The Sacketts Books, Ranked In Order I Review Westerns

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This is the biggest review I’ve ever written, but also the best. I’m going to classify the entire series of saccketts books in order. skip the photo to access the ranking, if you’re in a hurry.

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sacketts deserve the best of me. they have fought to become my favorite literary family. they’re the ultimate in western shit. the books are equal parts historical saga and delicious fiction that you can devour in a single night if you wish.

You are reading: Sackett books in order

That’s why instead of reviewing every book, I wanted to read all 17 adventures and then write a mega-review ranking sacckett’s novels in order. (okay i checked jubal sacckett before realizing that a ranked list was the best format).

You are reading: Sackett books in order

These books also have many links to my real life. This is my backstory. I worked in a public library for 15 years. and the only genre I never read in those 15 years was the western. I loved westerns, but I thought the books looked cheesy and boring.

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There were a few Western fiction fans in my library, all older men. i adored this sweet old man, hector nelson, and would visit other libraries in our system and sign stacks of westerns on my own card, then return them to our local branch so he could have fresh selections. however, I never opened the covers myself.

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When I met my future father-in-law, he showed me the bags. Somehow, in my mustache-loving cinematic adventures, I had never seen this epic Sam Elliott TV miniseries. Then he told me about Sackett’s books and handed me Jubal Sackett. Although I was horrified to start a series on the fourth book, I dove in.

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I got hooked.

You are reading: Sackett books in order

I thought when the series was over I would tell jaye my thoughts on each of sacckett’s books, but he passed away abruptly a month ago. I never thought I’d live in a world where I couldn’t talk to Jaye about the sacks. she had owned the entire set of bags several times, giving them away to friends and family, then buying them back. she loved them so much.

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He gave me this western legacy and I sincerely hope to do them justice. Let’s go for it!

You are reading: Sackett books in order

In case you’re totally new to saccketts, here’s the gist of the series:

You are reading: Sackett books in order

all the sacckett boys are tall and have big hands
all the sacckett boys grew up hunting and doing hard physical labor “from sight to sight” so they are all suitably strong fighters, skilled and excellent at shooting; most are also great riders
all saccketts are brilliant trackers
wherever a sacckett goes, everyone knows his reputation
all saccketts will do anything to help another sacckett
most of the sacckett boys describe themselves as unattractive (except for orrin and tyrel), but women don’t seem to share that point of view
along those lines, the sacckett boys always get the girl
six of the books are narrated by tell, who was portrayed by sam elliott in the 1979 tv miniseries the saccketts
only one book is directed by a sacckett woman, and unfortunately it’s bad (more on that later)

now that you’re ready… here are my totally accurate rankings of sacckett’s books in order.

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1. jubal sacckett – book 4, 1985

This is literally the best book you could read if your imagination wants to be like exploring early north america, paying respect to the natives and changing the hermit lifestyle. it was sacckett de l’amour’s last book, which is a giant fucking tragedy because he had planned to write the generations between the 1800s and 1600s, but jubal’s story was only the second in that regard when he died. it’s a great narrative, fascinatingly descriptive historical fiction, and it has a decently strong indigenous protagonist.

You are reading: Sackett books in order

i reviewed jubal sacckett on his own post, so check it out for more info. is about exploring the “new world” of the 1620s and features an unusual friendship between a lonely white guy and a lonely kickapoo man.

You are reading: Sackett books in order

2. lonely on the mountain – book 17, 1980

Okay, I lost my mind over this book. I had been reading this series for a year and a half, and this latest book was the perfect note to leave! It’s well-written, which isn’t always the case with Sacketts: 1960s l’amour novels are painfully repetitive, often using the same word multiple times on a single page and recycling identical descriptive passages across multiple books. butthis whole book is just exciting and a great fucking adventure with a bit of mystery. You also get four main sacks in one book: Tell, Tyrel, Orrin, and Logan (the stories are usually told by a single sack, often Tell).

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This story is about Tell’s brutal resistance cattle drive from Dakota to British Columbia. There are mestizos and historic places in BC that you may have visited on road trips. it’s fucking amazing. Bonus: There’s no random woman who annoys a guy from Sackett with her sass at first, but she wins her heart on the last page.

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3. galloway – book 14, 1970

This is another truly amazing Sackett adventure, and one of the few narrated by a cousin of Sackett’s main clan: Flagan. the book for some reason is titled in honor of his brother, galloway; I guess ‘flagan’ wasn’t a catchy title. Regardless, Flagan narrowly escapes the Apaches and befriends a rogue wolf, but he is stark naked and in bad shape from being tortured. he needs to find galloway, then they have to take on a bunch of killer white dudes so they can set up a ranch.

