The early critical reception of the novel was mixed. William J. Cobb, in a review published in the "Houston Chronicle" (July 15, 2005), characterizes McCarthy as "our greatest living writer" and describes the book as "a heated story that brands the reader's mind as if seared by a knife heated upon campfire flames". In the July 24, 2005, issue of "The New York Times Book Review", the critic and fiction writer Walter Kirn suggests that the novel's plot is "sinister high hokum", but writes admiringly of the prose, describing the author as "a whiz with the joystick, a master-level gamer who changes screens and situations every few pages".