By Maggie Stiefvater
Rating: ✫✫✫✫.5
Pages: 404
Goodreads rating: ✫✫✫✫.08
It is the first day of November and so, today, someone will die.
Even under the brightest sun, the frigid autumn sea is all the colours of the night: dark blue and black and brown. I watch the ever-changing patterns in the sand as it’s pummelled by countless hooves.
They run the horses on the beach, a pale road between the black water and the chalk cliffs. It is never safe, but it’s never so dangerous as today, race day.
I’m sad it’s over. I feel like the character George Holly; at first I didn’t get what the magical pull was – I was enjoying the read, and then finally the island and the magic of the water horses swept me away.
I feel sad there isn’t a sequel.
For the first two thirds I was wondering why the hell people stay on the island with these murderous horses. I was wondering why Puck entering the races was the solution to Gabe leaving. I was wondering why Puck was upset that Gabe was leaving; I get that she’s going to miss her brother, but she can’t blame him from getting away from the insane island that has a festival for the killer horses.
But the last third, I was swept away and by the last twenty pages I realised I didn’t want it to end. I read 160 pages today and it was because of two reasons 1) I’m on holidays and 2) the book was interesting and easy to read. Even with tones of spare time up my sleeve there’s no way I could have read from 7.30 to 3.14 with only small breaks if it was a boring novel. It wasn’t. The beginning wasn’t amazing, but the rest won me over enough to give it a 4.5 star rating.
It’s an odd novel, but Maggie Stiefvater does it well. I’m happy to have read it and again, really wish there was more to read!
-Jo Carter xx 🙂
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