Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Mar 03, 2008

Stephani rated it:

Set in NC Mountains during, before, and after the removal of the Native Americans, when land beyond the Mississippi was wilderness and Tennessee was considered "The West".
Protagonist: William Cooper, also narrator
Love: Claire Featherstone
Antagonist: Featherstone, Claire's father
Also: Bear, father figure and friend to Narrator

Themes:
Language, Communication, Mistranslation
Brevity of youth, brevity of life
Life as suffering with only More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Tyler rated it:

A girl in one of my English classes last semester said of this book, "I always get sucked into that Appalachian shit." Frazier romanticizes the lifestyle and landscape of pre-urbanization America better than many writers, making it pretty easy to get 'sucked into that shit.'

However, I think he captured the fertile wonder of the natural world and its rhythms in his first novel, the well-known 'Cold Mountain,' than he does here. When he's at his best, his images of man livin More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 13, 2009

Alison rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 22, 2008

Katie rated it:

Oh lord. I should have known what this would be like from the tagline: "Time fades everything. But desire." I mean, I read it, but only because

1. I really liked Cold Mountain: I thought it was beautifully written and had lots of interesting character studies and facts about mountain living in the 'ole days. I thought this would be similar, somehow.

2. I am in China, and my library is limited to what my parents own, what other ex-pats own, and what I can expensiv More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Aug 30, 2008

Paul (formerly known as Current) rated it:

Like Cold Mountain, this carefully written book covers a place and a time--weaving history into the fabric of its fiction--in a way that non-fiction cannot (and probably should not), bringing them to life. Whereas Cold Mountain is a story of epic quest modeled on the Odyssey with a love story as its major impetus, Thirteen Moons appears at first glance to be a biography told as the arc of a year's thirteen moons--birth to old age. Trapped by the teller in this story, his narration captures and More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 05, 2008

Julia rated it:

This very long, very adjective-packed book is basically a study in heartbreak, and I would only reccommend it to those who like that sort of thing. The main character and narrator, one Will Cooper, has everything taken from him in his life, with the exception of money. That he seems to have a talent for accumulating (although in one chapter he looses that too, only to gain it again.) Everyone he loves is taken from him or voluntarily leaves, the homes that he knows don't hold any power over h More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 20, 2008

J.R. rated it:

Thirteen Moons is the stuff of legend. It’s poetic fiction at its grandest, yet totally believable.

Will Cooper, a 12-year-old orphan, is given a horse, a key and a map and is sent off into the wilderness of the Cherokee Nation where he is to run an Indian trading post. A tough job at the time for a seasoned man and one would not expect a mere boy to survive for long. But this is no ordinary boy.

En route, he gets lost, has his horse stolen, runs afoul of strange characters More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 30, 2008

Robert rated it:

There are a great many historical parallels to the main character, although Frazier assures us that the locations and characters other than the obvious historical figures are fictional. The story period spans the time from the Andrew Jackson presidency through the turn of the century, and covers the immense changes to the lifestyle in western North Carolina. In particular, the story revolves around the experiences of the main character, Will, who travels to this area as a "bound boy" More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 26, 2007

Lauren rated it:

In many ways, Charles Frazier's Thirteen Moons reads like a homage to James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, as well as a gratuitous appraisal of the birth and death of U.S. cowboy culture. The protagonist and narrator, Will Cooper, might as well be a long-lost relative of Natty Bumpo (whom he often references), a white man "going native" in a small community of Cherokee. The most interesting thing about the book is Frazier's research into the lives and particularly the mu More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 04, 2008

Ngaire rated it:

I'm veering between three and four stars here, because I'm still not sure what I think about this book. I mean, it's so rambling and picaresque, and there's really no plot to it...and yet, there's just something about it that makes me kinda like it. I mean, just the descriptions alone are beautiful, and Frazier's heartbreaking account of Removal and war are so full of truth and despair and humor. It made me laugh that every second character who came to southern Appalachia (and by the way, it' More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 03, 2007

Cynthia rated it:

Not really like a fiction novel, this reads like really good, well-told history. I really liked it but it isn't a riproaring page-turning bestseller kind of a book. It's the story of the Cherokee indian nation and the process by which the US government forced them out of South Carolina and into the far west. It's all told from the point of view of a boy who is basically abandoned at ayoung age and adopted into a Cherokee clan. He's very colorful and has an interesting life, but the story is real More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 18, 2007

Lucy rated it:

Like Cold Mountain, this took me awhile to appreciate. But once I did, wow...there is so much beauty in words, landscape and life study to enjoy.

