Cooper dives into the action quickly and keeps the pace up throughout the novel. The central characters enemies are precariously close to their heels throughout the chase, keeping the readers interest through tension and stoking it when the are overtaken.<p>Very accessible language considering the time it was written, however a minor point being Coopers seemingly incesant use of the word &#x27;countenance&#x27; was mildly irritating.

Like the Star Wars movies, Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales were written out of sequence. In their chronological order, with their order of publication in parentheses, they are: The Deerslayer (5), The Last of the Mohicans (2), The Pathfinder (4), The Pioneers (1) and The Prairie (3). So if you want to read them in either chronological or published order, you should read Mohicans second. But each novel is self-contained, so if you want to try just one, to decide if the rest are worth reading, then Mohicans is the one to start with, as it is his most famous work and generally acknowledged to be his best.<p>The hero of these tales, the improbably named Nathaniel Bumppo (or Natty, or Deerslayer, or Hawkeye, or The Long Rifle, or...etc, etc) was the first, and remains the quintessential, all-American fictional hero; brave, noble, honest and more at home in the wilderness than the town. He is not however, the strong, silent type. He has a habit of launching into long, rambling streams of homespun philosophy at the drop of a coonskin cap. Never mind that lead shot is flying thick and fast around his ears, he will lean on his rifle and expound on the different natures of Indians and whites, or the evils of literacy.<p>The plot of Mohicans is action-packed, but is linear - no surprise twists, and no sub-plots - and contains some highly improbable elements. Well, would you be fooled by an enemy disguised as a beaver? Michael Mann's excellent 1992 screen version reworked the plot extensively, to its advantage.<p>Cooper was America's first novelist, inspired by Walter Scott, the inventor of the historical novel. He was consciously attempting to emulate Scott but, although he writes quite well, he lacks Scott's lyricism. And his characters, specially the women, are resiliently two-dimensional. But he did capture the spirit of the frontier, the pride and pain of a new and growing country, and in doing so created myths out of America's past that have survived, evolved, and have sustained the nation, ever since.

I found the language used in this quite tough. His descriptions really do put the images wonderfully in ones mind, but the problem is the sentences can sometimes stretch to an entire paragraph. These things make it difficult to read at time, and a bit of a labour. Also, on rare occasions, the characters start to converse in French, without any kind of translation. <br />Saying that, the plot is superb, and so different from the film it almost seems to defy belief. For example, there is no love story with hawk-eye and Cora, nor does Duncan Heyward desire the latter. Major Heyward is interested in Alice and Uncas has a fleeting interest in Cora. There is an additional character, in David Gamut, who confuses the Hurons with his bizarre songs so much that they thing he has mental problems. In this book Montcalm actively encourages the massacre of William Henry, and there is a rather brutal act from one of the Hurons. <br />Colonel Munro escapes the gory fate of the film because there is no blood vengeance at the heart of this story. And it all culminates in a battle of the Delawares (led by Le Cerf Agile) against Magua (Le Renard Subtil) and the Hurons. <br />It could not be any more different from the dramatisation if it tried, and so is readily recommended to those who have seen the film and think there is little extra to be gleaned from the book. There is a sub story of the abuse of the natural world and the treatment of the indeginous peoples of the Americas, and in some of the admonishments of Hawk-eye you can see the passion of the author.