The Blood Meridian

Hmmm.. The woman sighed trying to recollect her thought about this novel. She looks alternatively at her screen and at her hands resting lightly on the keyboard.
It seems that she supposed this novel would be more like The Border Trilogy with the darker themes from The Road or No Country for old Men. 
Alas, she was slightly disappointed.

This novel felt unhinged without any clear character development, which the women didn't like because she likes to be moved by its story, by their predicament, but McCarthy chose to let the events and scenery play the first role instead of delving deeper into what it meant to ride those plains, chase Indians and being chased by them.
Alas, she was slightly disappointed.

When she read the reviews on Goodreads and the score this novel got out of almost a 100 000 user reviews, she had been excited to read this installment of one of her favourite characters, but again she proved not to follow the trodden path. The novel felt like an exercise in language, sparsely drenched in anything humane, albeit is covered in blood from start to finish. So, expecting to find the violence countered by the decisions behind them,.. she was slightly disappointed.

Violence without anything more to feed its devastation, is like watching a balloon rapidly deflate. It will be excited and unpredictable for a few moments, but won't leave any lasting impact.
This won't take a place among the best McCarthy has written, according to the woman. She sighed again, glad to have stated her mind so clearly without sounding like she doesn't appreciate the effort that went behind it. But she likes her books to be stories, instead of exercises in style.

Review of Outer Dark

Outer Dark tells the tale of a woman giving birth to her brothers child. He leaves the child behind in the forest while she is resting from labour.
While she finds out what he has done, she goes out and tries to find her son. Meanwhile someone else has found him and is giving him a chance to live.
Both brother and sister set out on a voyage that will alter their lives ultimately ending in a heartbreaking collision.

Having read astonishing novels by Cormac McCarthy, this one was not in the same category. While No country for old men gave me outstanding monologues and dialogues and The Road gave me the desolate feeling of being on the run from the  world and trying to survive an world already spent and burnt, Outer Dark gave me boredom. Maybe I don't get the clue of this novel, but it never truly gripped me by the throat. The only emotion I felt was when the child was mentioned. It still repulses me to think of what happened near the ending. Putting myself in the place of the sister trying to find her son, I would be stricken with grief, especially since I know what happened to him. Although it does shimmer through that it was written by a man. The emotions the woman goes through are just a little too distanced, I think most mothers would know what I mean.
Because of that, neither of the two protagonists won any sympathy with me. It was a story I struggled through and if it hadn't been such a short novel I wouldn't have finished it.
I've read a lot of McCarthy and this is the least one so far.