Savages (Savages #2) (2024)

If these two wordsmithing masters of dialogue, tone and hip colloquialisms ever had a literary LOVE CHILD…..it would DON WINSLOW.

I loved, loved, loved every single page of this thrilltastic story. Don Winslow has instantly become an author whose next book I will buy sight unseen. His writing, his tone, his slick as sh*t story-telling are all intelligent, original, hiply sparse and kick-ass coolio.

The basic plot is very simple (though the execution of it is anything but). Chon and Ben are the 21st century version of the odd couple on steroids. Ben is a passive, brilliant, Buddhist type (or Baddhist as Ben explains) and Chon is an ex-special forces, "man of few words" killing machine who basically hates everyone (except Ben). Ben has engineered the highest of high grade marijuana and he and Chon sell it in Southern California to upper class, Kardashian type clientele. All is peachy, breezy and OC easy until the Mexican drug cartel wants Ben and Chon to come work for them.....and no is not an option.....yeah, tell that to Chon.

Hopefully that sounds interesting. However, even if it does, it really does not give you any idea about how mind-blowingly fresh and ice slick smooth the writing is in the story. Therefore, since I don’t believe I could ever do justice to Winslow’s prose, I thought I would give you a few samples and let you see for yourself, with a brief intro by me to set up the scene.

Intro to Scene 1: Winslow is introducing us to Chon via a description of Chon’s special forces tours in Iraq....

So when the corporate recruiter looked him up, Chon was available.
To go to I-Rock-and Roll.
Nasty nasty sh*t in those pre-Surge days, what with kidnappings, beheadings, IEDs severing sticks and blowing off melons. It was Chon’s job to keep any of that sh*t from happening to the paying customers, and if the best defense is a good offense,
well…
It was what it was.
And with the right blend of hydro, speed, Vike and Oxy it was actually a pretty cool video game--IraqBox--and you could rack up some serious points in the middle of the Shia/Sunni/AQ-in-Mesopotamia cluster-f*ck if you weren’t too particular about the particulars.

Chon likes to keep meetings short.
Learned that in a book, Things They Don’t teach You at Harvard Business School.
A short meeting is a good meeting.
He drives down to Dago, finds the house in Golden Hill he’s looking for, and parks on the street. Wakes the shotgun up (“We’re there”), crosses said street, and knocks on the door.
Tire Iron opens it.
Big wooly motherf*cker, heavy hairy shoulders showing under the wifebeater.
Chon puts the shotgun to T.I.’s throat and pulls the trigger.
Guy’s head goes ballpark.
(Fun Dog!)
Something they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School.
‘Savages, How to Deal With.’
Savagely.

(O-BAM-a!) Now they walk around like white frat boys in Bed-Stuy, talking tough to show they aren’t scared as the urine streams down their chinos into their cordovans. Obama has these dweebs so turned around all they can do is get behind some fat junkie DJ, a gibberish-spewing PsychoBimbette from the far North, and a tele-dork who gives adrenaline-crazed, 1950’s-style “chalk talks”(speaking of little white dicks) like some health-class instructor in a sex-offender unit.

As for me, I fell in love and give it 6.0 stars. This is on my all time favorite novels and is as good as anything I have read this year.

HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!

P.S. A big goodreads shout out to Kemper for recommending this book to me. Kemper, I can’t promise you any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.

Ben and Chon are the oddest of odd couples. Ben is a brilliant botanist and liberal do-gooder who spends his spare time in third world countries setting up clinics and schools. Chon (a nickname based on his real name, John) is an ex-Navy SEAL and Afghanistan veteran with a bad attitude and sincere belief that most people are just pretending to be civilized. Despite their differences, the two men are best friends and even knowingly share a girlfriend, Ophelia (also known as O.), who loves sex and shopping almost as much as she loves Ben and Chon.

The guys aren’t just friends, they’re also business partners. They’ve been the premier pot distributors in Southern California for years thanks to Ben’s talent with weed and Chon’s ability to discourage any unsavory types who threaten their operation. Unfortunately, the guys just got a video from a Mexican drug cartel showing several people getting decapitated. The message is clear: join up or get the Marie Antoinette treatment.

Ben is tired of the dope trade anyhow, and neither of them want to go to work for the cartel so they reject the offer with plans to take their money and disappear overseas. Unfortunately, drug cartels aren’t used to taking no for an answer, and they kidnap O. If the guys won’t keep growing pot for the cartel, O.’s neck is going to meet the business end of a chain saw. Ben and Chon have to play along, but to get O. back, they’ll have to go to war without letting the cartel know who is waging it.

Don Winslow is a writer I think has been flying under the radar for far too long. This should be the book that finally gets him some serious attention. This is an incredible story about the lengths that some people will go for friendship. I especially liked Chon with his bleak but amusing view of most people. Despite the gritty and violent nature of the story, the book is also laced with a black humor that has a lot to say about how goddamn silly this country can be at times.

I loved the unique writing style of this, too. Winslow has done several books in a conversational So-Cal tone of voice, and he’s also played around with a clipped and brusque style in The Power of the Dog. In this one, he’s fused the two into a unique read that reminds me of James Ellroy mixed with Charlie Huston and a dash of Chuck Palahniuk. Anyone interested should read it and not listen to an audio version because even the layout of the words on the page becomes part of the structure of the story.

