Cormac repeats many of the central themes of this novel in No Country For Old Men: a universe ruled by chance alone, and the relentlessness of pure evil in the Judge and Chigurh. The apocalyptic setting is repeated in The Road and the South West is always a character in all his novels. And so this novel is like a cauldron of ideas that his other novels are ladled out of: this is the dark broth of the cooking.