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This is a solid survival story with lots of classic western action. Taking place primarily in the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona in the late 1870s, it also briefly features Logan and Parmalee Sackett. Some readers take issue with the fact that Flagan’s girlfriend from book 12 is forgotten in favor of a new girl, but I honestly didn’t notice because book 12 was forgettable.

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4. the sacckett mark – book 10, 1965

Honestly, this sacckett novel is a bit tied with book 14 and book 8 when it comes to rankings. it’s so fucking good, I really wish they would make it into a TV movie. Tell Sackett is badly injured and cornered, with no fewer than 40 angry assassins closing in. Sacketts race to his rescue from across the country, so each chapter is either from Tell’s tense perspective or from a Sackett you haven’t met yet if you read them in order.

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is a tight, real-time narrative of survival and justice. This book, set around 1875, gives you an insight into later novels featuring the Sackett cousins as Galloway and Mustang Man.

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5. sack – book 8, 1961

This is one of two Sackett novels that were condensed to create the screenplay for Sackett’s TV movie, and the first (in series order) to be narrated by the legendary William Tell Sackett. the book is so much better than the movie! It takes place in 1874 and has a lot of good stuff: exploration, gold, danger from the elements, danger from armed men, and more.

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Although the writing is a bit rough, sackett’s story is fast-paced and enjoyable from start to finish.

You are reading: Sackett books in order

6. sacckett’s land – book 1, 1974

this book is ridiculously great. the writing is pretty good, and the story is very nice. It is the story of Barnabas Sackett. He’s the first Sackett to sail to the ‘new world,’ and the guy who started all the Sackett traditions. he finds some roman gold coins buried in the mud of his homeland, the fens of england. Those gold coins are supposed to get him to America, but first they get him into a lot of trouble.

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technically it’s not really a western, since it starts in 1599 and in England. but it’s loaded with action, adventure and even pirates, and it’s the origin story of my favorite western family, as it happens. In addition, you will meet Barnabas’s good friend, Jublain, after whom he would name his future son Jubal.

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7. the way of the warrior – book 3, 1980

this sacckett book takes you all over the fucking map. Holy shit Kin Sackett and El’s brother Yance, the other children of Barnabas, have to go on a rescue mission from Carolina to New England and then to Jamaica. yance’s sister-in-law has been kidnapped… or so it seems. then you get the america of 1620, adventure at sea and then more adventure in port royal.

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the writing is solid and the story is super exciting. the narration is also quite different from that of barnabas or tell. you get a fresh voice and a solid female character. Diana may be a love interest, but she’s also strong and independent and the Puritans think she’s a witch, all good reasons to like her.

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8. the early risers – book 6, 1960

This is another Sackett book that has a good enough story to balance out the poor quality of the writing. Not amazing when it comes to bags, but a bit above average. The Daybreakers is the other half of the two books that became the Sacketts TV movie. It is narrated by young Tyrel, the fastest gun in the west. He and his brother Orrin start working for a ranch, then their stories split: Tyrel takes up arms to defend a family of Mexican-Americans, while Orrin falls for an unpleasant young woman whose equally shady father places Orrin in local politics. .

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what I like about daybreakers is the way it captures how horrible white people treated Mexicans and Mexican Americans. the film removed much of that part. The book shows Tyrel’s loyalty and sense of justice. He only appears briefly in a couple of Sackett’s other books, so this is your only chance to meet him.

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9. mustang man – book 13, 1966

by the time you get to mustang man, you’re exhausted. the last couple of books in the series order were a bit meh, and the narrative sounded pretty much the same. The saving grace of this book is that it has a new voice: Nolan Sackett, one of the ‘outlaw’ fighting Sacketts from Clinch Mountains, Tennessee. His style is gruff, so you think you’re going to be more of a bad boy. but like all saccketts, as soon as there are women involved, he is all cavalier and does the right thing.

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five of the last seven books in the saccketts series are basically a three star review of mine. mustang man is way over the top because the characters of penelope and sylvie are great. it also has some solid plot twists that keep things interesting.

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10. the lonely men – book 12, 1969

Remember how I said you’d burn out halfway through the set? lonely men would be part of the reason you felt this way. Not a bad story, just not as cool as you know saccketts can be. Tell starts out trapped by Apaches, escapes, and then ends up on a deadly mission in the Sierra Madres thanks to the scheming Laura Pritts (that nasty yellow-haired girl Orrin fell in love with in Book 6).

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There are some super exciting moments in Lonely Men, and it’s a good story about surviving both the elements and the bad guys. the weakness is that the writing is not particularly good, so as soon as you finish reading it you quickly forget what it is about.

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11. treasure mountain – book 15, 1973

I expected treasure mountain to be more amazing, set in new orleans and coming out of galloway. but l’amour didn’t write the series in order and became a better writer over time, so his best work is randomly interspersed throughout the series, and this is not the case. In this novel, Tell and Orrin are trying to find out what happened to their father, Falcon Sackett, who disappeared on a gold-digging mission when they were children.