Dark, funny, violent, tender, tragic, and a story that makes it an obsessive page turner, this has instantly become one of my favorite crime novels.

**Movie Update** The movie version was decent but disappointing. Although the basic plot remains the same, a lot of the details and plot points are changed for no real reason related to adapting it. And anyone who thought that Hollywood wouldn't have the balls to do the book's ending was right.

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

“Dope is supposed to be bad, but in a bad world it’s good, if you catch the reverse moral polarity of it.”

That awkward moment when you are incurring a library fine because you’re too lazy to just WRITE THE G.D. REVIEW ALREADY!!! I also noticed today that this is apparently #2 in the series and I had no idea it was turned into a movie a few years ago until my husband

What can I say? I’m not so quick on the uptake. That being said, y’all should prolly just go ahead and click over to Kemper’s review since he knows how to use his words and I only know how to throw some pictures up in order to make a “review.”

For the four of you who are still here, you seriously need to read this book. It’s brilliant. Savages is the story of Ben and Chon. Ben is a do-gooder with a scientific mind and a very green thumb. Chon is a former special ops agent who ain’t quite right in the head. Together they grow and distribute some seriously choice ganja . . .

The last time the

No, that’s not it. In order to guaranty O’s release, twenty mill has to be raised pronto in order to pay off the existing cartel, which leads to . . . .

Uhhhhhh . . . things and stuff.

I read this in order to get back in Mitchell’s good graces after diving straight into the deep end of the romance pool. Like I said earlier, this was S.M.A.R.T. It’s written at almost a frantic pace that got the adrenaline flowing straight from the jump and didn’t let up until the end. The dialogue was genius, the humor spot on, the stabby oh so very stabby. And while I’m told the movie version was a bit of a turd I’m still interested in watching it because of . . .

Reasons.

All the stars. Highly recommend!

Each paragraph like a stick of dynamite; it's the paragraph, the singular block that comprises the graphic novel that's very much post-YA, post-Bret E Ellis punch to the face... & of course it's very amoral & gruesome.

This novel was alarming to me because, as a zeitgeisty book, it tells of conspicuous consumption which in the 80's was ultra-cool, but in the 2010's equates the acquisition of material things to a biological process-- a need that's as basic & primordial as breathing.

The title & theme of savages excuses the need to feel, as a reader, any type of empathy for any character whatsoever-- vacuous and unreal they are, in their stinky-perfume aura of perpetual hip. It's one fantastic safari of animals, cruelly killing each other... the bombastic often-straying-into-poetry chapters, with bold text that seems to chomp on the pages like a monster. Like some prose-producing evil machine...

This has a twinge of "Trainspotting"; a dash of Alex Garland too. (Hey, just a thought: maybe Danny Boyle woulda been a better choice for the cinematic adaptation of "Savages" over Oliver Stone...)

Points off for awful Spanish word translations. "Animale" is "animal", if you can believe, & "vamanos", as most people know, is "vaMOnos." & these are but a select ones... the disregard for this just makes it... less cool? Nah, it's pretty f*ckin cool anyway. Yeah.

i.e.

"Warning: trying to sleep on speed may trigger a psychopathic episode. Consult your physician immediately. Like, warning: if erection persists for more than four hours, consult a physician immediately and hope you have one f*cking horny physician." (170-171)

3.5/5 Estrellas, pero lo dejo en 3 por el poso global que me deja al acabar la lectura.

Siguiendo un poco el estilo del libro, tras acabarlo se me ocurren varias opciones:

a) Esto es una ventana a lo peor de la sociedad, el maldito mundo de la droga, que no trae más que dolor y sufrimiento a las personas y a las sociedades.
b) Un libro de aventuras en la que dos tipos intrépidos e inteligentes se enfrentan a toda una organización delictiva, sin olvidar a la chica que los acompaña, en plan Cassidy y Kid en "Dos Hombres y un Destino".
c) El autor se ha fumado una buena mezcla de "indica" y "sativa", como se describe en el libro, y en este estado ha producido muchos de los diálogos y situaciones descritas en el libro, que te asombran y te escaman a partes iguales.
d) El libro es un fiel reflejo de la realidad........

Pues queridos amigos, un poco de cada uno de estos apartados, aunque el que mas me ha llegado, es el C), todo el rato tenía en la cabeza que el autor estaba dándose un tremendo viaje en el tren azul mientras escribía (como cantaría Rosendo) y muchas partes de lo que leía ha perdido credibilidad...o eso quiero creer, porque quiero seguir viviendo en mis mundos de yupie, exento de drogas y porros y excesos varios...coño que quiero seguir con mi vida equilibrada...estas cosas no existen....o sí. Si quieren caer con todo el equipo, lean a Winslow.

“Your strengths are your weaknesses.

