotten about to just miraculously reappear as an after thought...I'm sure you get the point.
What was particularly frustrating in this book was the blatant mistakes (not spelling or grammatical errors just plot problems) and the repeated history lessons, oh yes and his favorite line...getting cold at night, as deserts are apt to be. The frustrating part was hanging in there and wading through the first 300 pages to get to the much, much, did I mention much anticipated ending. Do I regret staying with it? No not entirely as the story line was very interesting and the ending (although somewhat predictable)was what I had so eagerly been waiting for. My regret is that I didn't just read the first chapter or two and then skip to page 300 and finish it from there. :)This book could have been Great! As written it barely pulls three stars. Sorry LL, I still admire you as an author, as a great story teller, and am thrilled all your books are still in circulation 25 years after you passed on to the next realm.
What was particularly frustrating in this book was the blatant mistakes (not spelling or grammatical errors just plot problems) and the repeated history lessons, oh yes and his favorite line...getting cold at night, as deserts are apt to be. The frustrating part was hanging in there and wading through the first 300 pages to get to the much, much, did I mention much anticipated ending. Do I regret staying with it? No not entirely as the story line was very interesting and the ending (although somewhat predictable)was what I had so eagerly been waiting for. My regret is that I didn't just read the first chapter or two and then skip to page 300 and finish it from there. :)This book could have been Great! As written it barely pulls three stars. Sorry LL, I still admire you as an author, as a great story teller, and am thrilled all your books are still in circulation 25 years after you passed on to the next realm.
April 22, 2022
Typical of me to start a big name author with what is, according to other reviews, not his best. Bad writing in need of an edit, repetitive narration, meandering plot for the first two thirds. Meh.
March 28, 2017
I actually read this several years ago. I had read several stories of Louis L'Amour and expected this to be a Western. But this is quite different, even though it takes place in the West in Navajo country. It gives a speculative interpretation of ancient myths of ancient ones that came out of the earth. It turns out that there is really a portal between two worlds, and that the myths were not really wild tales.
I know that there are plenty of science fiction stories about dimensional gates, but L'Amour puts a fresh spin on things. I liked the story very much, even though there were a few parts hard to swallow.
I know that there are plenty of science fiction stories about dimensional gates, but L'Amour puts a fresh spin on things. I liked the story very much, even though there were a few parts hard to swallow.
February 3, 2021
Mike Raglan receives a letter from his friend Erik requesting help. When Mike arrives at their meeting place, Erik never shows up but a beatiful young woman does. Erik has gone to another deminsion and is trapped by an evil group. Mike has to cross over and rescue his friend and return to this universe before the gates close. This is one of the few books by L'Amour that involve supernatural forces.
November 9, 2022
I've read a few books by the legendary Western writer and they are typically engaging. L'Armour's stories take you through rivers and streams, canyons, forests, and pull the reader into an earlier time. The Haunted Mesa was a bit different. It was one of the last books he had written and it didn't take on the usual shoot 'em up style or focus on settling a new land. This one was more of a science fiction thriller, investigating what may have happened to the Anasazi, the cave dwellers of New Mexico that disappeared within a generation between 1275-1300 AD.
Mike Raglan is a paranormal writer that gets pulled in to investigating the disappearance of his friend Erik Hokart, who had called out to Raglan through journals he left behind. After a bit of research, it was believed that Erik disappeared through a "kiva" or a sort of port hole that connects to a new dimension. And some believe that the Anasazi may have disappeared into a similar dimension.
This was a bit beyond the style of genre that I'll seek out, but I love reading about the American Southwest and wanted to read something by L'Amour that went outside of what he typically wrote. There are many theories that explain what may have happened to the Anasazi, and of the most logical is that drought is what led to their disappearance, as they relied heavily on agriculture, but L'Amour entertained the idea and thought it possible that perhaps they fell back into another dimension, like something out of the Twilight Zone.
"The Hopi and some other Indians believed this was the Fourth World. Of the two first worlds they professed to remember little or nothing, but because the Third World had become evil, they had fled through a hole in the ground into this world. That was one of the legends."
It was an interesting read - one that I enjoyed more at the beginning as the story was being set up. It felt like it drug on a bit, while it could have been shortened and just gotten to the point. But it nonetheless included some exciting scenes and interesting characters. I picked the book up at a place called Bookishly Happy in Couer d'Alene, and now that I'm done with this one, I can get back there to pick up something new.
Mike Raglan is a paranormal writer that gets pulled in to investigating the disappearance of his friend Erik Hokart, who had called out to Raglan through journals he left behind. After a bit of research, it was believed that Erik disappeared through a "kiva" or a sort of port hole that connects to a new dimension. And some believe that the Anasazi may have disappeared into a similar dimension.
This was a bit beyond the style of genre that I'll seek out, but I love reading about the American Southwest and wanted to read something by L'Amour that went outside of what he typically wrote. There are many theories that explain what may have happened to the Anasazi, and of the most logical is that drought is what led to their disappearance, as they relied heavily on agriculture, but L'Amour entertained the idea and thought it possible that perhaps they fell back into another dimension, like something out of the Twilight Zone.
"The Hopi and some other Indians believed this was the Fourth World. Of the two first worlds they professed to remember little or nothing, but because the Third World had become evil, they had fled through a hole in the ground into this world. That was one of the legends."
It was an interesting read - one that I enjoyed more at the beginning as the story was being set up. It felt like it drug on a bit, while it could have been shortened and just gotten to the point. But it nonetheless included some exciting scenes and interesting characters. I picked the book up at a place called Bookishly Happy in Couer d'Alene, and now that I'm done with this one, I can get back there to pick up something new.
August 29, 2025
This book was, as far as I know, Louis L'Amour's only foray into science fiction, and it was fascinating. I read it many years ago and loved it, and I'm thinking it's due for a re-read.
My memory of specifics of "The Haunted Mesa" is spotty, but I do recall the plot: the hero of the story, a detective, is searching for a missing person. His investigation leads to Arizona, where he discovers a gateway to a parallel universe.
Of course, he enters the gateway and discovers where the lost Indian tribe, the Anasazi, disappeared to, as well as a lot of other missing people. As expected from L'Amour, the book was fun and action-packed, as well as an interesting take on lost Native American tribes and the idea of the Multiverse. (Keep in mind, this was written in 1987.)
My memory of specifics of "The Haunted Mesa" is spotty, but I do recall the plot: the hero of the story, a detective, is searching for a missing person. His investigation leads to Arizona, where he discovers a gateway to a parallel universe.
Of course, he enters the gateway and discovers where the lost Indian tribe, the Anasazi, disappeared to, as well as a lot of other missing people. As expected from L'Amour, the book was fun and action-packed, as well as an interesting take on lost Native American tribes and the idea of the Multiverse. (Keep in mind, this was written in 1987.)
December 26, 2020
I love the author, and read everything with his name on it. This one was a bit of a miss for me though. A modern western, L'Amour dived into the mystery of the Anasazi. In doing so, he also sent the reader into the metaphysic ideas that have grown around the legend over the last century plus. The story is a thriller as well, but the author spends (IMHO) too much time with Mike Raglan's internal monologue, especially where he dithers over rescuing his friend.
I'm glad I read it, but this will probably not work its way into my reread pile for awhile.
Find it. Buy it. Read it.
I'm glad I read it, but this will probably not work its way into my reread pile for awhile.
Find it. Buy it. Read it.
September 6, 2017
A good idea with total mediocre execution. The prime example of a 'it's okay' book. A perfect fit for the two star rank.
Mike Raglan is a myth debunk-er - a profession he stumbled up on in his youth when outing a sham magician. Called on all over the world, he travels and investigates the magical, supernatural, and otherworldly - and while he's not a cynic and seeks these things in part because he too wants to believe, he's skeptical and therefore able to dig out the facts.
For this reason, when his scientist friend stumbles upon something really weird on the site that he's building, a middle-of-nowhere-mesa, and finds himself in some really weird trouble...Erik knows just who to call (or in this case, write. It's set in the 70's.)
There was some question about whether or not this would fit in my 'Supernatural' square. After all, L'Amour writes westerns, right? The book flap indicated that it was a possibility that L'Amour would go there, so I gave it a shot. As he was a life long student of Indian history and Indian mysticism, even if it didn't fit, I knew I'd learn something along the way. I did enjoy a little tidbit here and there AND it definitely went supernatural.
The premise of the book revolves around the disappearance of the cave dwellers that were in this part of the world prior to the Hopi, Ute and Navajo Indian. This area, the four-corners of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, is home to many ruins and mystery - and at the time of L'Amour's writing - undiscovered history.
