McCarthy writes a compelling coming-of-age adventure, and paints a vivid landscape. The reader just about tastes the gritty dust of the trail, and feels the muscle ache of a day in the saddle under the hot sun. McCarthy uses little punctuation, no quotation marks, and a fair amount of Spanish. I have both read the text and listened to the audio version. As for the audio book – Alexander Adams does a good job with the many characters, however, he mispronounces place names, and mangles the Spanish spoken by the Mexicans. This irritated me so much I nearly dropped my rating further.