I loved the book. Once you get past the nineteenth century prose, it's really a great story. It's a story of adventure and friendship, loyalty and revenge, of newly made bonds and loss.
This book is a hard read and quite frankly I'm shocked that it took me just under a week to get through it. The language--the prose is not for everyone. But I can see why this book has remained a favorite classic for well over a hundred years. I'm looking forward to tackling the rest of the Leatherstocking Tales...at a later date.
For those who are fans of the Michael Mann movie version of this story(of which I am one), this book is nothing like the film. Though it will always be on my top ten list of favorite movies, having read the book, I'm a bit perturbed at the changes Mann and the script writers made to the story. Clearly we all know the book is always better than the movie, and that some things must be omitted due to the timing and flow of a film. However, there were some changes that I think were unnecessary and I would like to have seen them on film. They really downplayed Chingachgook and Uncas' roles in the adventure, their relationship with each other and Hawkeye, and their status among the Indian people. Also they downplayed Duncan who wasn't really a douche in the novel as he was in the film. The love interests were portrayed all wrong, and frankly the movie was more of a love story than that of an adventure. Whereas the novel was more adventure and only vague mentions of romance. I've never seen any of the other versions of the film and have to wonder if they were more true to the novel. I suppose I mentioned this to warn anyone against reading this hoping it'll be a more fleshed-out version of the film. While the overall story basically remains the same, the journey, battles, rescues and some deaths are completely different.
But to those who are lovers over books, classics, or true stories of adventure and virtue, this is a must-read!
This book is a hard read and quite frankly I'm shocked that it took me just under a week to get through it. The language--the prose is not for everyone. But I can see why this book has remained a favorite classic for well over a hundred years. I'm looking forward to tackling the rest of the Leatherstocking Tales...at a later date.
For those who are fans of the Michael Mann movie version of this story(of which I am one), this book is nothing like the film. Though it will always be on my top ten list of favorite movies, having read the book, I'm a bit perturbed at the changes Mann and the script writers made to the story. Clearly we all know the book is always better than the movie, and that some things must be omitted due to the timing and flow of a film. However, there were some changes that I think were unnecessary and I would like to have seen them on film. They really downplayed Chingachgook and Uncas' roles in the adventure, their relationship with each other and Hawkeye, and their status among the Indian people. Also they downplayed Duncan who wasn't really a douche in the novel as he was in the film. The love interests were portrayed all wrong, and frankly the movie was more of a love story than that of an adventure. Whereas the novel was more adventure and only vague mentions of romance. I've never seen any of the other versions of the film and have to wonder if they were more true to the novel. I suppose I mentioned this to warn anyone against reading this hoping it'll be a more fleshed-out version of the film. While the overall story basically remains the same, the journey, battles, rescues and some deaths are completely different.
But to those who are lovers over books, classics, or true stories of adventure and virtue, this is a must-read!