The more you try to protect something, the more vulnerable you make it.”
― Don Winslow, Savages

"We reinvented ourselves every day, remade our culture, locked ourselves in gated communities, we ate healthy food, we gave up smoking, we lifted our faces while avoiding the sun, we had our skin peeled, our lines removed, our fat sucked away like our unwanted babies, we defied aging and death.
We made gods of wealth and health.
A religion of narcissism.
In the end, we worshipped only ourselves.
In the end, it wasn't enough.”

Savages by Don Winslow

It's on my favorite list. No long review for this crazy but incredible book.

Personally I think you will know after the first two words in this book if it is for you or not. Personally I loved it. (Yes, that is a tease but it actually happens to be true!)

Movie was good but nowhere NEAR the quality of the book.

“Something they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School.
‘Savages, How to Deal With.’
Savagely.”

When it comes to threesome there are many.

One trio you will soon be taking note of are the likes of Ben, Chon and the wonderful O or her real name Ophelia, in this Drug cartel solid thriller from Don Winslow.
The story is about lucrative money making with a specially brewed drug herb that the trio or really Ben and Chon deal and solely profit from. Others want a cut of this market and Ben and Chon are just not having it. They have more than enough money and want to get out of the drug world and retire on sunnier sands. As always with a woman involved matters can get personal and you are taken to the knife-edge of showdowns. The boys need to have their killing skills at full capacity to keep what they love. The other big boy in the drug cartel is really one big girl Elena the last line of a drug mafia family who is just as brutal as any man. She also has something precious in the swing of matters a daughter Paqu.

I just discovered that this highly charged full throttle drama is to be released as a movie in 2012 directed by Oliver Stone and has a full cast of good actors with Pulp fiction team Travolta and Thurman acting the part of Dennis and Paqu. It will make one hell of a movie, I heard Oliver stone was writing the screenplay before the book was published. Another of Winslow’s books that I hope to read soon that is to be adapted is Satori and will have Di Caprio starring in it.

The novel is written with the right pace and flows well, easy to read not a mind storm to get through, I cant fault it at all. There is, for those who would like to know, plenty of dark humour and explicit situations. You do get to learn a lot about cannabis in this novel. What that really makes it so good are the characters Don has created and the trio that will forever be a bond to remember. You will take away a lesson on savagery and savages from this story and oh yes how to make, Mucho Dinero.

There is a good Profile video done by OpenRoadMediaVideos found on my website here

“O knows that Chon is seriously twisted-no, she knows Chon is seriously twisted-but not like day-old-spaghetti-in-a-bowl twisted, like getting off on guys getting their heads lopped off, like that tv show about the British king, every cute chick he f**** ends up getting her head cut off.”

“Ben is a self-described Baddhist, i.e., a ‘bad Buddhist,’ because he sometimes eats meat, gets angry, rarely meditates, and definitely does consciousness-altering substances. But the basics of Buddhism, Ben is down with-
Do no harm.
Which Ben articulates as
Don’t f*** with people.
And he doesn’t think the Dalai Lama would argue with that.”

“They became almost cult like figures.
There developed such a devoted following with such a religious loyalty that they even gave themselves a name.
The Church of the Lighter Day Saints.”

“Elena knows that love makes you strong
And love makes you weak.
Love makes you vulnerable.
So if you have enemies
Take what they love.”

“Chon has always known that there are two worlds:
The savage
The less savage.
The savage is the world of pure raw power, survival of the fittest, drug cartels and death squads, dictators and strongmen, terrorist attacks, gang wars, tribal hatreds, mass murder, mass rape.
The less savage is the world of pure civilized power, governments and armies, multinationals and banks, oil companies, shock-and-awe, death-from-the-sky, genocide, mass economic rape.
And Chon knows-
They’re the same world.”

“Chon like shooting guns.
He likes the feel of metal in his hands, the kick, the blowback, the precision of chemistry, physics, and engineering mixed with hand-eye coordination. Not to mention power-shooting a gun projects your personal will across time and space in a flash. I want to hit that and that is hit. Straight from your mind to the physical world. Talk about your PowerPoint presentations.”

“Savages” is on the surface a full-out action thriller about a trio of Laguna Beach kids who have become very wealthy off hydro farming and their battle with the Baja cartel that wants in on their action. It is fast-paced action that almost never lets up from beginning to end. But, the thing about “Savages” is that that it may be about more than just a drug war thriller. It is about the age-old battle between civilized society and the savages and the thing is that savages don’t play by civilized rules. They see you trying to be reasonable and compromise and see it as a sign of weakness that they are going to exploit. It plays out in the Yin and Yang that is Chon and Ben, one a pseudo-hippie that still wants to save the world in Darfur and the Congo and elsewhere, and the other battle-hardened by three tours of duty in Stanland (Afghanistan) against savages armed with IEDs and no lines that wouldn’t cross. It plays out in the battle between Chon and Ben and the insidious cartel that chops heads off merely to send a message. No quarter given.

It plays out against the sun-drenched backdrop of Laguna Beach with its basketball court and volleyball court right smack on the beach and O (Ophelia) who shops till she drops at the most fabulous malls in the country. Amidst all that sun and surf and innocence is a cutthroat battle, not just between the drug dealers and the cartels, but the predators who exist in real estate and business who simply are little more than savages in three-piece suits and who will give no quarter and exploit every weakness that they can see.

