The Heavenly Horse from the Outermost West

Heavenly Horse #1

by Mary Stanton

The Heavenly Horse is the Dancer, a shining Appaloosa stallion, first of all horses in the Army of One Hundred and Five and guardian of the Courts of the Outermost West.

Anor the Executioner, monstrous and fanged, is the servant of the Dark Horse. He comes from the Gates of Death—and if he can, he will destroy the Dancer.

Between them stands Duchess, last true mare of the Appaloosa line. With the Dancer, she runs away from the barns of men—but is stalked by Anor and his Harrier Hounds. If they can kill her and her foal, the Appaloosa breed will be ended.

Genres: Fantasy, Horses, Animals, Fiction, Animal Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Adventure

344 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 1, 1988

About the author

Mary Stanton was born in Florida and grew up in Japan and Hawaii, after which she returned to the United States and received a B.A. in Philosophy and Literature from the University of Minnesota.

Stanton’s career as a fiction writer began with the publication of her first novel, The Heavenly Horse from the Outermost West, in 1984. A beast fable similar in tone and theme to Watership Down, it was published in the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. The sequel to that novel, Piper at the Gates, appeared in 1989. She sold her first mystery to The Berkley Publishing Group in 1994.

In all, Stanton has written nineteen mystery novels, two adult fantasy novels, eleven novels for middle-grade readers (including the successful series, The Unicorns of Balinor), and three scripts for a television cartoon series, Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders, as well as edited three short story anthologies. Her nonfiction articles on horse care and veterinary medicine have appeared in national and regional magazines.

Stanton's newest series, The Beaufort & Company Mysteries, was launched in December 2008 with the publication of Defending Angels. Set in Savannah, Georgia, the paranormal mysteries chronicle the adventures of Bree Winston-Beaufort, a young lawyer who inherits her uncle's law firm and its deceased clientele, whom she represents in appeals before the Celestial Court.

The second book in the series, Angel's Advocate, was published in June 2009, followed by Avenging Angels in February 2010.

Mary also publishes the Hemlock Falls and Dr. McKenzie mysteries under the name Claudia Bishop. See the Claudia Bishop web site for more information.

Stanton’s interests outside writing have remained consistent over the years. She is a horsewoman, a goat aficionado, an enthusiastic (if inept) gardener, and a fan of gourmet food, but not an expert. She has developed a writing program for teens and middle grade readers that has had considerable success in schools.

Stanton has been a dedicated reader all her life, with particular emphasis on biography, history, veterinary science, medicine, psychology and current affairs. She is a member of the Mystery Writers of America.

Reviews

[Libbie Hawker (L.M. Ironside) · Rating 4 out of 5]

My feelings about this book can best be summed up in this simple way: "YAAY! HORSIES! HORSIES HORSIES HORSIESHORSIESHORSIES YAY!!!"

I am a huge animal lover and horses are among my favorite. I found this book in a grocery store's paperback section when I was about twelve years old, and my mom, praises be to her, never hesitated to buy me any book I wanted. Just look at the cover! It's a twelve-year-old girl's fantasy coming as close to true as can ever happen! It's got a magnificent Appaloosa with a fancy rainbow mane and tail! He's fighting some kind of spooky fanged/clawed horse! And there are dogs in this book, too! Dogs are rad! YES!!!

I still have that same paperback of The Heavenly Horse. I've never gotten rid of it. I read it several times as a kid, totally engrossed by the characters and the fantasy plot (if you must know: the Appaloosa breed is in danger of dying out, and patron god-horse of Appaloosas is sent to Earth to protect the mare who carries the last of the pure Appy blood. But he gets ideas of his own and steals her from her farm to live in the wild, along with a couple of her friends. Meanwhile, the Satan of Horses sends his lion/horse minion to Earth to kill the Appaloosa god-horse, who is now in a vulnerable mortal form.) It's a solid, fun fantasy plot, with gods warring and mortals caught between them.

Re-reading it as an adult, as I have done several times, diminished my enthusiasm somewhat. The writing is not the best I've ever read, although it's serviceable enough. There are facts about horses that the author got all wrong, and gross improbabilities as well; but my younger self still gets final say on this one. The Heavenly Horse from the Outermost West is a fun, exciting book that's full or HORSES and MORE HORSES, and I still indulge from time to time when I need a familiarly comforting read.

Recommended for horse nuts of all ages!

