Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.9 AVERAGE
3.9 AVERAGE
Interesting information. Very well researched. The horses grab your heart. The writing, however, is merely functional.
emotional
informative
sad
slow-paced
I really wanted to love this book as I loved The Eighty Dollar Champion. I grew up a horse crazy kid who read every book and story about horses that I could get my hands on. As an adult, Seabiscuit is one of my favorites. This book seemed to be in the same vein, so I eagerly picked it up when I saw it at a book store. It starts out well, but after several chapters the redundant, melodramatic romanticization and anthropomorphization of the horses had me rolling my eyes, and it never let up. I also felt that it was at least 50 pages too long; there were repetitive descriptions of how the horses responded to air raids, for example, and backgrounds on people that played little role in the events. I understand that the author wanted to pay homage to these heroes, even if their roles were small, and enable the reader to feel connected to them, but it just didn't work. At the opposite end of the spectrum, there were components of the story that received no follow-up. For example, toward and after the end of the war, grain was in short supply, which was a major obstacle to the survival of the horses, but we never learned how that issue was resolved. The author should have spent less time on minor characters, which also confused the story, and more time detailing the resolutions of major obstacles. The rescue of hundreds of horses within a war zone is an astonishing feat, and should have made for an incredible nail-biter, but I was left underwhelmed by this scattered attempt, wishing Laura Hillenbrand had written it instead.
fast-paced
adventurous
informative
medium-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
sad
tense
medium-paced
Loved this story and the history of the horses and the people involved in saving them.
adventurous
informative
inspiring
tense
medium-paced
informative
tense
slow-paced
Probably great if we like War history and Horses. I don’t like either and found it hard to follow.
Fascinating story about the Lipizzaner stallions that were almost lost during WWII and how Americans, Austrians, and Germans worked together to save these amazing horses. Especially cool book because I saw the Lippizanner stallions perform in Austria.