And how do we do battle with these savages and remain somewhat civilized without giving away the store? Do we end up becoming savages ourselves in the name of showing who can stand up taller?

Can you really just close up shop and go to some island paradise without letting the whole world be overrun by savages? And how does one do battle with savagery when one has family and friends that can be threatened?

This novel is written in the same style as “Kings of Cool” with 290 short chapters. Some of it is stream of consciousness, but not such that you would get lost in it like in Finnegan’s Wake. But, this novel, is like a high speed train gliding faster than the rails can be built. This novel lacks the history and backstory that fleshed out “Kings of Cool,” but it is still far more than just another action sequence.

"There is nothing so small that it does not save its life if it has the courage to defend itself against those who would lay hand on it." - Brasidas of Sparta, quoted by Plutarch.

Perhaps, one star for the story, one star for Don Winslow (I really, really liked The Cartel, The Power of the Dog, and The Winter of Frankie Machine), one star for its boldness, etc., but I'd almost like to remove a star for the awful sex writing. I'll leave it at 3-stars because almost no one can write about sex well, but if you are going to wade into threesomes with two guys and a gal, well, you better have your pound-prose (nasty-narrative, shag-slang, bone-brogue?).

Granted, we can't all be Joyce, Chopin, or Lawrence, but ugh.

Anyway, this might just be a book that is made better by Oliver Stone. Dear GOD, did I just write that? I don't know. It feels like there is a place near the border where even Cormac McCarthy shouldn't write about drugs and sex (see The Counselor: A Screenplay).

Anyway, if you haven't read any Don Winslow, I would go read his better books first.

There's a good story here, and it's told in a blisteringly fast manner that would work really well if the author weren't so obsessed with showing how "hip" he is by making up pretend slang that no young (or non-young) person has ever used. The corny wordplay and ridiculous geographic nicknames peppered throughout the book are just painful to read. There was much cringing. It's what you would get if you put Diablo Cody's "Juno" character into a movie about a brutal drug war in which a bunch of people, including children, are killed. The quirk overload just doesn't fit.

I think this is the first crime novel I've read since, I don't know, high school? It's definitely not my genre, so maybe I'm a little out of my element. And hell, I ripped through it in two days, so it obviously entertained me. And Winslow obviously has a deep knowledge of Southern California, and he really puts you there. It just could have been so much better if the author had more faith in his story and worried less about being cute.

Reading a book that is set in my own community of South Orange County, California was a fun experience. I routinely drive through Laguna Beach, Costa Mesa, and San Clemente as a part of my job as well as to enjoy the restaurants, shops, and beaches that abound in those coastal communities. The setting brought the story very close to home.

The story, however, comes across as a bit underwhelming, which may seem strange given that it focuses on drug wars, Mexican cartels, and drug dealers. But if you were to take that summary and then guess on the contents of this book before reading it, you would probably hit upon many of the same elements included by Winslow. There’s not much that’s surprising, new, or extraordinary. It simply arranges those preconceived notions in a story format.

Along these same lines, the characters are equally underwhelming. They play the parts that they were created to play. Killers are killers and bimbos are bimbos. They are all predictable, if not in their specific deeds, then certainly in retrospect of their actions. There is no variability and therefore, there are no surprises that can be attributed to their humanity. They are all stereotypical in composition.

Lastly, the style of the book is atypical for a novel. Chapters are very short in length. 290 chapters are used by Winslow to make his way through the 300 pages that comprise the book. Some of the chapters are as short as two words in length. While I understand Winslow’s attempt at creating a feeling of edginess, reading his book felt more like reding the slides of a PowerPoint presentation.

By the final page, the choppy format and the static characters left me cold to Winslow’s attempt to uncover a dark world that lives just below the surface of where I live. If thinking about reading Savages, one would do well to pick up anything else, preferably something by Elmore Leonard.

What's with the hype? This book was a snooze. A hatchet job. A pastiche of Tarantino, Roger Avary, Ritchie, Brett Easton Ellis etc. My advice...stick to those guys because chances are you've seen it & read it all before only much, much better.

Savages, Schmavages.

A totally played out story line (which was unbelievable BTW), with recycled storytelling, featuring snappy, hipster dialog that tries SOOOOOO hard to have pop cultural significance in the vain attempts of being ingratiated into those too-cool-for-school kidsters everyday lexicon.

This was such a blatant suck up to prove how down he is, I kept picturing Winslow skulking at the back of the class going, "oh! Oh! Me! Me! I know! I KNOW! Pick me! Pick me!" Then getting all pissed off because he was overlooked AGAIN so he goes on to continue writing his, "I'll show them" novel where he proves he's SO tapped in, the kids who never gave him the time of day now wish they did.

The characters were 2-dimensional. The action short & boring. The storyline trite. I completely understand why Winslow kept having to remind the audience that the title of the book was called Savages because really...what was the point this was so tepid? There was nothing Savage about it. Redundant? Yes. Savage? More like Average.

In some ways I was amazed Stone chose this to reintroduce his proof of cultural zeitgeist (long gone are the days of Wall Street & Natural Born Killers especially thanks to Alexander & Wall Street Never Sleeps).

