Hi, there! I'm every horse book you've ever read.

Astra
by Chris Platt
2010

I've read a few Chris Platt books, and commented on them accordingly with the loving obsession of a person who has read too many Thoroughbred books and is currently stalking its authors.  I know, I have no shame.  Willow King, Race the Wind!, Moon Shadow...the only non-Thoroughbred book of hers that I haven't gripped in my freakishly cold fingers is Storm Chaser.

After reading Astra, I'm really wondering about Storm Chaser.  In fact, I am going to have to get it soon so I can confirm a rising suspicion. 

Thirteen-year-old Lily O'Neil's passion is Arabian horses.  Someday she wants to be a great endurance rider like her mother.  But a year earlier, after a freak riding accident took her mother's life, Lily's father sold his daughter's beloved pony and forbade her to ride ever again.

When Lily's grandmother comes to live with them, however, she convinces Mr. O'Neil to let Lily clean stalls on the neighboring Arabian ranch, a place her mother had worked--and loved.  Lily is ecstatic, especially since she'll be near her mother's favorite horse--Astra.  Lily's mother had always believed that Astra had the talent to become a national champion.  Her goal was to ride her in the famous Tevis Cup Endurance Race, the toughest horse race in America.

Lily is determined to make her mother's dream come true.  But how will she convince her father to let her ride again?

So that's the summary.  Endurance riding!  What a breath of fresh air!  It's not three-day eventing or, god forbid, mustangs.  That in itself is great, apart from the endurance factoids that stuck out like sore thumbs.  Kind of like when Mary Anderson was inserting random horse racing facts into Thoroughbred, a land where horse racing facts go to die slow, miserable deaths.  The problem was in the rest of it.

If Brad Townsend taught us anything, it's that being awesome trumps actually winning.

Willow King: Race the Wind!
by Chris Platt
Published: 2000

Thanks to the faith and hard work of Katie Durham, Willow King is no longer a newborn foal with badly twisted legs. After painstaking training, the Thoroughbred colt has finally gained the strength and heart to compete in major races -- and Katie is determined to prove to the world that he's a champion

Katie is just as determined to prove that she can handle anything on horseback. Born with one leg an inch shorter than the other, she has always felt as if people were doubting her physical abilities.

If only she could become a licensed jockey. Katie knows the profession is dangerous, but she's sure she can master it. Unfortunately, her new ambition will present her with the most nerve-racking challenge of her life: riding Willow King in America's biggest race -- the Kentucky Derby.

I already decided that Chris Platt's first novel was a compounded version of the first three books of Thoroughbred, if that series had taken place in Oregon and Ashleigh had been slightly handicapped. In this novel, Chris Platt comes back to finish the job, sending Willow King to the Kentucky Derby and putting her main character, Katie, on the path to super jockey stardom.

Race the Wind! starts off at the beginning of King's three-year-old season. Jason has somehow become the assistant trainer at Willow Run Farm, and Katie is a gallop rider. There's also a new jockey thrown into the mix, Mark, who is here to teach Katie how to be a jockey and also be her competition for the jockey job on Willow King...despite her being King's owner, which you'd think would negate all competition. Honestly. Cindy, the antagonist from the beginning, is also around being spoiled and loud, as per the usual antagonist routine. However, she's also got a third cousin, Camela, who is around at the stables, but she's blind, so she spends most of her time sitting around, refusing to speak, and then, when she decides to open her mouth, she quotes her Irish grandfather. There was a lot of quoting in this book. The quotes almost outnumbered the random exclamatory sentences, which are your normal horse book staple.

Mark shows up and is dashing and gorgeous and immediately Katie is smitten. Jason? Jason who? She stares at Mark in a daze and is eager to ask him to help her with "jockey lessons" despite her insistence that no one know about her urge to be a jockey. She winds up telling Camela about her desire to jockey, and Camela has some motivational grandpa quote to give her when she's feeling less bitchy and more receptive to discourse with other humans. So she eventually asks Mark for the lessons and he's happy to provide his knowledge, although at this point he's also gotten on Camela's bad side by being a) alive and b) accidentally being stupid and saying Katie is no competition for him in front of Camela, who has convinced him that she's also deaf and mute. This, of course, means he is antagonist #2.

