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4.16 AVERAGE
4.16 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book actually deserves 10 stars: 5 for Stiefvater, who is an inspiration, and 5 for the adorable, man-eating horses ♥
I didn't love it as much as I had hoped. Puck was fun and plucky, but not enough kissing.
Puck Connolly would do anything for her family. When they fall on hard times and her older brother plans to peace out and leave her and her little brother high and dry, she decides to take a crazy risk and enter The Scorpio Races with her family horse, Dove. She’ll be riding against the dangerous, but far superior water horses that everyone else rides. She’s the first girl to enter and the first person to do so using an ordinary horse, making her a target. Sean Kendrick watched his father die in The Scorpio Races, but he still enters every year and wins almost all the time. His intense relationship with his own water horse and the ocean itself makes him an outcast on the island. Told from altering perspectives, Puck and Sean fight for the things they love the most– maybe even at the cost of their lives.
The Scorpio Races is pure magic. It’s such an interesting premise and even though the world is just one small island, it’s crafted into an epic setting for the story. Sporting a small cast of critical characters, it paints an intimate picture of each person found within the pages. Both Sean and Puck are excellently rendered protagonists, but detail is spent on many of the island’s inhabitants and their own histories and personal connection to the races. I also particularly enjoyed Puck’s younger brother Finn as a character. The best thing about this book is by far the prose and the fact that this is not a love story, it’s a story about the ties that bind and how you best protect them. AND MAGIC HORSE RACING. Because that’s just awesome. I will warn you that the language is oddly formal, but it works well with the delivery of the story and makes sense within the world-building.
The plot itself moved at the perfect pace– nothing happened too slowly and when there wasn’t much action, there was stunning character development and inside looks at the lives and personalities of Thisby’s population. Stiefvater plays close attention to detail, describing events and personalities with grace and sophistication. Particularly notable, was her description of the water horses and horse riding in general. You can tell how much she researched in order to write this book and it shows in how well she is able to relay the racing aspects of the story. And while you are definitely on the edge of your seat when the action happens, you’ll most likely be tingling from the anticipation of the event and how it affects the characters and their relationships rather than the sporting aspect.
Truly, the heart of this novel is the relationships– and I mean all of them: the relationships between family, between a boy and a girl holding their own, between a human and a wild animal, and between a town and its population. There is so much love in this novel that it overflows in every page and it’s not simple, feel good, instant, and shallow love. It’s complicated, complex, and bone deep. It’s in every choice and action they make. If you’re looking for banter and bickering and a typical boy meets girl, you’ll be disappointed and so will I because you’ll have missed the point and, honest to blog, a hell of a story.
The Scorpio Races is pure magic. It’s such an interesting premise and even though the world is just one small island, it’s crafted into an epic setting for the story. Sporting a small cast of critical characters, it paints an intimate picture of each person found within the pages. Both Sean and Puck are excellently rendered protagonists, but detail is spent on many of the island’s inhabitants and their own histories and personal connection to the races. I also particularly enjoyed Puck’s younger brother Finn as a character. The best thing about this book is by far the prose and the fact that this is not a love story, it’s a story about the ties that bind and how you best protect them. AND MAGIC HORSE RACING. Because that’s just awesome. I will warn you that the language is oddly formal, but it works well with the delivery of the story and makes sense within the world-building.
The plot itself moved at the perfect pace– nothing happened too slowly and when there wasn’t much action, there was stunning character development and inside looks at the lives and personalities of Thisby’s population. Stiefvater plays close attention to detail, describing events and personalities with grace and sophistication. Particularly notable, was her description of the water horses and horse riding in general. You can tell how much she researched in order to write this book and it shows in how well she is able to relay the racing aspects of the story. And while you are definitely on the edge of your seat when the action happens, you’ll most likely be tingling from the anticipation of the event and how it affects the characters and their relationships rather than the sporting aspect.
Truly, the heart of this novel is the relationships– and I mean all of them: the relationships between family, between a boy and a girl holding their own, between a human and a wild animal, and between a town and its population. There is so much love in this novel that it overflows in every page and it’s not simple, feel good, instant, and shallow love. It’s complicated, complex, and bone deep. It’s in every choice and action they make. If you’re looking for banter and bickering and a typical boy meets girl, you’ll be disappointed and so will I because you’ll have missed the point and, honest to blog, a hell of a story.
