“This crackling, lightning-bolt energy and patient attention to even the lowest of characters recalls the work of Denis Johnson…helped along by an energizing sense of humor and a virtuosic control of plot…Hart has created a Dickensian portrait of the barely settled Pacific Northwest.” — New York Times Book Review
“An ambitious and beautifully harsh chronicle of family, love and deception. . . . A brilliant novel. Its huge scope and panoramic sympathies make it compelling and immersive…Hart’s echoes of Cormac McCarthy—the brutality of landscape and character, the unrelenting hardship—are just a fraction of his original successes here in scope, character and emotional magnitude.” — Dallas Morning News
“Brian Hart writes like a dream. In this haunting, often brutal tale of failed fathers and abandoned sons, set in the logging industry a century ago, are scenes of aching beauty.” — James Magnuson, author of The Hounds of Winter
“Brilliant… Hart paints a vivid picture of the brutality and venality of the old Northwest Territories.” — Austin American-Statesman
“Hart’s sense of place is brilliant…There are dazzling characterizations…[and] a dense, deep and illuminating narrative…of greed and ambition and of fathers and sons…Think the brutal realities of McCarthy’s Blood Meridian set among the primeval forests of the Pacific Northwest frontier.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A very robust story about where I’m living now, Oregon. It’s about sheer madness and effort that went into logging in that area of the country in the 1800s. It’s really an epic historical tale, and he’s a fantastic writer.” — Smith Henderson, author of Fourth of July Creek
“A brilliant second novel… Hart’s prose is dense and lyrically savage.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Not a writer of half-measures, Hart brilliantly re-creates the rugged life in the Pacific Northwest logging camps of the 1890s. A riveting, powerful tale.” — Library Journal
“Brian Hart’s THE BULLY OF ORDER does what only the best works of fiction can do: it brilliantly imagines those parts of life that history all too often fails to record. This is a thoroughly engrossing story told in mesmerizing prose. I highly recommend it.” — Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds
“After a relatively quiet debut, Brian Hart has come back with a stunning second novel-a work would qualify as a lifetime achievement for most writers. You do not have to read very far to see that Brian Hart has vaulted squarely into the first rank of American novelists.” — Philipp Meyer, author of The Son
“When you step into this novel you submit to its dream, which is terrifying. You read to the end because you trust the storyteller, you believe in his large gift that leaves you stunned and breathless. A wonderful, unique portrait of a particular landscape I was familiar with but now see anew.” — Amanda Coplin, author of The Orchardist
“An epic novel of violence, depravity, and mayhem…Brian Hart writes like Cormac McCarthy in overdrive. What talent, what nerve, what a wondrous and spellbinding book. THE BULLY OF ORDER is part creation myth, part apocalyptic thriller, and it’s peopled with charlatans, swindlers, and murderers who will haunt your dreams.” — John Dufresne, author of No Regrets, Coyote
“THE BULLY OF ORDER possesses a strange magnetism…its irresistible, multi-layered plotline will tug you all the way through a story that captures the gritty lawlessness of the Northwest’s beginnings.” — High Country News