McCarthy is, in my opinion, America's greatest living author of fiction. I am aware this accolade is at this point a cliche and that I am not the first to give it, but I stand by it. There are a few others I'd put in the same ballpark, such as Philip Roth or Gene Wolfe, but no author I have read matches McCarthy's mastery of language, illusion, dialogue, and moral examination through storytelling.

Blood Meridian is his best, and darkest work. It is also by far his most masculine.

The tale is of a gang of scalp hunters who terrorize the southwest border country during the Mexican-American war, led by the infamously cruel John Glanton and his pale right hand, the otherwoldly, seven foot tall albino Judge Holden. The novel draws conscious parallels to Paradise Lost and Moby Dick, but in my opinion is a superior work both in language and in theme. The theme of the novel is war, and it spares no details, featuring some of the cruelest, and most complexly drawn villains in English literature.

But I'll let the text speak for itself.

Some quotes:

“The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.”

"He poured the tumbler full. Drink up, he said. The world goes on. We have dancing nightly and this night is no exception. The straight and the winding way are one and now that you are here what do the years count since last we two met together? Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not."

"Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to his moment which will tell if he is to die at that man’s hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man’s worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god."

Read this book.