book discussion

To be upfront, I'm going to admit that I really liked this book. It was funny, the characters were loveable (if insane), and I appreciated seeing Minty Fresh.

There was one thing about the ending that made me sit up and go, "Eeeh?" Sam has been running as far away as possible from his Native American heritage for the entire book, and then Calliope dies, and he realizes he has to embrace it to save her. To do this, he does a sweat and a little traveling on the astral plane. So far, so good. That doesn't work out, so he blackens his face and chest with ashes, grabs a buffalo spear, and leaps naked to the back of a bareback horse. He then says, "Today is a good day to die." (Or something to that effect.) This is apparently in preparation to deliver a butt kicking to the bikers who shot Calliope.

Wait, what? That felt like an incredibly cliche depiction of an Indian warrior. He's already embraced the spirtual side of his Native American-ness, and now he's suddenly leapt into "Dances with Wolves" mode. Is this supposed to be a retread of the incident on the dam when he bounced Enos into the river? A way for Coyote to kick the bucket?

Did anybody else question this when they were reading? Am I not getting something about Native American culture here? Or is it something about manhood in general? A combination of the two?

Or am I just be a hypersensitive little white girl?

I don't think you are being a hypersensitive white girl. I am a brown girl and I was like, "Whu?". The ending was silly and really rather anti-climactic. Did I spell that right? Anyhow, I thought it was cliche and when I read it, it made me think of "Ten Little Indians" by Indian writer Sherman Alexie. The first story in the book has an Indian girl explaining how silly it is that white people romanticize Indians and turn their culture into this mythic thing, as though they don't poop like everybody else. Although Sherman says it with a lot more class than I just did.

Anyhow, Coyote Blue is my least favorite of all of Chrisopher Moore's books. The story isn't engaging and the ending felt silly and cliche to a brown person as well.