Mike's friend Erik stumbles upon what might of happened to these people, and while Mike is looking for Erik who has disappeared, he is reminded of all the lore and myth that surrounds this area...eventually locating doorways to the "Third World" or another dimension from which the cave dwellers came and went. The story concludes with Mike crossing the veil, rescuing Erik who was being held prisoner there, along with a couple of other people who'd found themselves stuck on the other side.
The Haunted Mesa had all the promise of a great read, but L'Amour's writing kept it from being anything special. His constant use of questions in the Mike's inner dialogue to move the narrative along was beyond frustrating and felt very amateurish..."Where had Erik gone? Was he okay? Is there really something to these old tales? Was he going to go after him? Was he stuck there? Where was Erik?"...over and over and over again.
Additionally, Mike lacked any conviction in his decisions, which made him a weak hero. I'm sure that this is actually L'Amour's schtick - Mike was no hero, he was just an everyday man who was trying to make the right, brave choice. I'd be okay with that but Mike had apparently been all over the world to include dangerous places, knew things like jujitsu and how to handle a gun, and was somewhat of a survivalist. You can't have it both ways - he was either someone who spent a great deal of time being brave and high-spirited, or he was an indecisive wet-rag. He needed to pick one for conviction of character.
I can't say I'd recommend this, but I'm glad I read it because it knocked one more book off the ole' Mount TBR, and another off L'Amour's catalogue.
Mike Raglan is a myth debunk-er - a profession he stumbled up on in his youth when outing a sham magician. Called on all over the world, he travels and investigates the magical, supernatural, and otherworldly - and while he's not a cynic and seeks these things in part because he too wants to believe, he's skeptical and therefore able to dig out the facts.
For this reason, when his scientist friend stumbles upon something really weird on the site that he's building, a middle-of-nowhere-mesa, and finds himself in some really weird trouble...Erik knows just who to call (or in this case, write. It's set in the 70's.)
There was some question about whether or not this would fit in my 'Supernatural' square. After all, L'Amour writes westerns, right? The book flap indicated that it was a possibility that L'Amour would go there, so I gave it a shot. As he was a life long student of Indian history and Indian mysticism, even if it didn't fit, I knew I'd learn something along the way. I did enjoy a little tidbit here and there AND it definitely went supernatural.
The premise of the book revolves around the disappearance of the cave dwellers that were in this part of the world prior to the Hopi, Ute and Navajo Indian. This area, the four-corners of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, is home to many ruins and mystery - and at the time of L'Amour's writing - undiscovered history.
Mike's friend Erik stumbles upon what might of happened to these people, and while Mike is looking for Erik who has disappeared, he is reminded of all the lore and myth that surrounds this area...eventually locating doorways to the "Third World" or another dimension from which the cave dwellers came and went. The story concludes with Mike crossing the veil, rescuing Erik who was being held prisoner there, along with a couple of other people who'd found themselves stuck on the other side.
The Haunted Mesa had all the promise of a great read, but L'Amour's writing kept it from being anything special. His constant use of questions in the Mike's inner dialogue to move the narrative along was beyond frustrating and felt very amateurish..."Where had Erik gone? Was he okay? Is there really something to these old tales? Was he going to go after him? Was he stuck there? Where was Erik?"...over and over and over again.
Additionally, Mike lacked any conviction in his decisions, which made him a weak hero. I'm sure that this is actually L'Amour's schtick - Mike was no hero, he was just an everyday man who was trying to make the right, brave choice. I'd be okay with that but Mike had apparently been all over the world to include dangerous places, knew things like jujitsu and how to handle a gun, and was somewhat of a survivalist. You can't have it both ways - he was either someone who spent a great deal of time being brave and high-spirited, or he was an indecisive wet-rag. He needed to pick one for conviction of character.
I can't say I'd recommend this, but I'm glad I read it because it knocked one more book off the ole' Mount TBR, and another off L'Amour's catalogue.
August 24, 2023
1995
I noted that it was "very good," but I don't remember anything about the story ... time to read it again.
2023
Fun! I bet L'Amour enjoyed writing this book. There's a similarity to Hillerman, but L'Amour includes quite a bit of background info about the Anasazi and about phenomena worldwide that aren't easily explained.