Katie starts her lessons, which basically is her wrestling with a crop for hours on end. Meanwhile, King has entered to race in some Portland Downs thing and comes in last because his gate misfired and Mark didn't want to push him on a nearly frozen track. Katie almost has a fit about this, and is brought back to reality by Old John, the Charlie Burke look alike, who tells her Mark was being completely sensible. After this, King is worked with his younger brother, Destiny (a spoiled, crazy colt that is naturally going to be given to Cindy, because that's logical, right?) and that goes all to hell when Destiny causes a wreck and King gets a giant gash on his shoulder. Katie hauls King back to the barn, tries to get Camela to be functional and help her, but only winds up traumatizing her. At this point, Cindy comes in to tell Katie the secrets behind Camela -- that she was in some riding accident and went blind and now is scared of horses, but wants to be around horses, which is why she's been taking her to the barn, so stop thinking she's so selfish, Katie -- and blah blah blah. Seriously, did we need this blind girl? Really?

So King misses his next race, the Jim Beam, and aims instead for the Santa Anita Derby. By this point, Katie is ready to start training in the gate, and Mark has a brilliant plan, you guys. He wants to take Destiny, who has never been gate trained, and use him to train Katie in the gate. Brilliant. Katie goes along with this, and it takes Jason to tell them they're all being idiots to get Katie to see reason. Too bad they're already in the gate. Things go reasonably well at first, but in their last run through, the horse has had enough and goes ballistic, flipping over in the gate and nearly crushing Katie. Drama ensues, the boys nearly come to blows, but everyone gets through it without dying, so it works out. Then King gets out of his stall and eats the grass that the sick horses graze on before going down to Santa Anita. By this point, Katie has started to jockey and has gotten her two test races in, so she can ride King in the Santa Anita Derby. He comes in fifth. Then he gets strangles. He gets over that and then they race him again at Portland Downs, and Mark blocks Katie and King in and they come in second. And then they go Churchill Downs and Katie, who is convinced that Mark is right -- experience does count for something -- decides to let Mark ride. Only then Mark gets hurt right before the race, and Katie rides in the Kentucky Derby. Of course she does.

It just occurs to me that I can't remember if she's 15 or 16 when all of this happens. Well, whatever. Katie rides and at the 1/8 pole her stirrup snaps off. Due to all those Wildfire episodes, I thought we were in for some catastrophe, but not Katie. Katie keeps her balance, kicks her other foot out of the stirrup and rides Willow King to second place. Without stirrups. So while they didn't win, they get most of the attention for being freakishly awesome.

Oh, and Camela has some break through and can walk around without someone helping her. Huzzah.

• At a certain point...between the injury and the strangles, I decided too much was going on in this book. How Willow King even got to the Kentucky Derby after all of that is fairly crazy (given that I'm not all too sure, in terms of graded earnings, he would have even gotten into the race), but I did like that he didn't win once in the book. It was a little amusing, actually, to see the main horse character suck that hard, but still be touted as the best horse ever.

• Nothing happens between Mark and Katie (I guess her tingling sensations ceased somewhere along the way) and Jason/Katie remains in some strange are they/aren't they friends zone.
  

• Cindy is more multidimensional than in the first book, so that's a plus.
  

• The Jim Beam Stakes didn't exist as a stakes race when this book was published. Jim Beam ended their sponsorship in 1998, so in 1999 its name changed to the Galleryfurniture.Com Stakes (yes, it's awful, and I can see why Chris Platt decided to ignore this), then in 2000 it became the Turfway Spiral Stakes. It's now called the Lane's End Stakes.
  

• Willow King runs in the 126th Kentucky Derby.

• At one point, Mark tells Katie that she can't own Willow King and be a jockey at the same time because it's a conflict of interest. She'll have to switch the ownership to her mother. Katie has a particularly horse story main character attitude about this: NO! Her mother did NOT believe in and hand raise that horse like SHE DID. Do you NOT UNDERSTAND? In the long run, she switches the ownership anyway.
  

