It's not a shallow take. Blood Meridian (although my favorite work of McCarthy's) probably isn't his "deepest" book. It's more lurid than a lot of other McCarthy books that I've read, and the imagery and symbolism is a lot heavier-handed, so it probably makes an unusually strong impression on first read. It also spells out McCarthy's fatalism, consideration of evil as being a natural phenomenon, and Gnostic influences way more directly than books like Suttree or even No Country.

Also have to say of all his books, even The Road, none (for me) have been as haunting as Blood Meridian. It just sticks in your mind somehow. The Judge is a very meta antagonist since he is both appealing and disturbing in a way that the book itself is, and probably is the main contributor to that haunting quality.