Like I said, not only does this book have a been there and done that feel....it's not even good. However, it's easy to understand that its glossed over snap, crackle and flop dialog was enough for Stone to have read it & re-imagined his glory days. See? Redundant.

Um, we're not squeamish, right book club? No one minds that I recommended a book whose opening chapter includes graphic sex, decapitation, and quasi-free verse prose poetry? Look, I DIDN'T KNOW.

First of all: Ooooh. Don Winslow also wrote The Death and Life of Bobby Z. Hence, the stiking similarities in tone, setting and subject matter.

Secondly: glad I read this for book club-- I mean, aside form subjecting your sweet little eyes to to such vulgarities, my dears-- because I honestly haven't yet decided whether to be fascinated, repulsed, or both by this novel. So, by three stars, I mean one but also five.

Don Winslow scores again with Savages. Two Laguna Beach buddies, Ben and Chon, operate a top-of-the-line marijuana business. Ben is a laid-back environmentalist and philanthropist; Chon is an ex-Navy Seal and former mercenary. They grow their own product, which is much desired, and they have a loyal and exclusive clientele. Both Ben and Chon are in love with the beautiful Ophelia, a spoiled local rich girl who loves both of them in return.

There have been occasional minor threats to the business, but they have been quickly dealt with by Chon. Now, though, a Mexican cartel has decided to take over Ben and Chon's operation and the Mexicans also insist that Ben and Chon continue to grow the product for them, effectively becoming the cartel's employees. When Ben and Chon refuse, the cartel kidnaps Ophelia, insisting that they will hold her captive until Ben and Chon agree to the cartel's "offer." Should they continue to refuse, gruesome things will be done to Ophelia. Ben and Chon, determined to rescue Ophelia and to preserve their independence, declare war on the cartel.

"Savages" is, by turn, very funny and extremely violent. Winslow who wrote perhaps the best fictional account of the drug trade ever published, the classic The Power of the Dog, is in great form. As usual, he captures brilliantly the Southern California lifestyle while at the same time skewering the misadventure that is the "war" on drugs. This is not a book for the faint of heart, but for anyone who might not yet have discovered Winslow, it's a great place to start.

Savages by Don Winslow

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Blurb: The smash hit thriller about two young marijuana dealers who are blackmailed into a partnership with a Mexican cartel."Baditude." Bad attitude. Ben, Chon, and O have a bad case of it, but so would you if you were the twenty-something, Laguna-cool producers of the best hydro on the Left Coast and now a powerful and vicious Mexican cartel wants in on your business. Ben's a genius botanist out to save the world. Chon's a former SEAL with a "Lack Of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder." O is a South Orange County slacker girl who loves them both. When the cartel kidnaps O to keep the boys in line, serious baditude breaks out in this twenty-first century thriller that blasts through all the old rules and blows the lid off the genre. But that's baditude for you.

Thoughts: F*ck you.
That is the entire first chpater of this book. And the baditude doesn't let up for a moment.

I really had no idea what to expect with this book. It's been recommended to me for months by Goodreads as something similar to James Ellroy but if that is the case then it is a stripped back raw Ellroy for the 21st Century. The closest comparison I had was Nobody Move which had the same urgent feel and post Tarantino dialogue to it but none of the subtleties that leaves Savages as fantastic unputdownable achievement. I literally hated putting this book down for even a second.

In theory I couldn't care less for reading about drug cartels and turf wars but what Winslow does so well is to tell that story through the lives of such incredibly well written and interesting characters as Chon, Ben and O. They're not fully fleshed out people who share their life stories (as in some of those really tedious popular novels that seem to get churned out) but they are recognisable as people we all know with all the hallmarks of humanity and very unique voices. The same can also be said of Don Winslow. He just rips up the rule book for writing a black as night crime novel.

"Whatever happened to morality?"
"Same thing that happened to CD's, replaced by newer, faster, easier technology."

This is an American novel that analyses post 9/11, post Obama America in such a way as to bathe it in bright flourescent light, all it's failings and weaknesses shown as plain as day. It is a bold move for an American to write this stuff, almost constantly bashing every little detail of the 21st century American dream gone wrong.

Click here for my review of the movie adaptation.

Originally posted at blahblahblahgay

12/10/23 addendum: I read this in 2012. Please keep in mind that I was being somewhat hyperbolic in my review. It was strictly for humor purposes. If I offend thee, I'm sorry. That said: I really don't like potheads...

First, let's talk about Don Winslow's killer prose. It's brilliant: James Ellroy riffing on Jack Kerouac with the attitude of a Miles Davis song. It's haiku on steroids. Winslow is a punk-rock Shakespeare.

Second, let's talk about how Winslow has written the first Obama-era pothead action comedy.

