Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy seduces the reader to ride along on a journey into the heart of darkness through non-stop violence that blends with the stark harshness of the terrain in a tragic rendering of beauty. Only a real writer can break the rules of syntax to conjure a story that brings us to the highest mountain peaks before inevitably plunging us all into the scorching dust of the blood-red-rimmed, western plains in a place called hell. Every living form, human or not, native or not, is addicted to blood lust and destined to meet a brutal end. I have never seen violence depicted so vividly that it is no longer senseless or numbing and instead rolls along all gnarled up like a tumbleweed, transcending ordinary storytelling and ordinary human beings to become grotesque and twisted but earth shatteringly beautiful.