[August · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is Summer. It's stretching out on that scratchy pink camping blanket that smelled like our quarter-sized garage, fixing my explosive ponytail, and squinting into sunlight splashed on well-loved library book pages. It's getting lost so thoroughly in the world of Duchess and the Dancer that I forget about a snack and read hungrily until dinner. It's snapping the book shut after the last word, my eyes shining with tears or adventure, then flinging myself into a gallop across the yard; never mind the pebbles and sticks in my bony kneecaps; never mind my aching wrists, I ran with Duchess, I ran with Pony, I ran with Cory and Susie and even Lilly.

It isn't a perfect book. But for me, it's a perfect memory. It was like I'd already met the book a long time ago, and sitting down to it was like sitting down to a deep, twenty-something friendship with that kid whose name you barely knew in kindergarten but whose face is lined by the same environment yours is.

Thank you, Mary Stanton. For a couple of stolen afternoons, I ran with Hazel-Rah again for the first time, spun with Ender Wiggins in the Battle Room again for the first time, plunged to the terror of Sgorr's horrible secret with Rannoch again for the first time.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up on a lark and was astonished to find myself deeply engrossed well into the night. A wonderful blend of magic and anthropomorphic realism in the vein of "Watership Down" makes "Heavenly Horse From the Outermost West" a really interesting read, especially for horse-lovers. I can see some threads or narrative choices in this book that pop up later in Mary Stanton's Juvenile Fiction series "The Unicorns of Balinor:" the Watching Pool where the heavenly horses keep an eye on the affairs of earth, a Heavenly Herd of demi-gods capable of descending to the earth in mortal form, a small but highly dangerous group of evil demi-gods, a fallen god/dess, and Dreamspeakers. The horses in the story, while given human words and often humanlike emotions, remain strictly non-human. They don't view mates, children, or their place in the world the same way humans do, and yet we can empathize with them and their plight. I enjoyed the Army of One Hundred and Five, comprising the horse pantheon of demi-gods represented by different breeds. And it was refreshing to see horses and humans being able to coexist rather than the more black-and-white "humans are all bad, freedom in the wild is best" trope that is omnipresent in a lot of horse books. An enjoyable read!

[Rift Vegan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had been thinking about this book because I had mentioned it on my GR PC January postcard. This is a favorite from my childhood... altho, now that I check, I realize it was published in 1988 and I would have been 15 or 16 when I read it. That may be stretching your definition of childhood, but not by much!

This was one of those books that "cemented" me as a reader! It was the first time I had cried, reading a book. And that's what I remembered, coming back to it now. But there's humor too, and I wonder if maybe it was also the first book that made me laugh out loud.

Because when Pony offered to howl for the chorus for the telling of Cory's dog fable , oh my gosh, I lost it! And I'm giggling right now, thinking about it! :)

Anyway. It's a sweet story. Don't ask me to critique it... it gets 5 out of 5 stars because I'm so sentimental about it. But it really is a good story, and I'm just sorry that they haven't converted the second book, Piper at the Gate to ebook. I do own both of these as paperback (and ADORE the artwork of this book especially!!) but they are hard to get to in my tiny townhouse, and I re-bought this one to read on my kindle.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Because I *was* a 13-year-old girl.

[G.K. Hansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books that is far better than it has any right to be.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was actually pretty good. Told from the perspective of the horses who have their own gods and their own laws to follow. Stanton managed to capture everything majestic and beautiful about horses and their relationships with one another. She even broke my heart with the tale of an abused and neglected mare who finally came to rest in a good home and slowly learned to trust again. Clearly a fantasy story written for horse lovers by a horse lover. I loved it even though it was hard to read at times. Unfortunately, animal abuse and neglect has not changed over the years and it hurts my heart to think of all of the animals that lose their lives to it. Just a fantastic story. Highly recommend! Four out of five stars to Heavenly Horse of the Outermost West.

[Alex T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

H O N S E

Bullet review:
+Interesting and overall pretty likable main characters, especially Duchess and Susie
+Good world-building of the fantasy elements
+I like that the characters both are captive and wild for a while, yet neither is seen as a perfect (or terrible) option. A lot of animal xenofiction tends to demonize captivity under humans, which this book thankfully never does. Humans are seen as a pretty neutral aspect here, oftentimes even positive.
+Despite a few loredumps, it thankfully never goes too overboard with it.
-While I'm not calling this book sexist (I've seen xenofiction that is FAR worse in that regard, don't get me wrong) and it does have capable and well-written female characters, I am not entirely comfortable with how pretty much every female character of note in this book is quite literally a broodmare there to put foals into this world. It just feels like it falls into the "every woman wants to be a mother" stereotype. It really couldn't have hurt to have one or two major female characters who just don't bear foals.

