Incidents Among the Savages by David R. Lewis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Incidents Among the Savages is a book I maybe shouldn’t have liked as much as I did. It isn’t very original in plot. The main character, who comes to be called Walks in Snow, is too much of a superman to really be believable. The line “It is a good day to die” is used so often you can’t help but scream “Stereotype!” when you come to it.

And yet I did enjoy the story. David R. Lewis mixes some of my favorite things, the Western of the early 1800s and astral projection. The story is simple, action oriented, and paced well enough that I was always eager to return to it and see what would happen next. The ending was pretty sudden and a bit disappointing, but I knew going in that something like that had to happen simply because of the way the story was structured.

I listened to this on audio. Lewis himself did the narration, which overall was pretty good. There were times he overdid the melodrama and made me think about the author narrating his own work, but for the most part he did an excellent job. I especially liked the voice used for Long Nose on His Face and the sound effects between chapters. The worst was the voice of the golden eagle. I can’t even think of a good comparison for that.

Bottom line: I enjoyed it, but it wouldn’t be for everybody. I liked it enough I’ll probably give his Trail series a try in the near future.

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