This book is a wonder. It's interesting that it can be so effective when its artifice is so apparent. No one really writes like this. No one really uses this bizarre amalgam of heightened vocabulary, slang, and understatement; just to read a few pages is proof enough of that. The technique is mostly a kind of enjambed, run-on sentence style with colorful Australian argot. Yet one is completely mesmerized by the book. It's pleasures as a narrative are rich and unrelenting. My heart pounds and a sympathetic vengeance fills me as I read Ned Kelly's account of the injustices done to him and his family by an out of control police force. As if the dreary damp wretched pitiful lives of these people weren't enough. On top of it all they are persecuted as Irish Catholics by a colonial English establishment. One comes to the book with this expectation that it is about this out of control killer and his adherents. But halfway through it dawns on you that Ned Kelly as depicted here is a moral hero. It is only when he is pushed into a corner that he kills, and then his acts are in self defense. Ned's claims of being sought by the police solely for purposes of summary execution without trial are incontrovertible. Please look to the many other reviews here for a run-down of the plot points. Highly recommended.