I'm in love with this book, and with Sean, and with the horses, and everything about it. It was perfect, exactly what I was hoping for and expecting. What a perfect way to finish 2011.
This is the book that can always get me out of a reading slump, the familiarity and comfort of the story reminds my why I want to live in other places and become emerged in the experience.
So with the title and cover I was thinking this horse race was going to be like the Palio di Siena held in Siena, Italy every year. That doesn’t really have a thing to do with what this book is about.
The book is actually about a small island called Thisby. Every fall these water horses (capaill uisce) come up from the sea and wreak havoc on the islanders. They are brutal horses with a taste for blood and not at all picky where they get it. These water horses are creepy. They are so creepy you would want to run away screaming in terror. Only don’t run because then they will chase you down and kill you.
Every year in November there is a race with these water horses along the beach. I really don’t think that is the smartest location choice as the “magic” of the water horses can lull the rider enough that the horse can swim out to sea and drown the rider. The water horse will then likely eat the rider. Are you creeped out yet?
When Kate (Puck) Connolly announces that she is going to enter the race, she is at first just thinking of a way to get her older brother, Gabe, to stay on the island a few weeks longer. Puck also refuses to ride a water horse on principle because the water horses killed her parents leaving only Gabe, Puck, and their younger brother Finn. Puck instead decides to ride Dove, her trusty island horse.
Puck is trying to pick up the pieces of everything to somehow keep the house she grew up in. She tries so hard to stay strong for Finn as they are the only family each other will have left when Gabe leaves for the mainland.
Sean Kendrick at nineteen has won the Scorpio Races multiple times. He has a way with the water horses. At first he is adamant that Puck and Dove have no place on the beach as Puck is not a boy and Dove is not a water horse. Then later he says that Puck has the right to try just like anyone else.
Sean Kendrick is an interesting fellow who keeps his secrets to himself. All he wants in the world seems to be Corr, his water horse that technically belongs to him employer Mr Malvern.
This book was so unlike anything I have ever read. The setting is so very real it seems entirely possible there could be an island called Thisby where, every fall, ravenous water horses emerge from the sea.
This review first appeared at Orandi et Legendi.
The book is actually about a small island called Thisby. Every fall these water horses (capaill uisce) come up from the sea and wreak havoc on the islanders. They are brutal horses with a taste for blood and not at all picky where they get it. These water horses are creepy. They are so creepy you would want to run away screaming in terror. Only don’t run because then they will chase you down and kill you.
Every year in November there is a race with these water horses along the beach. I really don’t think that is the smartest location choice as the “magic” of the water horses can lull the rider enough that the horse can swim out to sea and drown the rider. The water horse will then likely eat the rider. Are you creeped out yet?
When Kate (Puck) Connolly announces that she is going to enter the race, she is at first just thinking of a way to get her older brother, Gabe, to stay on the island a few weeks longer. Puck also refuses to ride a water horse on principle because the water horses killed her parents leaving only Gabe, Puck, and their younger brother Finn. Puck instead decides to ride Dove, her trusty island horse.
Puck is trying to pick up the pieces of everything to somehow keep the house she grew up in. She tries so hard to stay strong for Finn as they are the only family each other will have left when Gabe leaves for the mainland.
Sean Kendrick at nineteen has won the Scorpio Races multiple times. He has a way with the water horses. At first he is adamant that Puck and Dove have no place on the beach as Puck is not a boy and Dove is not a water horse. Then later he says that Puck has the right to try just like anyone else.
Sean Kendrick is an interesting fellow who keeps his secrets to himself. All he wants in the world seems to be Corr, his water horse that technically belongs to him employer Mr Malvern.
This book was so unlike anything I have ever read. The setting is so very real it seems entirely possible there could be an island called Thisby where, every fall, ravenous water horses emerge from the sea.
This review first appeared at Orandi et Legendi.
Started out a bit slow but I got into the second half and loved it.
adventurous
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes