Clean rating: PG-13
largely because, hello, it’s dealing with violent, flesh-eating horses. There
is death and blood and maybe a limb or two lost, though not described in overly
gory detail.
Short summary:
Told from two POV characters, Puck (a female) and Sean, The Scorpio Races is the story of a tiny island where, every year,
bloodthirsty water horses wash up on the beach and the men of the town ride
them in a highly lucrative race (lucrative if you survive and win, of course). Both
Puck and Sean have something they are desperate to fight for, they both enter
the race, and they find themselves wanting to help each other. People die.
Sheep are eaten (by said bloodthirsty water horses). Teapots are painted. Good
times are not had by all.
What I liked: Stiefvater
(I do wonder how to pronounce that name) built an interesting mythology of
these water horses (whose names I also cannot pronounce and can’t even remember
how to spell)* who come to the island every year. They feel just like part of
the world of Thisby (the island), and I kept imagining what the world (ours)
would be like if there really were such a place. It felt very real.
I also enjoyed the plot overall, except that I could not
really engage with the characters as much as I would have liked to for the
reasons described below. When I pretended that I didn’t find a couple of their
specific behaviors completely incomprehensible, I enjoyed the characters and
felt for their struggles and wished them success in their goals and needs.
The conclusion was quite satisfying for me, not one of those
“everyone gets exactly what they want too easily” conclusions, but one where
some sacrifices were made, some middle ground was found, and the people we
cared about got what mattered most to them—though not the way they originally
planned. A friend complained that the deal made at the end was unbelievable,
and I see her point, but it didn’t bother me over much.
What didn’t work for
me: I am not an animal person. If you know me, you know this already. I don’t
do pets, largely because they require so much time and work and cleanup and such.
But also . . .
(And here’s where I take a minor detour to bring us back to
the point.) About two days after I read The
Scorpio Races, I read Dan Wells’ I Am
Not a Serial Killer. The main character, John Cleaver, is a sociopath (has
antisocial personality disorder). This means he has no empathy, no
understanding of human emotions; he can read about them and see them and even
try to imitate them, but he doesn’t really get
them. At one point, John describes it as an entirely different language that he
simply doesn’t know. Reading this directly after my inexplicable experience with
Scorpio made me say, “Yes! That’s
exactly how I feel about pets!” I can read about how much people love their
pets and how they don’t mind the dog tearing up the sofa, the cat peeing on the
bed, etc., but I just don’t get it. I
do not have that kind of attachment to any animal, nor am I willing to have it.
I think wild animals are beautiful, and I have a healthy respect for them, but
I’m quite happy for them to stay out of my house. (Let us just be clear here,
though: Don’t worry, I am not a sociopath.)
So, back to Scorpio.
If I don’t get liking your dog who eats your slippers, I’m certainly not going
to get why Sean cares so much about his water horse that he doesn’t mind the
fact that it is a powerful, killing monster. To me, this is not a horse you
want to hang around. Period. Sean’s love for his horse is utterly incomprehensible.
It is a foreign language. So I could not relate to him on a very fundamental
level.
The same goes for Puck, except in her case it’s the island.
Again, I can’t get attached to a land the same way she does. If the place I’m
living is wholly inhospitable (and spits out monster horses every October), if
I cannot find a way to support myself or my family there, and if I have better
prospects elsewhere—well, I feel like ninety-nine times of a hundred, I would
move to that elsewhere.
In summary: This
inability to relate is why I couldn’t give it another star. I just couldn’t get
these people, and so the story didn’t work for me on the visceral level where
found myself saying, “I do not understand these choices.” On the other hand, I
realize that this is a personal reaction that probably wouldn’t be a problem
for a large majority of people, so a 4/5 stars would be my rating if I were
someone else.
* Her choice of the
name is actually based on some water horse legends, so I can’t completely fault
her for it, but I confess to preferring fictional names I can pronounce.
