Review: Forlorn River

Forlorn River by Zane Grey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I picked up Grey’s popular “Nevada”, but when I found it was a sequel to this book, I decided to read them in order. In “Forlorn River”, I was treated with a story about as I expected. Grey’s writing is more modern than I expected in this 1926 Western. Less of the flowery prose of some of Grey’s other stories, this seemed more direct. Grey did have a tendency to latch on to a word and re-use it to excess – the word of this book is “ejaculated”, in the non-porn sense. Listening to this on audio, I was glad I was using my headphones. The story was typical Western fare, with honor and coyboying along side romance with the rancher’s daughter, who in this book just got back from college. The characters were well written and acted their parts. It was disappointing to see the token Indian treated much like a minor character, doing things for unsatisfactorily explained reasons, and disappearing entirely while apparently on-stage and part of the action near the end. And the plot seemed too contrived at places – the hero conveniently does exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time here to generate the climax. I found the naivety unappealing for an otherwise winning character. The narrator in the version of the audiobook I listened to, Jack Sondericker, did a good job with the various voices, best with hero Ben and his group. All told, I found it an enjoyable story and I look forward to reading more from Grey.

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