Product Description

From master of subversive humor Christopher Moore comes a quirky, irreverent novel of love, myth, metaphysics, outlaw biking, angst, and outrageous redemption.

As a boy, he was Samson Hunts Alone -- until a deadly misunderstanding with the law forced him to flee the Crow reservation at age fifteen. Today he is Samuel Hunter, a successful Santa Barbara insurance salesman with a Mercedes, a condo, and a hollow, invented life. Then one day, destiny offers him the dangerous gift of love -- in the exquisite form of Calliope Kincaid -- and a curse in the unheralded appearance of an ancient god by the name of Coyote. Coyote, the trickster, has arrived to reawaken the mystical storyteller within Sam...and to seriously screw up his existence in the process.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11921 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.com Review
This is an accelerating comedy with shadows setting off the wry, polished humor. Trickster deities thrive on contrariety, which is why one finds them bringing life into dead landscapes and disorder into order. A Santa Barbara insurance salesman's too-tidily-contained lifestyle, far from the Crow reservation he grew up on, is an irresistible target for Coyote, who wants to make sure his chosen people don't forget him. Coyote descends on Sam Hunter like one of Job's plagues, albeit a charmingly disingenuous one. "Why me? Why not someone who believes?" asks Sam, suffering from god-induced chaos. "This is more fun," says Coyote. He's right.

From Publishers Weekly
A lonely Crow Indian turned yuppie insurance salesman seeks the power of an ancient Indian god to give him enough courage to approach the woman of his dreams.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
"There ain't no cure for Coyote Blue," writes Moore ( Practical Demonkeeping , LJ 1/92) to explain the mystifying and outrageous chain of events that alters Sam Hunter's life forever. As a teenager, Samson Hunts Alone runs away from the Crow Reservation to avoid standing trial for murder. Twenty years later he has changed his name, become a partner in a successful insurance agency, and all but forgotten his Indian upbringing. Coyote, an ancient Indian god known as a trickster by the Crow, is determined that it is time for Sam to fulfill his destiny as storyteller for his tribe. To that end, Coyote leads Sam on a merry chase--interfering in business, disturbing the neighbors, introducing love, and inciting a motorcycle gang to riot, all in a fantastic plot to lead Sam home. This novel is at once irreverent, spiritual, and wonderfully fresh in approach. An absolute must for adults and mature teens alike.
- Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Coyote Blue will leave you "howling" for more Moore!
Christopher Moore's novels have an underlying theme to them. They are vehicles that poke fun at various "legends" of the paranormal-vampires (Bloodsucking Fiends), Godzilla (Lust Lizzard) and so on-while concomitantly poking fun at the "California Lifestyle" of type-a personalities espousing New Age psychobabble.

In Coyote Blue the legendary figure being skewered is Trickster, an ancient Native American god know generally for bollixing up the works in whatever situation he inserts himself. The "works" targeted by Trickster here is the life of Sam Hunter, the Southern California makeover of the former reservation baby known as Samson Hunts Alone of the Crow reservation in Montana.

The plot involves Sam's involvement/Tricksters interference with Calliope, a classic, comic version of the hippie child of hippie syndrome so common in LA, the setting for this farcical tale.

The book continues in the vein of Moore's works in general--looping, fantastic flights of fancy, complex yet entertaining plots, and frequent wise guy humor that leaves the reader laughing out loud.

This book differs from his other efforts only in that the story line is more controlled and more thoroughly constructed than is usual. It gives the book the feel of an actual, complete novel in the traditional sense.

However, one does not read Moore to experience novelistic integrity-one reads Moore to laugh one's head off. This novel, like all his others, scores a bull's-eye on that score.

If what you are looking for is a lot of laughs and a rollicking good time, Moore is your guy and this book will satisfy those cravings in droves.

mostly fun
Amazon.com has been recommending Coyote Blue to me for some time now, presumably due to my generally high ratings for Tom Robbins. This book is sort of a Robbins-Lite. We've got an enjoyable puree of natural and supernatural, without Robbins' mastery of the metaphor. Now, Moore's writing is clever and funny, but Robbins' makes me smile at least once per page.

In Coyote Blue we get a man facing up to his past (at the insistence of an ancient Native American god) and falling in real love for the first time. The best bits were the Native American myths told from a 20th Century point of view. The worst bits came at the end of the book. I won't give it away, but I will say that it's too much deus ex machina, even for a book about gods. Everything up to that point had made sense in its own way, but this was too much.

I will read more Moore, but I won't expect brilliance - just fun.

Self help is great, but sometimes we need Coyote.
Before I encountered this book, I thought I already knew all about Coyote, the trickster god of the Native Americans. He's the one who sticks out his foot and trips you once you've hit your stride. He's the one who turns up the heat in your comfort zone until he blasts you out. Moore puts a spin on him, however, that gave me a lot of fresh material to think about. There is something in this book that will appeal to everyone--satire, humor galore, love of all sorts, Las Vegas, bikers, a traveling miracle salesman, a Crow shaman who wonders himself if his visions are in fact now actually the D.T.'s--and last but not least, Sam Hunter (nee Samson Hunts Alone)who thought he'd already found himself until Coyote came along. In a rut? Read this book. You'll find yourself looking forward to having your world turned upside down.