• Willow King does not run for anyone like he runs for Katie! Although, frankly, he seemed to be doing just fine for everyone else, so I sort of think that theory is all in Katie's head.
  

It's better than the first book, and I would still read a third if Chris Platt puts out another book related to Willow King. I'm too invested now.

The #1 way to get a horse: cry and insult your loved ones.

Moon Shadow
by Chris Platt
Published: 2006

While reading this book, I pondered on what would happen if all of these horse story main characters somehow found themselves locked in, say, a giant, isolated warehouse somewhere. You know what would happen? It would be a blood bath. That's what would happen.

Thirteen-year-old Callie lives with her parents on the edge of the Nevada desert. More than anything, she wants a horse of her own, but knows that her family could never afford it. For a long time Callie has watched a herd of wild mustangs -- sometimes playing, sometimes battling, but always magnificent. The stallion she calls Cloud Dancer and his pregnant palomino mare Moonbeam are her favorites. Callie daydreams that the beautiful Moonbeam will someday -- somehow -- be hers.

But not everyone loves the wild horses. Area ranchers complain that the herds are overpopulated, and in one of the Bureau of Land Management's periodic roundups, Moonbeam is brought in. When the mare dies after giving birth prematurely, Callie devotes herself to caring for Moon Shadow, the orphaned filly. It's touch-and-go as to whether the little mustang will even survive. But if by some miracle Moon Shadow does make it, will Callie be able to adopt the beloved foal?

I am glad to see that Chris Platt escaped the Ashleigh series with her career still intact, considering that it looks like, for some authors, the Thoroughbred series took them down with it. In an unexpected move, Chris Platt bounced from horse racing and breeding to flinging her formulaic rage at the BLM. I feel like this is a stage for some authors. It's only a matter of time before a horse story author moves from racing or horse camp scenarios to focusing their adorable little indignant characters on ripping into the moral fibers of BLM employees who don't appear to give much of a crap, but do invariably lose to the willpower of a tween and her gaggle of influential friends who keep the story moving for her, because she is ultimately powerless.

Callie is one of those adorable, indignant tweens. She's thirteen, horse crazy, and forced to wear homemade clothing because her parents are overgrown hippies who grow their own organic food and appear to live in a junk yard. Callie is upset about this because she does not like tie-dye, and incense makes her a little nauseous. She bravely soldiers on, making due with the family's draft horse and longing for the day she can adopt Moonbeam, her favorite local mustang.

It's summer, and Callie is serving as an equine vet assistant who does plenty of rounds at the local BLM. While they're there, Callie meets two new cowboys, Sam and his son, Justin. If you're waiting for me to say that romantic sparks start to fly between Callie and Justin, I'm sorry to inform you that this doesn't exactly happen. Because another local boy, and rich kid, Luke, likes to pester her in typical displays of male youthfulness, Callie decides that she'd really like to treat Justin like a foreign creature. Because typical tween maleness is seen as unsatisfactory in this book, let it be known that Luke is the antagonist. It's just not really convincing because mainly it's just Luke acting like a boy and Callie completely overreacting to everything he does. Sort of like Christina overreacting to Brad. That sort of overreacting.

So...Moonbeam is driven into the BLM compound and, because the BLM is evil, she is in labor and gives birth prematurely and wins up being put down because the BLM is evil. Did I mention that the BLM is evil? Have I mentioned yet that the "boss man" at the BLM does not like orphan foals? No? Well, he doesn't. And he has pig eyes and is unintelligent. No kidding. So, moving on, Callie has a hissy fit in the middle of the BLM about Moonbeam and immediately names her filly Moon Shadow. Because Callie can't just move into the BLM complex, she is forced to go home. When she comes back, she finds Justin helping out with the filly and has an immediate jealous urge to whine to herself about how she wants the filly to interact with only her. She has to note to herself that people call Moon Shadow her filly, not anyone else's filly, or the government's filly, or whatever. It's HER filly, people. Despite it not being her filly at all. Sam and Justin try to get the filly to bond with a nurse mare, but that doesn't work, so she takes to formula. By this point, Callie is determined to adopt Moon Shadow for herself, because boss man whoever is giving the filly the evil eye.