Full review at: https://skybookcorner.blogspot.com/20...

[Lone Wolf · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a story of horse gods and horse demons, and their interactions with mortal horses as the Dancer, the god of the Appaloosas, attempts to save his breed. The premise is a good one, but the book is rather let down by the writing style, which is quite amateurish. At best it reads like a first draft that could do with some polishing, at worst like a horse-mad twelve-year-old’s first attempt at writing fantasy. The plot lacks focus, meandering around instead of getting on with things, and there is a lot of exposition and telling rather than showing. Sometimes it is not clear exactly what’s going on – you get the feeling that because it was obvious to the author, she didn’t bother to explain things properly, forgetting that the reader doesn’t know everything she does.

The animal characters are too anthropomorphic for my taste, often using human terms, slang and gestures, and have far too great an understanding of humans (for example, they understand every facet of a show-jumping competition – points, faults, judges, what the different ribbons indicate, etc. None of this would mean anything to a horse). There are also occasional factual errors, such as mistaking a horse colour for a breed, and a few grammatical mistakes.

At the back of the book is an index of “horse language”, which would be fine, except for the fact that these words are never used in the story. For example, the index states that the horses’ word for their kind is “hrunn”, yet throughout the book they only ever refer to themselves as horses. The word hrunn is not used even once. It seems like a waste of time to invent a bunch of words and then never actually use them, especially since integrating them into the story would have helped with world-building and immersion.

To be fair to this book, the story was engaging and I did enjoy reading it. It was just frustrating thinking how much better it could have been if its various issues were fixed.

[Megan Mc · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book as a child and reread it multiple times. But then again I was horse crazy as a child and only read books with horses on the cover, so maybe I'm a little bias.

re-read 2013:
I acquired the sequel a few years ago since I wanted it for years before that, but I was a kid then and the it was a time before you could go on amazon and find a used copy in 5 minutes. So once I had a credit card I finally acquired the sequel! But then realized I no longer remembered what happened in the first one. And then there was the fear of re-reading. You know when you re-read or watch something that was a childhood favorite and you realize the a character is stupid or really immature or there is a major plot hole. Things that you don't realize as a child but if you re-read it as an adult your memories are ruined because you realized it wasn't really that good. Especially with a book like this. A horse fantasy, told by the horses with horse gods having a major influence on their lives? I was worried I would read it and realized it was crazy. So it took me a while but I did it. And the results were pretty good.
Now don't get me wrong the story is pretty crazy and Duchess, our leading lady, can be a bit tiresome, especially in the beginning. She is a neglected mare who takes a while to learn to trust her new owners.

(this is a stallion, but the picture captures her attitude)
The fantasy element comes in when we discover she is the last of the appaloosa line even though her spots have faded (you know aside from the talking horses element.) So in comes The Dancer, lead stallion of the Appaloosa, kind of a demi god I guess. He is show on the cover as being black with a white blanket and black spots but I always imagined him as black with white spots, no blanket. I couldn't find any really good pictures of this so I don't know if it's even possible. Maybe something like this:

because she describes the white as flowering over his back like ivy and in his god form he is somehow rainbow, that I could never really picture. But if he can be rainbow that I think he can have white spots too. and Yes he is "the dancer" not just dancer, cause he is cool like that. So they adventure together and fight the evil horses to restore the balance of good and evil and save the appaloosa line.
So here's the thing even though the plot is a little out there and the main characters are a little impetuous, I wanted to read it every night. I guess that's good writing for you. Ok I'm not saying award winning or without mistakes but it has that magical spark that draws you in. It completely rehooked me and I am looking forward to starting Piper at the Gates tonight!

[Ward Behle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book came out when I was 10 or 11, and I still have a faded, falling-apart copy of it. I do make time to read this story once a year simply because I love it so much.
Being an artist and horse lover, the cover art caught my attention right away. Later, I got so hooked into the story that I couldn't put it down, which was a miracle to me since my reading comprehension is lousy. But when an author writes a good plot, the reader can overcome these obstacles.

To me, it seemed logical that animals could communicate with each other, and that they faced dilemmas the same as humans do. I can tell you that I never looked at horses the same after I read this book.

