The one hundred and fourth book: #080 The Last of the Mohicans - James Fenimore Cooper
I started feeling a bit apprehensive when I started reading The Last of the Mohicans - a white American writer writing about a native American who's the last of his tribe is awkward enough without knowing too much of what's coming. The titular last of the Mohicans (a situation were there were no pureblood women left) feels like he remains a cypher, a noble savage without much insight that I felt I could get. Instead, it becomes about how much the British colonists and the tribes they're allied with have to go up against the French and their allies, and in particular how their Mohican helper gets them through. As an adventure novel, the political elements are ignored and having read more about this (especially on a recent trip to Canada) it's clear it skips over a lot without enough introspection. It stays surface level, and where it doesn't it's on the characters I don't care about, in particular the white frontiersman who... yeah, it's as old fashioned as you'd expect. I never really got to a point where I found much to enjoy in the entirety of the book, unfortunately, and I'm happy to leave it where it is.