Review by tjportugal -- The McCoys Before The Feud

[tjportugal]

[Following is a volunteer review of "The McCoys Before The Feud" by Thomas McCoy.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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After four years of a weary civil war, about twenty people of the McCoy extended family agree to reunite and start rebuilding their lives together. However, Thomas McCoy Jr. is told by his betrothed, Teresa, that there are stockpiles of plundered valuables that were stolen from Southern families by corrupt high-ranking army officers. These stockpiles of riches are located in various sites around the Kansas-Missouri border. Thomas and his father decide to go and reclaim these goods: they want to get them back to the looted families and keep some to help them in their project. Together with the rest of the McCoy clan, they set up a plan to spy and raid those locations. The only problem is that the sites are guarded by soldiers. How will the McCoy kinfolk succeed with the plan?

The McCoys Before The Feud, by Thomas A. McCoy, is a historical fiction that follows the lives of some of the McCoy kinfolk after the American Civil War, while they start rebuilding their lives. The content is mostly made of the descriptions of the raids carried out by the McCoy clan, intertwined with some attractive elements of country lifestyle like homesteading, land work and family bonds.

The action element of the narrative, depicts some minor descriptions of violence. Apart from the last site, the suspense involved in each raid did not evolve into any climax. Furthermore, the absence of significant differences between each raid resulted in a somewhat dull repetition of the same elements of the narrative. This was what I disliked the most: the first couple of chapters had a good pace but then the story began sounding like a broken record. Also, the relationship between Thomas McCoy Jr. and Terry seemed to have a lot of unexplored potential.

As for the structure, The McCoys Before The Feud is very well edited, with only a few minor typos. There are no profanity, swearing or erotic elements. Although I like clean narratives, some swearing or profanity would have helped to portray a more realistic plot. Throughout the book there is a good balance between dialogues and descriptions of the characters and the surroundings. The linguistic quality of the narrative is very good: the text flows very smoothly, the sentences are well structured and there is a fair range of vocabulary diversity. My favorite element of the book was the use of misspelled words within dialogues, aimed at portraying specific accents.

The narrative is divided into 25 chapters plus Prologue and Epilogue. The text of the Prologue is taken ipsis verbis from the fourteenth chapter. I felt that this foreshadowing - aimed at creating some expectation or tension right from the beginning - did not reach its goal, resulting in a counterproductive use of this literary device.

All in all, The McCoys Before The Feud, by Thomas A. McCoy, was okay. Though still a fiction, the storyline is inspired by true events, making it slightly more interesting. I would say that this book is more appealing to American History aficionados. For them, this is the kind of book that you read sitting next to a fireplace in a countryside log home.

I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars. Such rating, reflects some appreciation for the plot and the way it was structured. Two stars are missing because of the dullness of the narrative. The book did not feel like a story on its own but rather a long introduction of a bigger plot. In any case, I think it still preserves the potential for splendid narratives in the remaining books of the McCoys-Before-The-Feud saga.

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The McCoys Before The Feud
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