At this point, Luke's old pony gets loose, so Callie leads it back to Luke's farm and meets Luke's dad, who is very Clay Townsend. He's all ridiculously eager to be nice and happy to help after Callie pours out her emotional vomit about Moon Shadow. He is going to a) give her a job, b) front her the adoption fee, c) transport the filly to her house, d) tell her fantastical stories of the history of mustangs for some reason, despite everyone all ready knowing about the history of mustangs. Callie makes some callous comment about how Luke would never sit and listen to this crap, and it's no wonder, really, because it would bore anyone out of their mind. Only a horse story main character would listen to this. Anyway, Callie practically floats back home to tell her parents her plan, but they are not immediately swayed by its awsomeness and Callie flips out completely, shrieking about how she hates tie-dye and living on a yard with junk in it. Then she realizes that she's a bitch and it's too much. She bursts into tears and, probably because her parents are horrified that she's going to get into their medicine cabinet or start burning herself with their incense sticks, they immediately fall into line and let her adopt the filly.

Callie finds herself at the BLM place soon after her diabolical fit, toting Luke's father's check and the signed paperwork...only to find that the BLM boss guy has somehow figured out her plans and decided to swiftly cut her off at the pass, letting this random city woman (who is unfit to own a horse because she wears spike heels) adopt Moon Shadow. The horror! Clearly the BLM exists solely to piss off tween girls. Callie is paralysed into staring in abject terror at this development, so Sam and Justin do all the legwork and get city lady interested in another mare and foal so city lady changes her mind and, oh bliss!, Callie gets to keep Moon Shadow.

After this, Callie starts to work at Luke's place, trains Moon Shadow to lead, somehow accidentally lets Luke unlock the filly's stall, loses the filly for about two pages, and then decides to enter a halter competition with Moon Shadow when Luke's dad comes to the rescue again and offers her a new halter and all of his daughter's old clothes. At the show, Luke gets instantly pissed off because by this point he's probably realized he's the antagonist and he's not going to win at anything in his life ever again. So he decides, you know, screw it, and goes for the only option available to him: he lets Moon Shadow loose on the grounds. Callie and Luke's sister, Jill, find the filly, clean her up within about five seconds, and then release them into the show ring.

By this point, you're just waiting for me to say that she comes in first in her halter class, right? Well, she doesn't. She comes in fifth. Luke, of course, doesn't place at all, so that's really the most important thing. Sure, the book tries to indicate something about how it's all about the horse and the girl going on to become a fantastic team or something, but you know it's all about the tween girl beating her antagonist and affording to be smug about it later.

It's not a horrible book, but it strictly follows the wild horse/western formula. It also throws in some main character angsting about how everyone thinks pedigreed horses are better than mustangs and how wrong everyone is for having this mindset. And I can't exactly figure out why Sam and Justin like Callie when she mainly spends her time treating Justin like crap, just because he happens to be a boy, which Luke also is. Also, notice how she doesn't exactly do much of anything that moves the plot forward except go into hysterics, which lands her a horse her family can't afford. The big saving grace here is that she comes in fifth, and is happy in fifth. She could have come in first, and made the cliché complete. The bottom line: solid, despite the converging of formulas.

It's amazing what allowances I'll give a book that doesn't reward its character with a justified blue ribbon in the end.

Willow King: There's a lot of talk about disabilities here that I almost completely ignore.

Willow King
by Chris Platt
Published: 1998

I always had the opinion that Chris Platt should have been an author on the Thoroughbred series, given that her background could have seriously helped add some realism to those plotlines. Instead, in true form for whoever was behind that series, she was put on the Ashleigh series...which never failed to confuse me. Author with jockey experience...stick her on a series that has relatively little to do with racing! Brilliant idea! It's this kind of thought process that never gets old.


