Title: Black Horses for the King
Author: Anne McCaffrey
Genre: Historical Fiction
This book is about a boy named Galwyn, who has a talent for languages and a talent for working with horses. He is apprenticed to his uncle, who treats him poorly. Soon, after learning of how he could be of use to the efforts of Lord Artos (later known as King Arthur), he runs away from his uncle. Throughout the story, he helps Lord Artos’s horses in many different ways. One aspect of the book that is particularly interesting is that the story discusses the early developments of using horseshoes to protect horse’s hooves.
Originally, I picked this up at the library because of the horses in the title and on the cover. It is my first Anne McCaffrey book, so I can’t tell you how it compares to her other works. However, I do know most of what she has written is fantasy, and the writing style seems very reminiscent of high fantasy.
The story was very interesting to read, and interesting to think about after reading. I really liked the Arthurian setting, and how it focused on the horses instead of knights, or something else more commonly focused on.
Another thing I really liked were the names of the characters. They were names that seemed to be typical of the time period (as far as I know). However, this wasn’t confusing in the way that a lot of historical fiction and fantasy is, when the somewhat foreign sounding names are all similar, and you end up mixing up characters. Everyone has a very unique name, and when a character is introduced, it is very clear who they are and their role in the group. There is a guide to who is who in the beginning of the book, but it is actually pretty unnecessary.
My one complaint is that the book was kind of hard to get into, and the style made the book seem slow. The book is only around 200 pages long, but took me longer to read than most books of that length. However, it definitely speeds up as you go, and the climax was only a couple pages from the end. I think the ending was my favorite part.
Overall, I would rate this book 7/10 stars, and would recommend it to anyone who likes horse books or Arthurian stories.
I love the adjective Arthurian, by the way. It makes me think I could be an adjective someday too.
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