(ASIDE: I f**king hate potheads. Let me be clear: I truly hate them. Potheads are self-made retards who have no reason to live. When I hear that a pothead dies violently, a part of me inside cheers a bit. When I see a pothead, that same part inside me wants to pummel their bloodshot giggly face into bloody pulp. I think drugs are stupid as sh*t, and yes, I mean all of them: alcohol, cocaine, heroin, nicotine, caffeine, marijuana, meth, even most prescription and over-the-counter drugs. They all suck, and I have no sympathy for anybody who is stupid enough to use them to the point of addiction. And this from someone who still has a serious caffeine addiction, but I know when to f*cking say when. That said, I say legalize it. Let the idiots have their sh*t. Clear out the prisons. Screw up the Mexican drug cartels' group health insurance plans. Give the D.A.R.E. cops a break, not that they do anything anyway...)

The story follows the messed-up three-way love affair of Ben, Chon, and O (short for Ophelia, of course). Entitled, white, super-intelligent, and politically apathetic rich kids who have managed to create an empire built on the cleanest hydroponic weed grown on the West Coast under the radar of law enforcement and their own liberal parents, they have, unfortunately, attracted the attention of one of the most ruthless dug cartels in northern Mexico.

This cartel wants Ben's recipe for his special blend, but Ben and Chon refuse to give it up. They want out of the business anyway. The cartel doesn't take no for an answer, so they kidnap O as a way of getting to the boys. This just pisses them off more. Then the fun really begins.

More gunplay than a John Woo movie, more chainsaw beheadings than a Texas Chainsaw Massacre double feature, and more kinky three-way sex than "Fifty Shades of Gray" (not that I've read it), "Savages" is like a Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse movie without the morality.

I haven't seen Oliver Stone's film version of this yet, but he seems like the perfect person to direct it, with all the subtlety of a co*ked-up bull in a china closet. Seriously, Stone's movie may be entertaining, but I have a feeling he may miss the subtle humor and strange beauty of Winslow's writing.

Ben & Chon are two Southern California dope dealers who manufacture and distribute some of the most potent pot available. Ben, a Buddhist and Chon, a gun-toting ex-US solider run into trouble with an invading Mexican drug cartel. When their mutual girlfriend, O (short for Ophelia), is kidnapped - all bets are off. Ben and Chon must do whatever it takes to ensure her safe return, even if it means risking their lives to do so.

Absolutely incredible.

I tried listening to the audio version of this book but was seriously turned off, immediately. I almost just about gave up but picked up a copy from the library instead. What a mistake that would've been. Geez.

Everything. From the prose, to the story, to the characters to the ending. All of those elements blend together to create an intriguing and fast paced thrill-ride. Also, I've yet to experience an ending that had my heart pounding as quickly as this one.

Where did this author come from? I've never heard of him before reviews started popping up on Good Reads declaring this novel an instant-classic. I definitely need to get my hands on more of his material and soon; he's that damn good (forgive me, I appear to be thinking out loud).

In closing, Winslow has written one of my favorite passages I've ever read. Here is that passage:

We reinvented ourselves every day, remade our culture, locked ourselves in gated communities, we ate healthy food, we gave up smoking, we lifted our faces while avoiding the sun, we had our skin peeled, our lines removed, our fat sucked away like our unwanted babies, we defied aging and death.

We made gods of wealth and health.

A religion of narcissism.

In the end, we worshiped only ourselves.

In the end, it wasn't enough.

READ THIS. NOW.

Well that was a delight! Satire with heart. As always with Winslow this is well-written, funny, wise, wry, very violent, very racy/kinda filthy, and at least as much about the people as about the capers. And who knew it would turn out to be a love story?! (By no means is that meant to indicate there is a happily-ever-after. It might be an HEA, but it is fair to say that is a completely subjective assessment.)

I keep going to describe the story itself, and it feels like everything is a spoiler. I was happy coming into this blind, so I will give you the same option. If you do read it, my favorite line is "It's all fun and games until someone loses an I." From the mouths of half-assed Buddhists...

Had I read this in 2010 it might have been a 5-star. Elements are dated, but mostly it is not an issue. My biggest problem was with the way the women were drawn. This is satire, so there are going to be all sorts of tropes in the mix, and women in noir have certain hallmarks. Making one woman a hot California blond who cares little for anything but org*sms and shopping (both of which she cares about deeply) and who eats like a lumberjack and never gains an ounce, another a California seeker looking for meaning it whatever someone puts in front of her (plastic surgery, Jesus, life coaching, etc.), and the third a true femme fatale makes sense, but they needed something to animate the stock character. The men got to embody tropes while still being very much individuals. That did not, in my estimation, happen for the women. It turned out to be a fairly minor quibble, but it did have an impact on my enjoyment of the book, and I think on the overall storytelling.

Younger folks might rate most of this book as a 4 star book liking the language more than I did. I was hovering over 3 most of the time, pretty good, but very close to the edge & a bit much pretty often. It's different, quirky, & fun with a choppy, irreverent, & down right hilarious style that really worked in places, but got a bit wearing in others. The names for people, places, & things were fun. O's mother is Paqu - Passive Aggressive Queen of the Universe - perfect!

The characters were well sketched out well, very believable, as was the situation. Again, it was quirky & different, but it made sense & poked a lot of fun at everyone involved & many who weren't.