There's some repetition, but it feels realistic. Someone pondering a 'mystery' constantly reviews the facts as well as the possibilities.
I marked quite a few passages, a few of which I've included here.
p 122
The small town of Dove Creek lay just ahead. This was one of the places where Zane Grey had lived briefly and where the local citizens claimed much of 'Riders of the Purple Sage' had been written.
p 133
"The world is changing fast. When I was a youngster there were still a hundred jobs a man could do who had no education. Most of them have vanished. It's not even a machine world as we knew it. Now it's a computer world, and if you don't have education and the ability to adapt you're out of it. ... " (re: copyright 1987)
174
Actually, if we want to be happy on our green earth, the last thing we want is a visit from a superior people from outer space. ... the probability is we would have to learn a new language, a new math, and an entirely different way of looking at things.
245
Each man's vision of reality is based upon his life experience, the influences of people, places, books, dreams, work, all the various aspect of his existence that go to make up him or her. ...Each of us has a vision of the world that belongs to him alone.
I'm curious about L'Amour. I may need to read his memoir.
I noted that it was "very good," but I don't remember anything about the story ... time to read it again.
2023
Fun! I bet L'Amour enjoyed writing this book. There's a similarity to Hillerman, but L'Amour includes quite a bit of background info about the Anasazi and about phenomena worldwide that aren't easily explained.
There's some repetition, but it feels realistic. Someone pondering a 'mystery' constantly reviews the facts as well as the possibilities.
I marked quite a few passages, a few of which I've included here.
p 122
The small town of Dove Creek lay just ahead. This was one of the places where Zane Grey had lived briefly and where the local citizens claimed much of 'Riders of the Purple Sage' had been written.
p 133
"The world is changing fast. When I was a youngster there were still a hundred jobs a man could do who had no education. Most of them have vanished. It's not even a machine world as we knew it. Now it's a computer world, and if you don't have education and the ability to adapt you're out of it. ... " (re: copyright 1987)
174
Actually, if we want to be happy on our green earth, the last thing we want is a visit from a superior people from outer space. ... the probability is we would have to learn a new language, a new math, and an entirely different way of looking at things.
245
Each man's vision of reality is based upon his life experience, the influences of people, places, books, dreams, work, all the various aspect of his existence that go to make up him or her. ...Each of us has a vision of the world that belongs to him alone.
I'm curious about L'Amour. I may need to read his memoir.
July 10, 2010
Quick! Gut reaction: Okay, this is all just too weird.
Short Summation
Mike Raglan’s friend, Erik, is missing. Now, Mike’s made his living with weird stuff, so when someone delivers Erik’s journal to him and it looks like Erik’s disappeared into a parallel world, he’s more apt to believe in the possibly than most.
Lots of history on the Navajo, Hopi and what the Navajo called the Anasazi. If you’re not familiar, those’re the people who said they came to this world from another one, where a great evil was taking over.
So you can probably see where this book is going. If, you know, you forget that it’s L’Amour.
Why this book?
This is supposed to be the weirdest book, because of who its author is and because of what it is. More on that in “How’d it go?” but yeah---that and the fact that the authors of Hunt for the Skinwalker recommended it is why.
How’d it go?
Okay, back when I graduated from reading Hank the Cowdog, you had basically three choices with our rather small school library. You became a fan of Mary Higgins Clark, Christopher Pike, or Louis L’Amour. I chose the fisrt one, with some dabbling into the second, before I finally dove full into horror, which meant almost no more trips to that library.
I didn’t get around to L’Amour because he’s western writer. I lived that all summer, every summer. And aside from the riding and cattle-working and all the other stuff tied into it, I enjoyed the hell out of the westerns we watched. But I just couldn’t think in the vein of reading it.
So, this is my very first L’Amour book. And it’s the “weird” one. From what I understand all L’Amour’s work is not only western, but of the Old West. This book takes place in “modern times.” (That is, mine says this was copyrighted in 1978.) I think that people who never spent real time out in the area this book is set would think it seemed, at times, to take place much earlier. (Or, that is, people whose fathers weren’t raised out there, and so didn’t grow up hearing stories of it.)
B, it’s the book of a very pragmatic sort of man, and it deals with a freakin’ parallel world. And all very mystical and whatnot. Delves very much into the myths around the Anasazi, using those stories to create this theory of a story. There’s also just tad on skinwalkers.