A sweeping epic of a man's life from the early 1800s to the end of the century in the American South, Frazier describes the harsh realities of a young and sometimes immature government as it expands its territory and faces its own human rights abuses. He does this through the life of Will Cooper, a bound boy on his own since his eleventh More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Mar 13, 2008

Daniel rated it:

Damn.

I just wrote a lengthy review of this excellent book and apparently GoodReads was having server problems just as I was submitting it.

So...I don't have the stomach to type all that out again, so kindly believe me when I tell you that Thirteen Moons is a tremendous accomplishment, that the negative reviews stem from an apparent failure to realize that the novel is a narrative based on the life of the historical figure William Holland Thomas (his name has been changed t More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it

Critics voiced great expectations for Thirteen Moons, coming nearly ten years after Charles Frazier's National Book Award-winning Cold Mountain (1997). Unfortunately, this second novel fails to achieve the same uniform critical acclaim. Certainly, similarities between the two books abound, including a deep appreciation for the Southern Appalachian landscape, a protagonist embarking on a life-defining odyssey, an elegiac tone, and swatches of excellent prose. Here, Frazier frames Will's story aga

More...

0 comments like

Dec 08, 2011

Hansen rated it:

I suppose this novel may be even more interesting for people familiar with the Appalachians or the natural life, but anyone can appreciate Frazier’s great characters, adventure, romance and occasionally sympathetic but ultimately realistic lament for the ‘progress’ of civilization over native culture. This is an entertaining story with great balance of action and depth, moving the many plots smoothly along without sacrificing any detail. He writes conversations masterfully, especially the great More...

0 comments like

Nov 02, 2011

Jpmist rated it:

Thirteen moons is how the Indians gauged a year in time. This is right in Frazier's wheelhouse as he seems to specialize in naturalism in the mid-19th century.

"Survive long enough and you get to a far point in life where nothing else of particular interest is going to happen. After that, if you don't watch out, you can spend all your time tallying your losses and gains in endless narrative." Yikes.

The book consists of a fictional memoir by the elderly gentlemen who More...

0 comments like

Jul 20, 2011

Maryjoamani rated it:

I loved this book, every page of it, and it's a long time since I can say that about a work of fiction. I couldn't get through Cold Mountain by the same author (but will now return to it!) but found this book the kind of great (a bit of a Paul Bunyan tone which critics seem to struggle with) piece of storytelling, all in the first person--in short, a rollicking darn good yarn. It's a delightful tale of one young man's survival and thriving on the frontier. There's romance, tragedy, regret, More...

0 comments like

Jul 19, 2011

Chris rated it:

I did not want to read this book. I started reading Mr. Frazier's earlier book Cold Mountain at least 3 times and was not able to get interested in the story. Strange as it may seem historial novels are my favorite and enjoy almost any of them. After finishing 13 Moons I now know that I will never read another one by him.

I thought the beginning of the book was very interesting and I loved reading it. Then it just lost all interest and became a maudlin love story. Not even a ve More...

0 comments like

May 15, 2011

Sarita rated it:

My dad gave me this book with lots of pages dogeared. I loved every page! I especially loved Frazier's descriptive style and how every time he detailed what what Will was eating, I wanted some too. Here's one of my favorite passages from when Will and Bear are in the winter house:

Day and night came not to signify. Our light was the fire. Smoke lay in a cloud above our heads, where it collected before going out the little hole. We kept housecat hours, sleeping three fourths of the day, More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 27, 2011

Don rated it:

I was completely captivated by Charles Frazier's inaugural novel, Cold Mountain. The journey of the protagonist, the elements of the time, the food, paths, war; I was very taken with the writing and the story. I happened to be traveling in the Carolinas at the time of reading Cold Mountain which I confess might have deepened the novel's impression on me. I was enamored of the prose. So, when recently perusing the my public library, my wife suggested Thirteen Moons, who was I to say no? Not More...