The only reason I'm displaying a larger image of this cover is because of the denim outfit. I was in high school in the 1990s...I would have remembered if wearing all denim was fashionable...and I really don't think it was.

When thirteen-year-old Katie Durham learns that the owner of a neighboring Thoroughbred farm is going to destroy a newborn colt, she rushes to save him. Willow King's legs are badly twisted, but Katie fights for his life, begging for the chance to raise the foal.

Because one of her own legs is nearly an inch shorter than the other, Katie feels an immediate kinship with Willow King. Together they embark on a painstaking journey of training that becomes more harrowing than Katie ever expected. Yet, through it all, she remains determined to see this brave little colt grow into the beautiful Thoroughbred champion she knows he's meant to be.

So, I recall when this book was published. I actually remember telling Chris Platt I would read it back in 1998 (don't ask). Ten years later, I finally get around to it. Nicely done, me! The important thing is that I've at least read it, and I have every intention of reading its sequel...whatever it's called.

This book begins rather abruptly. There is no easing you into Katie's world. Instead we plunge right into the thick of it on the first page, because Willow King has already been born and his owner has decided to destroy him because his legs are crooked. As it turns out, Willow King is part of the first crop of Beau Jest, the farm's would-be-prominent stallion. Mr. Ellis, owner of the farm, isn't taking any chances with his stallion's future, and determines that the foal is a black mark on Beau Jest's remarkably small record as a producer. Katie, being a horse story main character, is not going to let this happen. Quickly, she slaps the foal with a name and rabidly defends his life. Everyone backs down when it becomes apparent the foal can nurse by himself, but Mr. Ellis still doesn't want to foal on his farm, so Katie cuts a deal with him. He can lease Katie's horse, Jester, for his daughter, Cindy, for three years. In return, Katie gets to own Willow King and pretty much singlehandedly raise him. The deal is done, King and his dam go off to Katie's property, and that's that.

So, this obviously makes Cindy our antagonist. She's a little more unpredictable than most flat antagonists in these sort of books, in that she's duplicitous and a bitch most of the time, and then will turn around and have some completely unexpected break through by admitting she's "a jerk" and then turns around again and acts like a crazed banshee for no apparent reason. This is either more in line with the reality of rich teenage girls, or Cindy is mentally unbalanced. I honestly couldn't tell. More on Cindy later.

Willow King grows up and Katie raises him with the help of Jason, our heartthrob for this book. It's worthwhile to point out now that this book has a lot of similarities to the first three Thoroughbred books. Katie is Ashleigh, King is Wonder, John is Charlie (he even has a felt hat and calls Katie "missy" more than once), Jason is Mike, Mr. Ellis is Clay Townsend. The only thing missing is a Brad Townsend. So, obviously that needed to be rectified. The major difference is that you can tell these characters aren't completely expecting some sappy fantasyland in which they can play around to their hearts content. That was sort of nice. Anyway, back to Jason. He's a year older than Katie, and she's got a crush on him like you would not believe. Because Katie has this physical disability, she figures she's totally out of Jason's league, but because Jason is basically Mike Reese, of course this is not the case. At one point she thinks he's figured out she has a crush on him, and miraculously he doesn't go tell the whole school. Only then he accidentally says he'd never be interested in a thirteen-year-old, which Katie totally is, and that results in hysterics. She avoids him for eons (in teenager time, which is like a month) and then he up and says he's moving to Oklahoma for a year. Katie is all stunned, and he moves to Oklahoma.

Willow King finally grows up, and they do this whole thing with a horse swimming pool, and honestly I think right about here there was too much technical garble. Blah blah swimming blah blah legs blah blah timers and minutes and wait, Willow King is drowning...okay, don't worry, they didn't drown the horse. Eventually Willow King's legs straighten out by themselves and Mr. Ellis has that my horse is actually good looking moment. And he tries to trade Katie back, but she stands firm, despite Cindy over there being a complete asshat with her horse.