Later, when I was 16 and 17 and I worked on a Peruvian Paso farm. At the same time, my parents raised Belgians. After having worked around horses, and looking at this book from a more critical perspective, I began to notice so many things that just don't fit. First of all, horses stick with one lead mare the whole time unless a newer younger one is introduced to the herd. She then establishes authority. Second, I used to think that horses are color blind. Having done some quick reference for the purpose of this review, I discovered that they can see color, just not the same range as humans. It seemed bizarre to me that the equines in this story could make out the red color of the barn that they slept in, and the ribbons that they won at the horse show. Third, how come, despite their superior sense of smell, nobody could tell where Pony came from? I won't spoil this information, but it did seem surprising to me. Another thing that struck me as really unusual was how the All-Knowing Equus Himself had no clue as to the Dancer's fate when Duchess asked him. How can a god--even a horse-deity--be uncertain about such an important outcome? Finally, stallions don't lift their tails to urinate, as the Dancer does in the Dark Lord's face. Nope. Mares do that. (There were more things, but I think I will stop at these.)

In spite of all this, I do enjoy reading this book. What takes me most about it is the romance between Duchess and the Dancer, the heroism that Corey shows, and the interior conflict that Duchess faces throughout. Also, that Stanton devised a sort of horsey religion demonstrates tremendous creativity on her part. I loved her story about how ponies came into the world, and the song about Joachim, the Horse in the Moon. El Arat is quite honestly my favorite character simply because she shows greater human qualities like jealousy and vanity.

I have wanted for years to buy the rights and make a graphic novel. I even sent an email to Ms. Stanton to tell her of my appreciation, and received no reply. I really wish that this book could be re-vamped, kind of the same way that Hollywood is re-making movies these days.

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

This shit made me feel addled.

The Heavenly Horse from the Outermost West is best described as "if Neil Breen wrote a horse girl book."

It's one of the most... uhh, extra... books I've ever read. I mean, all animal action fantasy books are A Lot. It's in their contracts. But this isn't extra like Watership Down is extra. It's more like r/cringe territory. The dedication makes me think that this is, in fact, AU horse friend-fiction based on a real barn and its real horses. Which is just!

┐(ﾟ ～ﾟ )┌

I was screaming laughing during the first three chapters, texting my friends with some deliciously weird and grand out-of-context sentences. That feeling would roar back whenever Stanton added in the... p-poetry?! (I literally don't even know if that was what it was. There was no rhyme, and no meter, just bonkers visuals and a devil-may-care return key.) But eventually I just got exhausted by its steadfast, unselfconscious commitment to itself.

The plot meandered back on itself, ultimately resembling nothing like a hero's journey. (Which is okay, not every book needs to follow that format, but srsly who was the protagonist supposed to be?!) The core personality of its characters seemed to shift from scene to scene. I started grey-rocking this book, needing it to just be done.

I love weird books, so I couldn't hate it. And I love me some horse girl shit. But oof, this ride was too wild for me.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Take Watership Down, replace the bunnies with horses, add a Lost Orphaned Royalty plot, mix with a few gods and a whole lot of demons, have it snort a line of coke, and you get The Heavenly Horse from the Outermost West. Don't think about it too much and just enjoy the ride.

I also recommend going wherever you get your used books and finding an old mass-market paperback copy of this book, because the ebook cover is boring as hell and does not represent the insane adventure within, like, at all.

[Matthew Maiello · Rating 4 out of 5]

as a kid to young adult this would of been a epic story about a mare and a stallion against evil... as a adult reading this after working in the horse world for 5 years it means a lot more. well over half this book isnt written in words its written between the lines. there is abuse and betrayal. love and hope. the biggest show of this was susie. if you didnt know horses she was sick but with under standing come much new light about herlike that she was old. i think this book is amust read for all young and old

[Searska GreyRaven · Rating 4 out of 5]

As much as I liked this one, I had a few issues with it. First, the Dancer's attempted rape of Duchess was a big yikes, and even though she fought him off and eventually warmed to him, that was a really bad first impression for a character and it made reading the rest of the novel much harder. The second was El Arat's defection at the end: it felt really out of character for her and came out of nowhere.

Still, problematic elements aside, I liked it.

[Autumn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book would have been a one star if it weren't for the writing. A lot of the characters were awful, especially Duchess, who turned into a moron after meeting the Dancer. The Dancer himself was an idiot who, though he went through a lot, never improved even after knowing he made mistakes. The only one who seemed reasonable was Cody. Thank the damn Lord they listened to him (sometimes).