0 comments like

Dec 21, 2010

Brittany rated it:

Thirteen Moons is the second novel by author Charles Frazier (his first novel was Cold Mountain). The book caught my eye because I enjoyed reading Cold Mountain and when I read the back cover of Thirteen Moons, I was intrigued by the subject matter—a young orphan is sent to the unknown territory of the Cherokee Indians.

The book takes the reader on a journey into the mid-1800’s, interweaving actual historic events and people (the Indian Removal Act, The Trail of Tears and Davey Crocke More...

0 comments like

Nov 20, 2010

Nancy rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

Dec 18, 2009

Charles rated it:

A writer whose first novel has been a critical and commercial success can either give us more of the same or try for something completely different.

After the huge success of “Cold Mountain,” Charles Frazier has made us wait a decade for his second novel. And from some descriptions, “Thirteen Moons” sounds like more of the same: Like “Cold Mountain,” it’s set in the North Carolina mountains in the 19th century, and it features a pair of lovers torn apart by the forces of history.
More...

0 comments like

Aug 09, 2009

Chip rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

Dec 09, 2010

Tom rated it:

It's a rare 1st person narrator I enjoy keeping company with for over 400+ pgs. Other than Huck Finn, I'm having trouble thinking of notable exceptions (feel free to enlighten me with suggestions). In the case of Will Cooper, narrator of TM, he was entertaining, dramatic, witty and compellingly melancholic about half the time; the other half he was annoying, self-inflated, borderline whiny and just too damn talky. Frazier sets him up as a kind of Thoreauvian witness of America in the 19th c, More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 17, 2009

Julie rated it:

I read this book after seeing it in the gift shop of the Museum of the Cherokee in Cherokke, NC. I have an interest in native American writers and topics, as well as an interest in the history of the land surrounding the Smokey Mountains, a vacation spot my husband and I have visited frequently. although fiction, Frazier took great pains to research the Cherokee people and their complex history with the land. Barbara Duncan, education Director for the Museum, was one of his sources. It does N More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 23, 2011

Garnette rated it:

Did you ever love reading a book so much you had to put it down only five pages to the end? And then cannot BEAR being away from it, so you go ahead and finish. Then cry because of its beauty and that it’s over. Never again WILL I read Thirteen Moons for the first time – and I’m already nostalgic for it.

You say it’s the location. The Southern Appalachians where my family lived for twelve generations, generally acknowledged as one of the most magnificent on Earth. It’s not only that. To More...

0 comments like

Nov 13, 2009

Laura rated it:

I wanted to give this four stars, but if I really thought about that desire, it would honestly be because of how much I enjoyed Cold Mountain... and the FIRST half of this novel.

Frazier's second starts out as a lovely ode to Cherokee living in the Carolina mountains; a bound boy, Will, is shipped off to run a trading post on his own, and taken into the community of Cherokee via Bear. Bear shepherd's the boy into a man, and Cherokee living, just before the infamous President Jackson s More...

0 comments like

Feb 25, 2009

Mary rated it:

I listened to this as a book on CD, and I loved the story. The main character was not always admirable or likeable, but I loved the language used to tell the story -- particularly because this story was told from the perspective of a very old man looking back on his life. In the very beginning of the book, he tells the story of the telephone, how foreign it is, and it reminds him of his lost horse, and then through a soft hiss he cannot hear the person on the other end. His earlier life is re More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 14, 2009

Frmaselli rated it:

My expectations were high for this book based on the author's excellent writing of Cold Mountain. The first half of the book met and exceeded those expectations. The book is the story of the Native Americans forced exile (Trail of Tears) from the East to the West told from the perspective of a young boy orphan who is adopted by a well-known Indian chief. I found myself re-reading paragraphs for the sheer enjoyment of the beauty of the words.
However, in the second half of the book More...

0 comments like