I Gave You, All I had : A RED DEAD REDEMPTION adaptation

by M. Humaidh

He gave them everything. But in the end, could he find something worth saving?

Set against the vast, untamed backdrop of 1899 America, this sweeping and emotionally charged adaptation of Red Dead Redemption II follows the life of Arthur Morgan — a loyal enforcer of the Van der Linde gang — as the age of outlaws draws to a bitter close. Torn between loyalty and conscience, Arthur grapples with the sins of his past while facing a future he may never see.

As the gang begins to fracture under the weight of ambition, betrayal, and federal pursuit, Arthur finds himself questioning the life he once swore by. Through gunfights, train robberies, stolen moments of peace, and fleeting glimpses of redemption, this novel brings new depth to familiar characters like Dutch, John Marston, Sadie Adler, and Hosea Matthews — and gives voice to the unspoken thoughts and buried emotions of a man trying desperately to outrun the shadow of his own legacy.

With rich storytelling, faithful dialogue, and a heart-rending narrative true to the original game, this novelized journey offers a powerful retelling of one man’s search for meaning at the end of the Wild West. This is not just Arthur Morgan's story — it is the story of all who seek redemption before the curtain falls.

134 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 6, 2025

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dear reader, are you familiar with the "Mom can I have _______" | "We have _______ at home" | "_______ at home: " meme? If not, this may give you the idea. I open this review with that ominous question because this book feels an awful lot like "RDR2 at home": we have the same character names, we have the same towns. We have, in a very loose sense of the word, the same story -- "the same story" in that it opens with the van der Linde gang running into the mountains to escape the aftermath of a botched ferry job, and ends with betrayal, bloodshed, loss -- and a spot of hope. Beyond that, though, I wondered if the person who wrote this had even played the game, as characters and their scope of actions are wildly off the mark. Large parts of the game are bizarrely omitted or marginalized: in this telling, the gang descends from the mountains into Valentine, starts dealing deals with the Braithwaites (who live in another state, in an area of the country Dutch hates and only went into because of the Pinkertons chasing them out), and then mosies over to St Denis after a few fistfights to try to rob a prominent businessman as soon as they roll into town. Not only is this absurdly truncated and inaccurate, it's nonsensical storytelling, with the gang knowing about people they haven't met yet. I largely kept reading it out of morbid curiosity: as with Angels and Demons, an increasing part of the fun of reading this was yelling at the book. Some of this can be excused on the grounds that it's an adaptation, not a novelization, so the same broad story happening through a slightly different chain of events is plausible. The mischaracterizations, though -- John wanting to take Jack and abandon the gang when HE SPENDS MOST OF THE GAME DENYING JACK IS EVEN HIS -- grated, and any story has to make internal sense, which this frequently does not. However, there were bits of good writing, a few highlights from which I'll quote below.

And he thought about the letter in his satchel. Mary’s handwriting still haunted the seams of his conscience. “You’re a good man, Arthur,” she had once said, voice trembling. “I just wish the world had let you be one.” As fireflies blinked across the brush and the sound of the camp drifted into the trees, Arthur Morgan rode on.

Dutch grinned. “Opportunity, my boy. Trouble is just the name small men give to ambition.”

[Lipp Ronald · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible. Pretty sure it was written by A.I. or the world’s worst writer. Example: Micah dies twice at the end. An insult to the brilliant complex storytelling of the video game.