I HATED the ending & almost gave this 2 stars because of it. Not only didn't it make any sense to me, I don't think it could have happened that way.
- I can't see Chon giving O the fatal shot so easily. Once that was done, taking one himself wasn't a huge leap.
- The length of time it took them to go out seemed long, though. The one time I had morphine, it was in my butt & seemed to work instantly. AGONY -> woah, instant golden glow. I'd think mainlining it would take a few seconds to run them into no where.
- And he had enough on him to OD 3 people? The doc had given him a few hits to manage his own pain.

I wouldn't want to read many books like this, but I'm glad I read one.

The Baja Cartel want Ben and Chon to grow exclusively for them, so much so that they send a rather confronting video to Chon for his viewing pleasure. One could say Ben, Chon, and O have got themselves over their heads…

And so starts a non stop thrill ride of drugs, sex, violence, and big business cartel warfare.

When I first read SAVAGES, I was blown away by how engaging the characters were and the second time round is no different. O is unique, funny, and deeply in love with her boys, both of whom freely share her heart and bed. She's the innocent victim of the Baja Cartels greed and thirst for expansion.

Ben and Chon, now having read THE KINGS OF COOL are that much cooler - if possible. Winslow is really onto a winner with this semi odd couple - one a violent and take charge through violence, the other, a negotiator with a Zen-like outlook on life.

As for the story, Winslow doesn't miss a beat. There's enough back-story to make the characters feel real while the action clocks breakneck speed. I love the approach Ben and Chon take to raise enough money to meet the cartels requirements. It's a blood romp through California sun, shine and drug warfare.

My original take was much less comprehensive but remains true: Great characters, fast moving story and non stop action. The Bruen-like prose was well executed - Winslow has adopted this style and made it his own. (Jan 2011)

This review appears on my blog along with my thoughts on the movie adaptation: http://justaguythatlikes2read.blogspo...

Chapter 1:

f*ck you.

End of chapter.

Instant favorite.

Ben and Chon are best friends who have different views on life and how to live it, almost yin/yang opposites, but have two things in common: they share a gf, (O)phelia, and are in the business of growing and selling primo hydro mary jane. When the Baja Cartel wants them to do business for them, and they decline, the downward spiral begins.

Explicitly violent, explicitly sexual and explicitly... well one of the most entertaining books I’ve read this year. It was a radicalized and ripping rush of a read through the southern California drug culture that succeeds on the strength of "savage" characters on both sides of the California-Mexico border. On one side there's "Chon," the literally too-cool-for-school jock who dropped out and became a Navy SEAL, finding that the skills he picked up in "StanLand" and "I-Rock-and-Roll" (AKA Iraq/Afghanistan) have served him well pushing high-grade marijuana to a well-heeled Orange County customer base. His partner, Ben, champion of third world causes, is the product of a liberal up-bringing by a pair of psychologist parents. Forming a neat little love triangle is dyed and tattooed "O," the spoiled offspring of the stereotypical SoCal diva who jumps from husband-to-husband while flitting from the latest pop culture answer to self-actualization to the next with ADD-like precision. So life is sweet for the drug-trade made multimillionaires - until the feared BC (Baja Cartel) proposes a business deal - via a web video of seven heads separated from their bodies hanging from meat hooks. Chon prefers to fight while "peaceful" Ben would rather run, but when Baja raises the stakes, both boys are sucked into a wild and fiendishly brutal ride worthy of the title.

I have not yet seen anyone write Southern California quite like Winslow here. In his stripped, tragically hip dialogue and convention-be-damned prose - definitely keep your Urban Dictionary handy - Winslow at the same time skewers and venerates San Diego's culture, it's citizens, and the love/hate symbiosis between those south-of-the-border who produce the drugs and their el Norte clientele who provide the demand. Winslow isn't here to preach but, excepting some misplaced Oliver Stone-like political rants, but to entertain. He succeeds beautifully in spinning a bare-knuckled, blistered-pace drama of crime, suspense, and passion that explodes in a climax fitting of the carnage and emotion that precedes it. Don Winslow is an under-appreciated writer - a talented and consistent storyteller with a very unique style, backed by the authority that only comes from living the life of what you write. Fast and furious, yet paradoxically poignant. Don't miss it.

Savages has a panache, I have heard the style here is different then his other books, but as I read it I felt that it was the mark of a writer finding his style. I see how someone could find it irritating, such as his frequent use of acronyms; however, I love the acronyms, switching to script form, nickname etymology, and other devices Winslow used for this story.

The reason why the book didn't get 5 stars is because I still had some issues with it. Sometimes the writing appeared a bit elementary. I realize that some books are supposed to be a simple perspective style, but with all the visual writing and the almost 290 chapters in an only 302 page book, I almost felt like it was meant to be a movie, with each chapter being a new scene.

In the end, I recommend this book to anyone who isn't sensitive to sex and/or violence. It is a gritty, violent romance, sure to leave you hating and loving the book at the same time.

This comes adorned with so many over-the-top raves and blurbs that you'd be forgiven for thinking that the novel is unlikely to live up to the hype. And you'd be unsurprised to discover that you're right.