One thing I didn't really buy was Cindy's riding ability. Let me explain. Cindy and Katie compete in the same classes, yet Katie is such a good rider she actually starts to give Cindy lessons in order to prevent Cindy from inadvertently ruining Jester. When I say Cindy is getting lessons, I'm not talking about relatively advanced, even intermediate lessons. I'm talking about beginner stuff, here. Cindy's having trouble mounting and she can't figure out diagonals. Which makes me wonder how the hell Katie and Cindy are even competing against each other in shows.

Anyway, King starts to train for races, etc. Jason comes back and he's all older and more manly and such, making Katie swoon as she watches him help break the colt to saddle. Mr. Ellis offers Katie the opportunity to train King at his farm, and she takes him up on the opportunity. John has her exercise the colt, leading to more jealousy from Cindy, resulting in completely deranged teenager antics involving Cindy trying to race King with Jester. Obviously that didn't turn out well, and that's the last we hear from Cindy for the rest of the book. Mr. Ellis grounds her and gives Jester back to Katie. For all we know, Cindy could have died.

Then we pick up a little bit of plot from Wonder's Victory. King runs in his first race and beats a two-year-old that had designs on the Kentucky Derby. The trainer of this other horse is not to be trusted, and he starts doing some crazy antics, ie. he laces King's grain with bute, causing him to be scratched when John finds the tainted grain, and then dumps moldy hay in King's stall, resulting in colic. But it doesn't matter. King is so fantastic that he still beats the other colt in the final race of the book, the big Portland Downs Futurity. Everyone is estatic, so Katie starts to babble about the Kentucky Derby before John can rain on her parade by saying you have to nominate horses for that race. You can't, like, just show up and stick it in the gate akin to the Thoroughbred series, people. Crushed, Katie decides she'll get over it and King will be great without the Derby, but then John comes back and says he nominated King anyway? Like, what? What was all that about before, John? Huh? But Katie is too thrilled to care that John killed her enthusiasm about the exact same topic about five minutes ago because OMG Kentucky Derby. Then she dances with Jason finally, because he's still there being patient and such.

• Katie tried to wriggle out of his grasp, but he held her firm, steadying her like the wild colts she had seen him tame. I had to pull this out of the book, because it's so romance novel. Just imagine if that line had been in the Thoroughbred series. I probably would have died laughing.
  

• Katie and Jan constantly call each other "friend" and "pal" and I didn't know what was up with that.

• Willow King is based on a horse called King Hark. I suppose this is him?

You know, this is a solid book. I could have lived without the evil trainer trying to fix the races, because that popped out of nowhere and added an unrealistic element to the story. Then there's the problem of Cindy. I liked her brief moment of coming close to apologizing for being a natural bitch, but the whole set up of perfect Katie giving flawed Cindy riding lessons and Cindy taking almost nothing from those lessons and still acting irresponsibly by the end just makes her too flat for my liking. It's just my opinion that if you're going to have an antagonist in a story, at least operate on the understanding that this person is also an actual human. I get so sick of this perfect protagonist who gets everything, evil antagonist who gets absolutely nothing crap sometimes.

Still, I wish Chris Platt and Mary Anderson had traded places.

Derby Fever (Rhoda hasn’t Got it!) - Ashleigh #7: Derby Day

Derby Day – Ashleigh #7
Created by Joanna Cambell
Written by Chris Platt
First Printing: November 1999

Ugh, here it is – the saccharine sappiness of Aladdin’s Derby. It’s just so sappy; obviously he’s not going to lose the freaking race, but oh no, we’ve got to throw more obstacles in his path and muck him up even more in the process. After all, god forbid any of Ashleigh’s Special Horses™ have a smooth and easy route to the Triple Crown. That said, I am glad that Chris Platt’s at the helm of this book. She seems to be pretty grounded in the reality of the racing world so to speak, and usually keeps things sane.

