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Aug 12, 2011

Henry rated it:

Lassiter is a very angry man.His sister and only living relative, disappears from her home in Texas. (The only person he loves in the world) Kidnapped?Who knows,but the brother will search as long as it takes ,to find her.(Similar to The Searchers film) After years on the long weary road, the gunman discovers the sister, in an unmarked lonely grave, in southern Utah.The former cowboy seaks revenge, he has killed before, he will again .Complications occur when he meets Jane Withersteen , a rich More...

6 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Jim rated it:

Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey

Before I opened this book, I thought it was just a fundamental cowboy story, and indeed, as I read it anonymous images coaxed from every Western movie I’ve ever seen interjected themselves into the experience. (For some reason – I don’t know why – I couldn’t help but envision Humphrey Bogart as “Lassiter”, the taciturn protagonist, ostensibly honorable, yet willing killer - of Mormons in particular). My expectation – and I’m also not sure why – w More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 10, 2011

Alison rated it:

This read comes under the heading of Auld Lang Syne. Revisiting beloved books after many, many years is not always a good thing. In my childhood/early teens I devoured ALL of Zne Grey's cowboy novels, and loved them. I discovered, this time around, with the help of Wikipaedia, that ZG was a prolific writer - author of more than 90 books (!!) including two on hunting, and eight on fishing. He is credited with 'inventing' the genre of the Old West - sanitized and moralized. What I enjoyed durin More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 24, 2011

Jared rated it:

I really liked “The Riders of The Purple Sage” by Zane Grey and thought it was interesting because the plot kept me thinking. It is about a rich Mormon woman, Jane Withersteen, in the late 1800s who befriends non-Mormons. The elders in her town of Cottonwood in southern Utah don't like it so they persecute her. They persecute her by taking her cattle and making all of her workers leave. She meets a man called Lassiter who helps her in her situation. Lassiter also was in Cottonwood because he More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 19, 2010

Michael rated it:

"Riders of the Purple Sage" was my first western and, of course, first Zane Grey. As such, I was expecting something along the line of the classic western movies of the 40s and 50s. Obviously, it did not live up to those expectations. The hero of the book is not even a cowboy.

Having said this, "Riders" was far from disappointing. It was an entertaining look at the wild west through the eyes of a man who saw at least part of it. The story is fairly well known More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 05, 2007

Xarah rated it:

I love this book! It caught my attention and kept my attention all the while transporting me back in time to the old west. The inclusion of the Mormons as the bad guys is controversial, though also has a lot of truth to it. I never found the religious aspect to be overbearing – you just have understand that Zane Grey disliked them.

What would I give to go back and spend time alone in the beautiful sandstone canyons of the Southwest. For anyone who has lived or visited places like Can More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 22, 2012

kent rated it:

Classic western, originally published in 1912 a mere 40 years after the story took place. It's squeaky clean by todays standards, a few mentions of her "heaving breast" and a kiss or two.
The story uses a third person narrator to tell the story from the point of view of two main characters Bern Venter and Jane Withersteen and a few minor characters.
Withersteen is the heir of her fathers huge estate and is courted by the Mormon preacher who wants to add her to his family a More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 01, 2012

Zack rated it:

Thanks to the Kindle, it is amazing how much you can download for free or a minimal sum at most. As such, I have downloaded several works by Zane Grey. (The Call of the Canyon, The Mysterious Rider, The Last Trail, and The Rustlers of Pecos County). Of the five I have downloaded, this was the best and average at that. His plots are redundant. Only the settings change.

I suppose it is a prototypical western. He spends a lot of time describing the beautiful country that the Americ More...

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Nov 30, 2011

Sandy rated it:

This was an interesting Western with a decidedly anti-Mormon sentiment to it. Although there may have been isolated incidents in the history of Mormonism that are like what is described in this novel, I feel that they are just that--isolated incidents and not representative of the religion as a whole. This book is certainly not representative of the teachings of the religion, although that's not to say that there may be some who abused and ignored the religious teachings for their own self-inter More...

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Nov 12, 2011

Patrick rated it:

Zane Grey is to Westerns what Dickens is to Drama. Make no doubt, there's plenty of cliches, but every single one of them works. Action, drama, romance, and huge dollops of thoughfulness: this book is a classic! The plot is simple: one man finds himself helping a mysterious gunslinger heal while one woman finds herself embroiled in a conflict between her religion and what her heart. I know the book has been labeled anti-Mormon, but after reading it a second time, and finding the line where Lassi More...

