About the author
Maggie Stiefvater has been a technical editor, waitress and calligraphy instructor, but none of these suited her special talents for “talking to yourself, staring into space, and coming to work in your pajamas.” Writing, however, does. She is also an artist and musician. And her website gives you a far better idea of what she’s like than I ever can: there’s a link in the section below. Well worth a visit.
She writes:
“I am Maggie Stiefvater. I write books. Some are about homicidal faeries. Some are about werewolf nookie. Some are about neither.”
The Scorpio Races is about none of them: I can quite see that it might not be some people’s thing if you like by-the-fireside comfort reads and nothing else, but if not, The Scorpio Races is simply, one of my stand out reads of the year so far. It takes the water horses of Celtic legend, and sees what would happen if they were part of a more or less contemporary society. Humanity does not come of well in its encounters with these water horses.
So far, The Scorpio Races is her one book to have a horsy theme (though I’m sure her others are equally fantastic and will seek them out). I hope there will be more.
Finding the book still in print
Links and sources
Maggie Stiefvater’s Scorpio Races website
Maggie Stiefvater’s website
Bibliography (horse books only)
The Scorpio Races
Scholastic Press, New York, 2011, 409 pp.
Scholastic Children’s Books, London, 2011, pb 482 pp
My review of The Scorpio Races
A dark and occasionally bloody and violent fantasy about a race of water horses who live off the island of Thisby. Sometimes flung up by storms, and sometimes captured, the water horses are raced by the inhabitants of the island once a year, in the Scorpio Races. The race is notoriously lethal, particularly for the riders. Sean Kendrick has won the race twice already; thinks he can again, but then Puck enters too, only not on a water horse, but her own unfit, ordinary horse, Dove.
Sean and Puck should be rivals…