The Cover:

It’s hideous. The pinks and purples make me want to puke at the glaring florescence of it. Aladdin looks like a backyard pony with a too long unpulled unruly mane; and I grow continually more convinced that when the Edgardale mares go to other breeding farms, the frikkin teaser stallion jumps the fence and knocks ‘em up (and the other farm owners laugh all the way to the bank: “Hey Frank, that mare from that rinky dink breeding farm just got jumped by the teaser, what’cha say we let it go, and tell them our real stallion did the job. They’ll never know, hahahaha!”) Aladdin looks more like an Appaloosa trail horse than he does a racehorse with that weird pink mottled muzzle, and the mottling around his eyes. Ashleigh looks to be wearing a very unflattering salmon-pink sundress (oh barf) or else she’s committed the grave sin of wearing a hideously bright t-shirt in the winner’s circle of the nation’s biggest race. Also, Aladdin’s bit looks far to large for his mouth, and Ashleigh looks far too tall considering that Aladdin is “almost 17 hands tall” – so either she’s Andre the Giant, or Aladdin isn’t an inch over 15 hands in that picture.

(Note bene: The only picture I could find of the cover is pretty washed out and faded, the actual one is really much more florescent and eye-blinding)

Ye Olde Summary:

Gag! That said, the back cover blurb is pretty much dead on, if rather stupid. I think the less said on this, the better. So I’ll stop here before I start frothing at the mouth (rabid dog, rabid dog!)

The Big Picture Plot:

1) Aladdin’s Treasure: Apparently being sired by a fairly prestigious stallion, and owned by wealthy privileged folk, he’s still viewed as a jumped-up upstart who’s “got no place racing with these upper-class horses.” He was supposed to run dead-last in the Blue Grass considering his past performances, so everyone not connected to him throws a shitfit when he does win. So then during a “Breakfast with the Works” morning gallop, he gets body-slammed by a two-year-old brother of the mean-tempered Derby favorite, Star Gazer. Naturally, this involves him throwing his jockey, and bolts into the machine yard, thereby giving Ashleigh a heart attack that they’d have to put him down. Which of course brings us to …

2) Aladdin can’t settle down! OH NOES!!!! So once again, as soon as Ashleigh the Wondergirl extracts the colt from the machine yard, he’s off to Paradise Edgardale for some peace and quiet. Except he doesn't settle down there either. He still acts a little spooky, and a little jumpy, and freaks his jockey out, and once on a trail ride, he tosses her off -- and then she's forced to bail a second time. Of course, Ashleigh manages to sneak a little ride on him (again!) and finds out he's actually behaving perfectly, and she guesses it's his jockey being nervous which sets him off, and that means...

3) It's all Rhoda Kat's fault! Seriously, I know why... it's her name for christ's sake. Rhoda Kat. Sounds like some cheap 80-1 claimer at Emerald Downs. Hell, I'd be nervous and freaked out too if I was imagining myself in the post parade of the nation's most important horse race and heard my stupid name being called over the loudspeaker. Anyway, Rhoda's got this exclusive contract with the Danworths to ride Aladdin in the Derby, but after she gets thrown, and Aladdin acts up, she has her confidence shaken. So of course, it's up to Ashleigh to get her back in the saddle and confident by ...

4) jumping "Jessica's Jump" which is apparently some made up backstory about some girl who tried jumping a horse over a 10-foot gully and ended up in the hospital. So Ashleigh writes a note to Rhoda saying she's going to go jump the gully, conveniently leaves Aladdin's saddle and bridle in very plain sight in front of his stall in which the horse himself is penned up (yeah, doesn't it just scream set-up?) and gets ready to do the deed, but lo and behold, Rhoda arrives in the nick of time (as if Ashleigh really had the cajones to jump the thing anyway) and rides Aladdin real good. So she's not scared anymore. And so they ride in the Derby. Yay!

Points of Interesting Useless (or not so useless) Facts:

• OK, Chris sorta has it wrong here, since she says the horse has to be nominated to the Derby when it's young (there's the whole issue of supplemental fees, but technically, it's cheaper to nominate horses early on) but y'know, props to her about horses running well and/or winning in the Derby preps. It's a breath of realism in a fantasy world. Sure, you're always gonna see owners who throw a no-chance horse in, but realistically, when they do well in the preps, it's just more evident to run them after all.