[Talie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the kind of fiction we're missing in the book world today. Highly descriptive without bogging down the reader; full of characters who are well thought-out, dynamic, and portrayed deeply yet in the simplest of terms; a plot that is both well-placed and engrossing, even if it's one of those classes "good versus evil" kind of stories. Who cares if this is about horses?

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read this book so many times since I was a kid, and I still never get bored with it. Even if you're not an animal lover, you forget you're reading about a story about horses and you just get drawn into this compelling good vs. evil adventure.

[Michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m pretty sure this is camp.

Also I bought it because the cover is amazing.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a childhood favorite. I read it at least a dozen times when I was a horse crazy pre-teen.

[ladyethyme · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books that, for me, is almost impossible to grade.
The ideas are top-notch, exceptionally unique, with a rich mythology and history that is alluded to. Very interesting world, I've heard it compared to Watership down, I've never read that.
If you are extremely sensitive to images of animal abuse, I recommend you skip over those parts, or avoid this book.
There are no long-winded instances of active animal abuse, but there are flashbacks to some pretty intense descriptions of starvation etc.
I find the second book in this due to be far more interesting. This one is basically mostly set up, introducing the main characters in the world, and then they wander around in the wild for their pretty much the rest of the book.
That isn't to say that there's not a lot of really interesting imagery, supernatural ideas that kind of thing.

And keep in mind, that despite all of my criticisms of this book, and the next one as well, they were THE foundational books of my childhood, the awakened and cemented my love of the fantasy genre. I can't tell you how many times I've read and reread these books. Hundreds.

However, I do have certain issues with this book, which I will outline here. It deals mostly with internal consistency, and not particularly logical jumps in character.

The first issue is you need to get a real comfortable real fast with the book mostly being about breeding. Also, making excuses and normalizing chattel slavery. Of course in real life, these are horses. But in the book, they are sentient, thinking beings with their own gods, mythology, stories, as intelligent as human beings etc. Which makes the normalizing such treatment extremely uncomfortable. At least for me.

The cops are called in to a case of serious animal abuse, so bad that one of the cops practically throws up. Some guy has literally starved two horses to death, over the course of years. But for some reason, the cops don't press any charges, the guy gets off completely scot-free, and in fact is back to slaughtering and torturing animals within a few chapters..........

"Equus", the horse god, apparently doesn't bother to do anything ever. The devil horse, or whatever, it's constantly making deals, packs, manipulation, buying spies off with rewards, setting traps… But the horse god does absolutely absolutely nothing about it. He doesn't talk to anyone, make any "soldiers" on the side of good.
In fact, he complains and dismisses any arguments that the evil God has overstepped his bounds, and is completely upsetting the balance of good and evil. (Which he is.)
This is either incompetence on a massive scale, or a laziness that is staggering.

Frankly anything that dark horse does, doesn't matter. The narrative seems to be unfortunately uneven in this regard, with pretty much everything that the good horses do "tipping the balance", but the Marriott instances of interference from the dark horse don't appear to carry any weight.

We are told that the Bishops are "good men", if they don't seem to have a problem with selling foals to people that will literally work them to death. I don't even know how how you would overwork a foal, but apparently that's in the narrative. Usually people that sell horses have a good idea of what farms and breeders they are working with, they're not going to sell it to somebody that's going to abuse it and beat the crap out of it. But they do, apparently.

Also, buy an incredibly violent and aggressive horse (Dancer)-and literally the day that he arrives, biting and kicking and thrashing and being generally malevolent, they put Duchess in the pen with him to try and breed her. That doesn't make any sense at all. Not even to give him a couple of weeks to settle down.

So Dancer beats the crap out of Duchess for some reason, although I'm not understanding why-since she is literally like the last Appaloosa mare in existence, and his entire point of going to earth was to get her on his good side...... and literally the next day they put her back in the stall with him. Again.
That makes absolutely no sense for any rancher to do. If you're stallion is literally biting the crap and kicking the crap out of your mirror, you're not gonna put her in with him again the next day.

Duchess has been abused for her entire life. She's brought to a farm has all the food she can eat, warm and clean surroundings, nothing to worry about. But for some reason she decides to runoff with Dancer-who just the day before beat the crap out of her.

