Review Detail

As I’ve been going on my Maggie Stiefvater binge, I’ve realized that while her stories incorporate fantastical elements, she really writes about the human condition. Reading "The Scorpio Races" completely affirmed this idea. While on the surface the book seems to be about a race on a tiny island featuring bloodthirsty water horses, it’s really about a teenage girl’s struggle to deal with her small immediate family crumbling apart.

The beauty of Stiefvater’s writing is that you don’t realize you’ve just delved into the psyche of a character until you finish her work. The driving force appears at first glance to be some sadistic horses and making sure the characters escape unscathed from getting an appendage chomped off by some aggressive horse teeth. In reality, it’s the tension of making sure that the main character, Puck, gets her family back together. Upon Puck’s journey of entering and training for the Scorpio Races she regularly encounters obstacles that could send her older brother away to the mainland or leave her and her young brother homeless. To top it all off, her parents are dead.

Following Puck through this difficult time is a captivating experience. And now thanks to Stiefvater I’ll never look at horses the same way again.