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Jul 05, 2011

Harmonybites rated it:

Set in the Utah of 1871, it deals with a Mormon woman, heir to a ranch, resisting pressures to become a junior wife of a Mormon elder. I tried this because it's recommended on The Ultimate Reading List in the Western section. This is Zane Grey's most famous novel, supposedly one that set the mold for the Western genre and published way back in 1912--which doesn't make this a classic. Indeed, I'm afraid the "purple" in the title is sadly apt. Here's a snippet of the the puerile writing: More...

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Jun 17, 2011

Alexander rated it:

Some reviewers find that genre literature is beneath their notice. The Western, science fiction, horror – because they are creatures of pulp they are somehow less worthy of admiration or of the observation of their inherent quality. "Riders of the Purple Sage" is a genre novel. It's a Western. There are definite tones of romance and the indefinable resonance of overwrought drama without a question.

It's also a fantastic book. Fantastic in the literal sense, in that it creates More...

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Jun 06, 2011

John rated it:

This is a very well-written and arguably a genre-classic. Its a Western with all the elements, adventure, mystery, romance and characters: the big-hearted gunman, the rustlers, the independent woman, the cowboys, the corrupt landowners and more. HOWEVER, it is also (arguably) virulent anti-Mormon invective (!) This combination imparts a sort of unease to the proceedings. The Mormon characters come off as a kind of old-West Star Trek Borg Collective, brain-washed and hell-bent on evil in supp More...

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Jun 03, 2011

Regan rated it:

Riders of the Purple sage is a classic of Western genre fiction, and I was looking forward to a good cowboy adventure story. It turns out that this is far less an adventure story and much more a morality tale about the abuse of power by religious leadership. The story is set during the era of Utah's pre-statehood 'theocratic democracy' and chronicles the conflicts that arise from attempts to force women into unwanted polygamous marriages and the church's violent efforts of the era to exclude non More...

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Jan 28, 2011

Sue added it

The edition of Riders of the Purple Sage that I read was a printing of the original manuscript that was published in 2006 by Leisure Historical Fiction. Jon Tuska worked with Grey's grandson to bring this original manuscript to the light of day.

It is beautiful in its descriptions of the country and the pathos of the characters. This is the version that Grey wanted to be published but was not; instead his manuscript was heavily cut and edited to the tastes of the editor. When Grey rece More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 04, 2010

Colin rated it:

Zane Grey is interesting, both in the modern day meaning of curious and also in the way of the Chinese curse. On the one side it has a very simple moral structure –black and white, rather than shades of grey. This is partly due to the conventions of the western as a genre, partly because it was written a bare dozen years after the death of Queen Victoria, with the whole period’s attendant moral absolutism.

The really frustrating thing about the novel is that it has a curiously extens More...

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Jun 12, 2010

Justin rated it:

This Western Classic was published in 1912. It is a fictitious story of a girl named Jane Withersteen and her struggle with getting away from a Mormon polygamous community that is persecuting her. Jane's father wanted her to marry a certain local Mormon leader (Elder Tull), but she refused because she did not love him. The group highly persecuted Withersteen for not marrying Tull. Withersteen meets and falls in love with a bandit Mormon killer named Lassiter who convinces her to leave the commun More...

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Sep 07, 2009

Sherrie rated it:

"Riders of the Purple Sage" by Zane Grey
This story is about Lassiter, a gunslinger who is looking for revenge. He shows up in the remote Utah town of Cottonwood. Jane Withersteen is a young and beautiful rancher of the Mormon faith. She is being pressured to marry a church elder, Tulle. The church elders have already run her hired hand, a gentile, off her ranch. Venters is running into trouble with the cattle rustlers that have taken Jane's red herd. He shoots one of their More...

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May 22, 2009

Seth rated it:

The first page and the first few chapters are particularly well written. The beautiful landscape descriptions of the rugged frontier in Utah, the "wild purple upland waste," made me think of Stephen King's desert setting in his The Wasteland series, where The Gunslinger is out in the desert with purple mountains sketched across the horizon. This book has a good, classic, original Western story. It has one slow section about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through the book. I got so bored, I put More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 10, 2011

Caleb rated it:

Zane Grey is given credit for starting the cowboy/western genre. 'Riders of the Purple Sage' is the book that put him on the map. Starring an array of classic western archetypes, it is not difficult to see how this book sets the standard for future generations to come.