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Here are some great new orleans historical facts and descriptions, and you can’t help but get stuck wondering how his father died and who did it. This is another Sackett novel that struggles with repetitive language, but the last 50 pages are quite gripping.

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12. mojave crossing – book 9, 1964

This book picks up after Sackett, with Tell transporting all the gold he got in the previous book from Colorado to Los Angeles. It’s actually a great story, and it sets things up to take on Nolan Sackett, who was hired by a devious woman. It’s just not great writing, so sometimes I would distract my brain begging to switch to edit mode.

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I think I would have liked to cross the Mojave better if he hadn’t spent the whole time super upset that his fucking wife wasn’t mentioned. they got married at the end of book 8, and all you get is a sentence in the middle that says angel is somewhere else and he’s not sure if he’ll ever see her again. it’s like he’s conveniently out of place just so there could be a different woman.

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13. ride the dark path – book 16, 1972

Now you can officially meet Nolan’s twin brother, Logan! Appearing briefly in books 10 and 14, Logan Sackett is another one of those tough mountain boys. Like Nolan, he is supposedly a “cynical bum,” but he becomes chivalrous the moment a woman is in trouble. this time she’s an old lady, and it turns out she’s a sack too. she has an awesome house and land, and a bunch of assholes are trying to get her out of there, so logan stays to fight.

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This story was honestly a bit boring. You don’t have enough time or reason to care about Em Talon, so the idea that Logan and other men will fight to the death for her is a bit far-fetched. Logan’s character isn’t as well-written as the other Sackett boys, and the young lady, Pennywell, is a total yawn.

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14. the ocean liners – book 11, 1967

This book did not make any kind of impression on me. I was literally googling it to find out what it was about and why I misclassified it when I was done…because even reading random passages at this point didn’t jog my memory. It’s narrated by Flagan, but it’s not as good as Galloway. the female character, judith, is fucking annoying. she basically causes all this trouble by being a stubborn brat, and then somehow she earns a sack.

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It’s not trash or anything, but you don’t get carried away by flagan’s narrative and you’re not rooting for him to get the girl, so it’s like…what’s the point?

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15. to the far blue mountains – book 2, 1976

at the end of book 1, barnabas sacckett had to return to england. In this book, he is trying to return to America, but the queen has a warrant out for his arrest. coming off the fast-paced action of sacckett’s land the narrative is incoherent and there is no real dramatic tension. There is no specific bad guy, and Barnabas can handle literally anything that comes his way. you never have to worry about it, so it’s sort of a flat line.

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A lot of people liked that this longer story about Barnabas spent more time just on his character and the trials of being among the first people to try to settle in a completely foreign land. I found it tiring and the dialogue awkward. And what about the random hints that barnabas has magic in his blood?

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16. ride the river – book 5, 1983

navigating the river was a step in bridging the gap between tell (1880s) and jubal sacckett (1620s), which took place in the 1840s. its narrator is echo, the only sacot woman he has his own story. she is a sharpshooter with a rifle, and quite fearless. I really wanted to like this book. but echo’s narrative style is creaky and poorly written.

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It was painful to push myself through this book. it’s really bad. but not as bad as…

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17. lando – book 7, 1962

There are no words to express how much I hated this book, but I’ll try. the writing is terrible. the character, orlando aka lando, lacks personality. all the interesting stuff happened before the story happened. it’s mostly fistfights, which bores me in books because it’s hard to read three pages of fistfights if you’re not a fighter.

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I literally didn’t give a shit if lando got what he wanted or not. It’s as if the premise is “I want to write a boxing book”, rather than a fully realized member of the Sackett clan. I even hate the cover. terrible book, horrible, not good, very bad. I don’t recommend it

You are reading: Sackett books in order

so there you have it, my ranking of saccketts novels. I’d say hit me with your own thoughts, but I’ve disabled comments on this blog because I’m a delicate flower who can’t handle trolls. this is the one time i wish i could resist, just to have an amazing conversation about this epic series.

Other content

The Sacketts Books, Ranked In Order I Review Westerns

1. jubal sacckett – book 4, 1985

2. lonely on the mountain – book 17, 1980

3. galloway – book 14, 1970

4. the sacckett mark – book 10, 1965

5. sack – book 8, 1961

6. sacckett’s land – book 1, 1974

7. the way of the warrior – book 3, 1980

8. the early risers – book 6, 1960

9. mustang man – book 13, 1966

10. the lonely men – book 12, 1969

11. treasure mountain – book 15, 1973

12. mojave crossing – book 9, 1964

13. ride the dark path – book 16, 1972

14. the ocean liners – book 11, 1967

15. to the far blue mountains – book 2, 1976

16. ride the river – book 5, 1983

17. lando – book 7, 1962

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