scorpio races
Sep. 16th, 2012 11:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
verbicideLast night, I finished Scorpio Races. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rolypolypony --I see now why you so strongly advocated for this book. It was freaking amazing from start to finish.
The story is...I suppose part fantasy. The story is framed around water horses, which are a part of this otherwise very ordinary world.
Set on a poor Irish island called Thisby, the story is told from two POV characters--Sean is a still and silent young man, who has a rare gift in working with the deadly capaill uisce; he works as a stable hand for one of the richest men in town, who is cold and cruel, and has a son who resents Sean. Thisby's main economy is tourism for the annual November Scorpio Races. Sean has won the past four years and is hands-down the best horseman on the island. Puck (née Kate) is a scrappy young woman who finds that she needs to enter the races for the first time (the first woman to do so), and does so against the wishes of the entire town, in order to save her family's home. (No parents, two brothers who make up her small, close family.)
The writing is so beautiful and engaging--and the mythology is so seamless, that I started to wonder if water horses were real. The town is full of interesting characters. Some of the reviews say it starts off slow, but I think the writing is so good--I never found it slow at all. (And it's hard to get me engaged these days in any book that doesn't keep things moving along.)
There are lots of haunting scenes, but it's not overly full of descriptive prose, which is something that I struggle with. You root, earnestly, for both Sean and Puck, and for so many of the people on Thisby.
Great book--highly recommend!
rolypolypony --I see now why you so strongly advocated for this book. It was freaking amazing from start to finish. The story is...I suppose part fantasy. The story is framed around water horses, which are a part of this otherwise very ordinary world.
Set on a poor Irish island called Thisby, the story is told from two POV characters--Sean is a still and silent young man, who has a rare gift in working with the deadly capaill uisce; he works as a stable hand for one of the richest men in town, who is cold and cruel, and has a son who resents Sean. Thisby's main economy is tourism for the annual November Scorpio Races. Sean has won the past four years and is hands-down the best horseman on the island. Puck (née Kate) is a scrappy young woman who finds that she needs to enter the races for the first time (the first woman to do so), and does so against the wishes of the entire town, in order to save her family's home. (No parents, two brothers who make up her small, close family.)
The writing is so beautiful and engaging--and the mythology is so seamless, that I started to wonder if water horses were real. The town is full of interesting characters. Some of the reviews say it starts off slow, but I think the writing is so good--I never found it slow at all. (And it's hard to get me engaged these days in any book that doesn't keep things moving along.)
There are lots of haunting scenes, but it's not overly full of descriptive prose, which is something that I struggle with. You root, earnestly, for both Sean and Puck, and for so many of the people on Thisby.
Great book--highly recommend!