I liked this book- the rugged heroes, triumphantly surviving deadly situations. Simple love stories. Vivid descriptions of horseback chases across the barren, unforgiving landscape. Honor, justice, retribution...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 17, 2011

Jill rated it:

Unbelievably, painfully sappy and over-the-top melodramatic, some of which I hope was deliberate. I've never known a male to write such slushy romance. The characters are exaggerated to perfection, as if there were a checklist to include every stereotype suitable for the Western genre. His men are all "men's men" and his women are perfectly docile, beautiful, emotional idiots. Though Grey is thorough in his scathingly hate-filled portrayal of the LDS, he apparently didn't have suffi More...

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Apr 09, 2010

Jen rated it:

The rugged West was once a great hunger for the United States. The Western was gobbled up by young and old and the spirit of adventure was very much alive. As time has progressed and technology has sped up all processes to hyper speed - the West and its adventure have become dusty and old.

As I get older, I yearn for the 'old days' and crave to know what it was like to live in the time of the pioneers. Reading Riders of the Purple Sage allowed me to take a glimpse into a rough and tu More...

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Jul 14, 2010

TJ rated it:

This book is horribly written, chock-full of overly-used adjectives and adverbs and prose that is downright awkward. It is also extremely dated and sexist. I found The Riders of the Purple Sage a very difficult read to plough through. The version I read was also the "complete and uncut" version and I now see why the editors went at The Riders of the Purple Sage so ruthlessly: to try and curb Grey's repetitive language and description.
The ending is also a tacked-on coincidence, p More...

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Jul 02, 2011

Anjanette rated it:

The cover of this book says that this is the restored edition of the novel. Apparently when it was first published, Grey's editor cut huge portions out of the novel. With the approval of the author's son, the editor of this edition reconstructed the novel from the original manuscript. The only thing it needs now, ironically, is a good editor. As it stands I can see perfectly well why it was cut so heavily. For example, in the first 5 chapters the words "rider", "purple", and More...

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Jun 18, 2011

Chris rated it:

While Grey can get a bit Tolkein-esque (taking paragraphs and/or pages to describe the scenery), I did enjoy this book. Without giving anything away, I was surprised by the emphatic view he took on the antagonists of this story. I mean, every story has to have a bad guy, but this was extreme! It didn't deter me from getting caught up in the story, though, and the action was very well-written. Some of the characters could have been a little more defined (Jane's motivations had to keep being kick- More...

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Jul 07, 2010

Kip rated it:

I've read reviews calling this book "dated" ad "hopelessly trapped in another time." Be that as it may, and surely there's an element of truth, Riders Of The Purple Sage exists in a special place where horrible writing is timeless. One line, which isn't nearly as isolated as one might hope, should say all, "With the breaking of dawn, his eyes unclosed." I was tempted to give it five stars for just how incredibly bad is really is. Think of Zane Gray the next time More...

1 comment like

Apr 10, 2011

Rebecca rated it:

Basically founded the cowboy romance tradition (a bit like Shakespeare with horses but also offering a great deal of long-winded description and purple prose to match the purple sage). The story turns on enormous amounts of coincidence but the same might be said of, say, A Midsummer Night's Dream. These characters wander in the desert, not the forest, and finally end up with the mates nature intended for them.

Interesting for its influence on later western fiction and for its female More...

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Apr 07, 2011

Todd rated it:

Riders of the Purple Sage is Zane Grey’s most famous novel and is the first of his that I’ve read. I would describe it to be a mixed bag.

On the downside, the book is replete with enough maudlin melodrama and sugary romance to put one at risk of falling into a diabetic coma. On the upside, there are some outstanding chase scenes and gunfights that will put you on the edge of your seat.

Two observations:
1) Mormons are not portrayed in a positive light … in the least. More...

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Dec 08, 2009

Lisalit rated it:

A sharp clip-clop of iron shod hoofs deadened and died away, and clouds of yellow dust drifted from under the cottonwoods out over the sage.

I was surprised by this book. It was surprisingly readable, considering it was written in the early 1900s--1912, to be exact--and that westerns have never really been my genre. But really it was a lot of fun to read. Dramatic and romantic, heavily outdated, but fun.

The story centers around Jane Withersteen, a Mormon woman who has More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 23, 2009

Dan-o rated it:

This book was not quite what I expected. I can definitely see where Louis L'amour got all his inspiration, but for being the book that started the traditional Western genre, I was a little disappointed. The story was good, but the disappointing part was that the antagonists were Mormons. All of them. The ringleader of the bad guys was the Bishop, and Elder Tull, his counselor, was #2 in command. He portrayed them as rustlers, wife stealers, zealous preachers, killers, and brainwashers. I am not More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)