It’s the kind of book I enjoyed because I have just a little more than no knowledge about the Anasazi or the history of the peoples around the Four Corners (the area where New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado come together.) Skinwalker Ranch, written about in Hunt for the Skinwalker, is in Utah.
It’s a weird experience for me because it interested me based on the fact that it’s just an odd book for L’Amour to have written and because Native American myths and history fascinates me, in certain forms. (That is, I can’t sit down and read a textbook about it.)
The plot, however, is rather...awful. Felt very pieced together, convenient in places (like, oh dear, there’s no real urgency---I know, we’ll throw in this other thing about the doorways between worlds we haven’t mentioned at all until now, and that’ll give the plot what it needs.) There’s a romance in it that just completely baffled me. I wasn’t even aware the man and woman considered one another friends, then all the sudden he’s confessing love for her.
And there is a whole, whole lot of repetition and third person narrative questions. Mike’s sittin’ around, thinking about all that’s going on, and the narration will have two paragraphs of questions. What’s going on? Was it the Anasazi? And if the doorways close forever, then what? And why was he going after Erik anyway? When is a raven like a writing desk?
And, while I did enjoy the Native American history, I could have done without a lot of the repetition of that, too. There were two or three sentences that came up, with slightly different wordings, every time there was a recap of Navajo and Hopi history, and then a new sentence would be added in, to show this recap was “different.”
And (yup, that’s three paragraphs in a row I’m beginning with a conjunction) I was very much not a fan of the way L’Amour handled the Shut Up and Believe It factor. Or, rather, the way he refused to handle it. Because it was in his way. Dealing with the characters and formulating a believable and engaging plot---these things got in the way of what he was really trying to do, which was convey his notion of an alternate dimension.
What I’m trying to say is, there were a lot of problems with the plotting, the characterization, and the writing. But then there’d be spots that were just beautiful. Like, “Leaves whispered their secrets into the stillness, then held still, listening for replies that never came.”
It was just odd. And then ideas---there are ideas that, of course, I’ve heard a lot of, but the way he put them somehow rang with more truth. In some cases, maybe because they were simpler. In others, because they drew from just the right places, with just the right progression. You know, stuff like, “Man has demonstrated over and over again that the last thing he wants are new ideas, even when they are desperately needed.”
I enjoyed his vision of the alternate dimension, even if it wasn’t as imaginative as it would have been in the hands of a science fiction or fantasy writer. Maybe it’s nice that this was the case; made it easier to focus on the ideas L’Amour was sharing. It would have been nice if it was a tad less Orwellian, however.
That’s the thing about this book, to me; it reads as if the ideas, the theories, the conveying of this mythology was the whole point. The plot, characters, and all that were just thrown in as a weak and faulty engine. Didn’t matter, though, because the ideas and mythology drove itself. The concept! That’s the word I’m looking for. The concept, I thought, was awesome. The story was useless. I won’t remember much (if anything) of it or the characters in a few months. But the concept will stay with me for a very long time.
Short Summation
Mike Raglan’s friend, Erik, is missing. Now, Mike’s made his living with weird stuff, so when someone delivers Erik’s journal to him and it looks like Erik’s disappeared into a parallel world, he’s more apt to believe in the possibly than most.
Lots of history on the Navajo, Hopi and what the Navajo called the Anasazi. If you’re not familiar, those’re the people who said they came to this world from another one, where a great evil was taking over.
So you can probably see where this book is going. If, you know, you forget that it’s L’Amour.
Why this book?
This is supposed to be the weirdest book, because of who its author is and because of what it is. More on that in “How’d it go?” but yeah---that and the fact that the authors of Hunt for the Skinwalker recommended it is why.
How’d it go?
Okay, back when I graduated from reading Hank the Cowdog, you had basically three choices with our rather small school library. You became a fan of Mary Higgins Clark, Christopher Pike, or Louis L’Amour. I chose the fisrt one, with some dabbling into the second, before I finally dove full into horror, which meant almost no more trips to that library.
I didn’t get around to L’Amour because he’s western writer. I lived that all summer, every summer. And aside from the riding and cattle-working and all the other stuff tied into it, I enjoyed the hell out of the westerns we watched. But I just couldn’t think in the vein of reading it.
So, this is my very first L’Amour book. And it’s the “weird” one. From what I understand all L’Amour’s work is not only western, but of the Old West. This book takes place in “modern times.” (That is, mine says this was copyrighted in 1978.) I think that people who never spent real time out in the area this book is set would think it seemed, at times, to take place much earlier. (Or, that is, people whose fathers weren’t raised out there, and so didn’t grow up hearing stories of it.)
B, it’s the book of a very pragmatic sort of man, and it deals with a freakin’ parallel world. And all very mystical and whatnot. Delves very much into the myths around the Anasazi, using those stories to create this theory of a story. There’s also just tad on skinwalkers.
It’s the kind of book I enjoyed because I have just a little more than no knowledge about the Anasazi or the history of the peoples around the Four Corners (the area where New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado come together.) Skinwalker Ranch, written about in Hunt for the Skinwalker, is in Utah.
It’s a weird experience for me because it interested me based on the fact that it’s just an odd book for L’Amour to have written and because Native American myths and history fascinates me, in certain forms. (That is, I can’t sit down and read a textbook about it.)
The plot, however, is rather...awful. Felt very pieced together, convenient in places (like, oh dear, there’s no real urgency---I know, we’ll throw in this other thing about the doorways between worlds we haven’t mentioned at all until now, and that’ll give the plot what it needs.) There’s a romance in it that just completely baffled me. I wasn’t even aware the man and woman considered one another friends, then all the sudden he’s confessing love for her.
And there is a whole, whole lot of repetition and third person narrative questions. Mike’s sittin’ around, thinking about all that’s going on, and the narration will have two paragraphs of questions. What’s going on? Was it the Anasazi? And if the doorways close forever, then what? And why was he going after Erik anyway? When is a raven like a writing desk?
And, while I did enjoy the Native American history, I could have done without a lot of the repetition of that, too. There were two or three sentences that came up, with slightly different wordings, every time there was a recap of Navajo and Hopi history, and then a new sentence would be added in, to show this recap was “different.”
And (yup, that’s three paragraphs in a row I’m beginning with a conjunction) I was very much not a fan of the way L’Amour handled the Shut Up and Believe It factor. Or, rather, the way he refused to handle it. Because it was in his way. Dealing with the characters and formulating a believable and engaging plot---these things got in the way of what he was really trying to do, which was convey his notion of an alternate dimension.
What I’m trying to say is, there were a lot of problems with the plotting, the characterization, and the writing. But then there’d be spots that were just beautiful. Like, “Leaves whispered their secrets into the stillness, then held still, listening for replies that never came.”
It was just odd. And then ideas---there are ideas that, of course, I’ve heard a lot of, but the way he put them somehow rang with more truth. In some cases, maybe because they were simpler. In others, because they drew from just the right places, with just the right progression. You know, stuff like, “Man has demonstrated over and over again that the last thing he wants are new ideas, even when they are desperately needed.”
I enjoyed his vision of the alternate dimension, even if it wasn’t as imaginative as it would have been in the hands of a science fiction or fantasy writer. Maybe it’s nice that this was the case; made it easier to focus on the ideas L’Amour was sharing. It would have been nice if it was a tad less Orwellian, however.
That’s the thing about this book, to me; it reads as if the ideas, the theories, the conveying of this mythology was the whole point. The plot, characters, and all that were just thrown in as a weak and faulty engine. Didn’t matter, though, because the ideas and mythology drove itself. The concept! That’s the word I’m looking for. The concept, I thought, was awesome. The story was useless. I won’t remember much (if anything) of it or the characters in a few months. But the concept will stay with me for a very long time.
June 19, 2023
3.5, it gets dry at times but it's great when it's moving.
April 16, 2023
This is my favorite Louis L’Amour book
August 28, 2017
I did enjoy this novel, but it took forever to read. L'amore spends the bulk of the novel as the main character thinking about and questioning what he needs to do in order to save his friend. There were times I felt like I was re-reading pages over and over and over again. "What's there? How will I make it? This is dangerous. I should just leave." For pages and ages. By the end, I was just ready to be done with the whole story.
June 10, 2019
What the ?! I have never read a Louis L'Amour book in my LIFE but this one was sitting on the shelf at the Manti house (Manti house: pioneer era home, in a small town called Manti, been in my family for generations). So I picked it up, it seemed like just the thing to read in an old pioneer town.
But it felt like reading a Scooby Doo episode. Mike Raglan, an Indiana Jones type researcher, adventurer, seen-it-all type goes down to the desert to help his old rich reclusive scientist pal after his mysterious plea for help. But when he gets there? No pal. Just m y s t e r y . oooooh. But at first I honestly didn't hate it. I was like ok, yeah, a spooky mesa, some weird lights up there, an eerie feeling, a mysterious map, yeah! Let's do it!
Then a mysterious babe appears, some mysterious bad guys rifling through his stuff. It takes a turn towards the supernatural which REALLY threw me off - isn't Louis L'Amour like, a cowboy writer? The rest of the book was all about like, stumbling into other dimensions, hot inter-dimensional ladies, treasure, and vehicles bouncing around the desert terrain at night.
I really truly kept picturing it just like a Scooby Doo episode. If the Mystery Gang had appeared at the end in their van to unmask the bad guys I would not have been the least bit surprised. And I gave this book two stars, because I didn't hate it, and I definitely wanted to see where on earth ol' L'Amour was going to throw his characters next - into a UFO? Anything seemed possible there at the end. It was so random.
But it felt like reading a Scooby Doo episode. Mike Raglan, an Indiana Jones type researcher, adventurer, seen-it-all type goes down to the desert to help his old rich reclusive scientist pal after his mysterious plea for help. But when he gets there? No pal. Just m y s t e r y . oooooh. But at first I honestly didn't hate it. I was like ok, yeah, a spooky mesa, some weird lights up there, an eerie feeling, a mysterious map, yeah! Let's do it!
Then a mysterious babe appears, some mysterious bad guys rifling through his stuff. It takes a turn towards the supernatural which REALLY threw me off - isn't Louis L'Amour like, a cowboy writer? The rest of the book was all about like, stumbling into other dimensions, hot inter-dimensional ladies, treasure, and vehicles bouncing around the desert terrain at night.
I really truly kept picturing it just like a Scooby Doo episode. If the Mystery Gang had appeared at the end in their van to unmask the bad guys I would not have been the least bit surprised. And I gave this book two stars, because I didn't hate it, and I definitely wanted to see where on earth ol' L'Amour was going to throw his characters next - into a UFO? Anything seemed possible there at the end. It was so random.
August 2, 2009
I've always been fascinated by the Anasazi people, those who inhabited the now American Southwest, and lived in cliff dwellings. Every chance I get while vacationing in those areas, I make sure to visit the National Park sites that host cliff dwellings, and try to learn what I can about them. I find myself wondering and speculating about what life might have been like for them, their families, work lives, activities, and so forth. Their relatively sudden disappearances from the places where they lived are still a mystery.
The Haunted Mesa is Louis L'Amour's imagined story involving the Anasazi, though set in modern day times. It is one of the few he wrote with elements of the supernatural in it, yet still characterized by the mystery and suspense and adventure of his earlier works.
As a side note, I read this book while living in California in 1988. Shortly afterwards, L'Amour came to a nearby bookstore (in Costa Mesa as I recall) for a book signing. I so wanted to go to that event to meet the man whose books I had enjoyed since I was a teenager, but it conflicted with one of the class times in my Ph.D. program. Like a serious scholar, I chose to attend class instead, and I have regretted it ever since. L'Amour passed away just a few weeks later.
The Haunted Mesa is Louis L'Amour's imagined story involving the Anasazi, though set in modern day times. It is one of the few he wrote with elements of the supernatural in it, yet still characterized by the mystery and suspense and adventure of his earlier works.
As a side note, I read this book while living in California in 1988. Shortly afterwards, L'Amour came to a nearby bookstore (in Costa Mesa as I recall) for a book signing. I so wanted to go to that event to meet the man whose books I had enjoyed since I was a teenager, but it conflicted with one of the class times in my Ph.D. program. Like a serious scholar, I chose to attend class instead, and I have regretted it ever since. L'Amour passed away just a few weeks later.
November 14, 2017
The idea of the story was good but the dialogue, I swear, was so staccato LIKE , not only did the people from the other world speak like that but so did people from our earth??? THE DIALOGUE WAS SO AWKWARD
October 11, 2020
Louis should stick to westerns and historic fiction. This was sci-fi/fantasy based in the southwest.
November 17, 2020
Not your usual Louis L'amour. Judging by the varied reviews here, this is a hit or miss book, for L'amour fans. I love his westerns, and I really like this one, too.
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