This is a speedy read, and it is pretty much gripping once it gets going, and it does have funny bits, but something is lost: we never feel a lick of genuine interest in these characters, and they never feel like more than types being pushed around in something made for the movies. It's just awfully thin, is all. The telegraphic, faux-blank-verse-y style of the writing, with lots of lines
that break in the middle,
I suppose to mimic how the prose
hits, and
hits, and
hits the reader—
makes for blazingly fast reading (like a movie script, yes, and there are pages in script form mixed in with the prose here as well, though to what end its hard to say). Though once you slow down, there are lots of easy-to-punch holes in the plot. And ultimately the style is also kind of annoying, and achieves any effects by skipping past those other things that a fuller style achieves: developed character and fully realized scene and so on and so on.

A passable read for a long plane ride, but that's about all. I immediately threw it in the resale box on getting home. Wouldn't recommend it.

Read this one to take a break from slogging through a classic published in 1747. I was craving short sentences and in that respect, Savages delivers. The first page, in fact the entire opening chapter, is just 2 words which I can recite from heart: "f*ck you."

Winslow achieves something here through smart and innovative prose. He has prose with line breaks, for crying out loud.

At the centre of this book is a throuple, two men and a woman.

{May be spoilers} Have not seen the movie yet but people complain about the ending. I suspect it is not the same ending as in the book, which is rich in metaphor. In the book, peace-living Ben is killed by guns, and the other two commit suicide through drugs. Yes, drugs are what kills everyone here, and the lines that Winslow has the characters talk about, the invisible lines between the savages and the civilized, and just as blurry when drawn around our heroes on the ground.

The only quibble I have is an overuse of acronyms (AQ for al-qaeda, for example, or DC meaning the US federal government). Perhaps (as people keep saying) I am somewhat dull-witted, but I could not easily understand all of these. This slowed me down, where really the use of acronyms is meant to foster a zippy reading experience.

This is listed here are book #2 of a series, but I didn’t notice that when I read it. Maybe because the prequel had not yet been conceived. I enjoyed this propulsive story, but I'll never get around to the prequel.

Read a lot of good reviews of this, heard Oliver Stone was adapting it, made some best-of-crime-fiction year-end lists...

And I don't get it. I will say that pages 175-250 were good, insofar as things actually happened. And quickly. The rest of it...

Don Winslow inserts his (or the narrator's) voice between the reader and the character, as a character of its own. But that character is indistinct. That character thinks he is incredibly clever and funny. And after he makes a funny, clever comment, he takes pains to explain to you why it was clever and funny. What he doesn't seem to realize is that if it has to be explained, it's neither funny nor clever.

The world is great: two dudes making great hydro. Hydro so great they come into competition with a Mexican cartel in SoCal. But the two dudes are not much more than that. One is a Iraq vet who likes violence. The other is the peaceful one. Mostly so he can be different than his partner.

If this set up had just been written straightforwardly, with unaffected prose... basically, if it had been written more "hacky," I weirdly would have enjoyed it more. It was really the style of the writing mixed with the shallowness of the characters that got me.

You can skip it.

Amazing. Unputdownable. Off to buy every single book Winslow has written. LOVE LOVE LOVE. Review to come in August.

It’s interesting reading this early Winslow work having already read his later books, especially the Cartel ones. The tone and writing is so vastly different that it’s striking. If I read his books chronologically, I might have appreciated this more as a new exciting voice and admired his growth and maturity from book to book. Winslow’s Cartel novels have many obvious similarities in content with this one, but the Cartel series is much more intricately plotted, deeply reasearched, and thoughtfully executed.

Savages is less mature and more manic in its pacing. It crackles with an energy and attitude that really fits the material and definitely stands out in the pack of thriller fiction. But I couldn’t get past the large style-over-substance ratio where the writing technique is pretty distracting and it was frustrating how little I cared about the hollow characters or about any of the events and plot turns. The book has style to burn, but ultimately left me a bit cold and distracted.

Don, what have you done?

Libro muy dinámico que debido a lo rápido de su lectura te deja algo frio no cogiendo cariño o afecto a algún personaje, pero el libro es bastante entretenido. 7/10

It starts with a two-word chapter. One of the words is an obscenity. That ratio of obscenities to non- pretty much holds up for the rest of the book. What do you expect in a story about some Orange County yuppies who dabble in the drug trade until the BC gets all real with them?

Yeah that BC.

Baja

Cartel.

Some feelings get hurt. Dr. Phil gets involved. Not really, but, well, yeah, kinda he does.

Flipping through the book you notice a lot of white. Not white like white people white, although there are some of those too. White as in pages that aren't filled with words. That's due to some of the short chapters, like the one that opens the book. Also there's a lot of

unnecessary
carriage
returns

which seems to be part of the author's
Uber-hip style
that sounds like a guy who moved from New York and absorbed himself in the SoCal culture
instead of just sitting around complaining about
how the pizza and bagels here
aren't the same as they are back home
only that really is the author's story,
but it's unclear about the pizza and bagels part.

So you don't want to like it
because it's, you know, trying too hard
except for one thing:

it's really good.

So you like it in spite of the Look-at-me-ma prose.

Now you're looking to get your hands on the prequel. And you might even watch the Oliver Stone movie adaptation.