Also, Pony is a Shetland. Dancer is over 17 hands high we are told. I'm sorry, but they are not going to mate. That's like trying to get a Doberman to mate with a Chihuahua. The logistics just aren't there.

Finally, at the end when Pony is giving birth and they do not do they know who the father is, that's confusing to me. There is no even indication that she ever mated with Anor- so I'm not even sure why it's randomly brought up. However, during the birth, there are all these indications that the evil one is the sire to her baby. Even her teeth begin to look like fangs etc. The baby is not an Appaloosa, and as the Dancer is literally a God, whose all of his offspring are Appaloosas, I'm confused as to why her baby is born red. This could only possibly be if he was not the father. But apparently he is? I wish there was more clarification on this.

[Shelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love reading books from the 80's, because the "rules" of writing were just different back then. You can tell an 80's book by reading it, just like you can tell an 80's movie by seeing it. It just has a flavor. (And that cover!! I'll be 100% honest, I bought this book for that fabulous cover.)

I can see a lot of reviews for this book on GoodReads were written by people who read this book as a child, and I love that people can have such a nostalgic memory for this. I'd love my own work to someday be thought of fondly by adults who read them as a child.

As an adult reading this book 30 years after it was written, I enjoyed it for its fairy tail tone but struggled with a lot of it. It reads like a fable, which was the intention, of course. But you know when you hear a fable and you say to yourself "Why would the character do that?" even though you know the answer is "Because they need to for the sake of the story to continue." This book is like that. It exists to tell the narrative, not to make us believe in this world as if it were our own.

Enjoy this story in the context of history. It was written when there wasn't a lot of animal POV stories exploring myth and lore of the animal world.

Use the title of this novel as a guide. If you see a title like that as ridiculous, you are not going to enjoy this book. If you think the title is amusing and you want to understand it, give this book a try. (Although you might have to search a bit, as it is out of print. I got mine used on ebay.)

[Lauren]

The cover is awesome - a rainbow horse, hello! - and I probably would've liked this much more when I was younger, since I was deep into any book about horses. As an adult, however, the writing has a few too many flaws for me to properly get into this book.

There's a lot of infodumping and exposition right out of the gate, as well as a ton of Capitalised Fantasy Words, sometimes completely oversaturating single sentences. The interludes that interrupt the main plot to tell in-world myths and stories just end up being distracting, not meaningful like the tales in Watership Down that the author is attempting to imitate.

Almost all of the characters are flat, except for Duchess, the horse that seems to be the protagonist, but her character and motivations tend to flip back and forth or clumsily lurch from one mood to another depending on the plot. I think my main criticism is that Stanton is trying to build a deep horse culture in the story, but falls short with sometimes contradictory character statements, actions, and beliefs. The horses and horse gods respect the agreement with humans, but actually no they're all imprisoned. Horses should have the freedom to choose what they do, but the stallion just pressures every mare into his herd and bullies them if they don't follow his orders. It's hard for a reader to understand the consequences and implications of what's happening in the story when the foundations of the plot and the culture is so shaky and ill-defined in the first place.

[Dorothy Callahan]

This story has lured me in multiple times over the decades it's lived on my shelf.

A herd of barn horses whose lives are steeped in their creation mythology are confronted with evil when the god of the Appaloosas comes down to earth to breed with a mortal mare who carries the last of his lineage.

It's a heartwarming tale of love, trust, honor and dedication. A definite keeper. And grab a few hankies for the journey!

[Blackminx18 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my most favorite books of all times. I hadn't read it in a while but I picked it up last week and re-read it. Even as an adult I still enjoy it immensely. Though I will say reality intrudes a little more than it did when I first read the book when I was 10.

[Alanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a review of “Heavenly horse” that said “this book is way better than it has any right to be” and I can’t think of any better review to give it. Why should horse mysticism and herd politics be so damn fascinating? I don’t know. But I do know I really enjoyed this.

[Darquae Shade · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I was in the fifth grade when I read it and it opened my world up to a new kind of fantasy novel. I had only read kid's fantasy to that point, it changed my life. It woke me up to a more adult world of writing and I loved it. Wonderful story and I would gladly read it again.

[Celeste Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

My all-time favorite book!

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-done piece of animal fiction that manages to set itself apart as a unique and genuinely engrossing experience for people of all ages. Highly recommended.

[Willow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book well written from the horses eyes, I enjoyed the book so much I have now read it 4 times and will probably read many more times in the future too