eBook Dances with Wolves ePub

Culturally sensitive, not preachy, good story, well written--deserves to be best seller it is.

I have finished reading Michael Blake's Dances with Wolves, and highly recommend it, especially if you are "ethnic"--

"ethar nick" as we say in Burmese.

It is very well and sensitively written and is much more credible than the movie script, which Blake also wrote.

I can't help thinking that his experience with writing screenplays and creating scenes helped him make this book so terse at the same time that it is deep.

Comanche culture is gone into, but as part of the story, not en bloc in a dry academic way--"The Comanche are --blah blah blah" that will put you to sleep in less than one minute.

At the sentence and paragraph level Blake is another "child of Hemingway" and completely to my taste.

The ending with about 3 plot twists worked in, is achieved in about 5 pages.

Each chapter is about 1 to 2 and a 1/2 pages, and divided into numbered paras.

(I do wish he had spelled-out numbers, e.g. ONE, for chap. heads instead of Roman numerals and 1, 2, 3--for the paras. which would look better I think, but that is very minor point.)

Blake illustrates "Chekhov's gun" very well--if you show an object/person early, it must be of some significance.

(There is one extremely annoying writer in whose novel real/imagined seals keep popping up too cute and annoying. As a result, I only read that one novel of hers, never again. It is called a verbal tick--like a kyaw swear ne te. It is awful and worse than cliches such as "But at that time the laws of nature had not been violated" -- a journalist cliche that good god, a journalist used right after her younger brother's death!)

In Michael Blake's writing, everything is clean and clear.

The characters, even of the little buckskin pony and the wolf who starts to act like a dog, are well rounded and developed.

As it is said, a pouf (a piece of furniture) in Tolstoy (in War and Peace) has more life than humans in some people's writing. "The pouf let out a sigh when -- jumped off it."

And Blake is very good at 3rd person limited point of view, starting on page one, line one, as Lt. Dunbar feels swallowed up by the vast prairie.

His metamorphosis to a Comanche man, with a Comanche name "Dances with Wolves" is gradual and completely natural, not sudden as in the movie.

The Comanche way of life, how they make decisions and so on, is beautifully depicted.

A diary he keeps at the Fort in the beginning becomes the reason for the climax at the end.

His courtship of the (white) woman who was rescued/found by the Comanche as a child, after a Pawnee raid, is also convincing in the book, not sudden and Hollywood sexy as in the movie.

Writers often have to perhaps sign waivers (unless their name is JK Rawling), and things are then changed radically on screen.

So in this case, even though the story is not that changed, a lot of detail and the beautiful sparse language and cultural and visual detail has disappeared from the movie, making it much weaker than the novel.

However, without the advertisement value of the movie, I might never have found the novel.

5 out of 5 stars, I am definitely keeping this book, and don't you dare ask me to give you or lend you my copy.

Buy your own.

I hate book free loaders who can buy handbags at $350 but don't want to pay a fair price for books.

cfn

Kyi May Kaung​5-23-2015

I liked the character of Dunbar, but felt he gave in too easily to converting to Comanche. It also seems a little incredible, given Comanche culture that they didn’t just kill him on sight, as would have been easy to do. The author clearly had a purpose, an axe to grind, wanting to show how the Comanche were exploited and wronged, by the bad white people - which is true, but the book presented a one sided picture, perhaps because it was felt that the other side had already been told, often. A good read, nonetheless. The movie seems to have been unusually faithful to the book, perhaps due to the author being involved with the screenplay. I think more could have been done with Christine/Stands With A Fist.

I first read this year's ago probably after seeing the movie. It is a compelling tale and believable. A battle hardened young lieutenant first keeps to the lonely fort. Then he finds himself becoming Comanche . There can be ultimately no happy ending, but the reader better understands the position of the Comanche whose world has been repeatedly invaded. An easy worthwhile reading for all who enjoy literature regarding U.S. early history. It was a good second read for me.

Nice to get a copy of the original story (part#1). I have had the video for many, many years. Wasn't aware that there was an actual written copy of the (part#1) of the story-line. Veruy, very happy now to have acquired written/novel/books copies of the complete storyline.

The movie "Dances With Wolves" was a wonderful movie, the kind of movie that rates five stars. I got the book because I was interested to see if it explains how John Dunbar had become the kind of person that was portrayed so wonderfully by Kevin Costner in the movie. I liked the book but got no clue as to Lt. Dunbar's inner psychological state / workings or the source of his wish to keep exploring whom he truly was. I'm almost done with the book and except for a few enticing phrases of description, so far I've found no clear source for the person that is portrayed in and grows so much during the film.

William E. Baumzweiger, M.D.

I'm almost done with the book and it will be interesting to see how the book/movie endings compare. LOVE the book, LOVE the movie! The book really gets the imagination going, the movie fills some of the visual gaps.

I have read Dances with Wolves several times over the years and it's one of my favorites. I saw the sequel Holy Road for Kindle and decided to buy it. I downloaded a sample of Dances just for fun and like so many years ago the book sucked me in. I enjoy the quiet thoughts of Lt. Dunbar as he goes through his day to day routine in camp to meeting indians and onward throughout the book. There are subtle differences between the book and the movie, but again, the inner thoughts of Lt. Dunbar makes it so much more interesting. I did download the rest of the book. You too, for a few quiet hours can get sucked into the 1800's in a time where there are still buffalo and some frontier left.

I wished I would have read this before the movie, but without the movie I would have not known of the book. Great book, loved the imagery. I feel compelled to mention that the movie was an amazing adaptation of this book.