• Aladdin's run 7 times as a 3-year-old. Then the Blue Grass and Derby make races #8 and #9. Holy cow, compared to today's modern Thoroughbred, he's a machine.

• Y'know, I'm really happy to read how the Wortons have a 6-furlong training track where Aladdin works. It's cool, see. Way better than some giant one-mile track. I've seen aerial footage of Churchill Downs, and it really makes you realize how big the freaking track is. For any Thoroughbred farm (no matter how prestigious) to have a track of that size, they'd have to have a shitload of land.

• And Caro's gift for Ashleigh's birthday was a peach-colored sundress. That means that the hideous garment Ashleigh is wearing on the cover is a dress. Ugh. It's awful.

• Rhoda comes to stay at Edgardale between the Blue Grass and the Derby. She and Ashleigh go for a ride. Rhoda rides Stardust, and Ashleigh actually rides Moe again. So much for being too "big" for him. Suddenly he has value to her again because he's the only other ridable critter on the place.

• Aladdin runs in the 125th Derby. And gets Gate 8 in a 16 horse field with fairly high odds. Gosh, Derby 125 brings back memories. Come to think of it, that was Charismatic's year, and he went off at high odds too.

And Aladdin wins the Derby. As if he'd lose, judging by the cover. Puh-leeze! So that's over and done with, thank you very much. I need brain bleach or something. And I think I'll try and review another non-Ashleigh series book right now to recover from the torment of Derby Day. I dug around in one of the cardboard boxes that my horse books are temporarily being stored in, and think I found a nice old one that should do nicely.

She’s a Rebel… A Rebel with a Cause – Ashleigh #5: The Forbidden Stallion

Ashleigh #5: The Forbidden Stallion
Created by Joanna Campbell
Written by Chris Platt
First Printing: August 1999

So here’s another one! This is probably be the last one for the weekend since tomorrow is March 2nd, and that means it’s Mitch’s birthday (Happy Birthday to my pony!) and then my birthday happens to be Monday. So it might be Tuesday before my next review. But that said, here’s book #5, with what I consider to be an incredibly cheesy-ass title … but then, most of the books in this series have the most awful cliché titles in the world. Also, I’d like to know why I seem to be adapting these review titles to quotations from movies lately – maybe it makes it more fun that way. Or something.

The Cover:
Now, aside from the painfully awful title in red and white on the bottom of the cover, we finally get a cover pumped full of action and raging equine testosterone. Why, it seems to leap right out of the Black Stallion movie – except of course that Aladdin’s Treasure is a three-year-old colt, and a Thoroughbred, not an Arabian. It just screams romance though; the wild looking horse running free through the crashing waves at sunset. Which actually doesn’t ever happen in the book. Yes, Aladdin gets loose (way to go Ashleigh) and runs around on the beach, but it was in the morning, and he was fully tacked up. I’d highly doubt that he’d be running around wild and free on a beach otherwise given how supposedly valuable he is. Plus, the water looks very weird; the waves are breaking rather far behind Aladdin, but he’s able to run through deep enough water that he leaves a spray plume behind him. I don’t know if that’s possible; I’ve ridden on the beach, and usually, you have to be right down by the breakers to get a spray plume like that. Still, compared to the bland and boring inaction on the last few covers, this is an eye-catching breath of fresh air.

The Summary:

Ashleigh is torn

Ashleigh Griffen knows it's wrong, but she can't help it-she's jealous. Peter Danworth has everything: a huge Thoroughbred racing farm, money, and one of Ashleigh's favorite stallions, Aladdin.

Then Ashleigh gets amazing news. If the stallion loses his next race, the Danworths will retire him to stud at Edgardale!

Excited, Ashleigh sneaks a ride on Aladdin -- and she accidentally discovers how to run him to win. Will she keep quiet so the magnificent stallion can live on her parents' farm? Or will she give Peter, the boy who has everything, Aladdin's secret?

So where do we start? I know, let’s start by comparing the similarities between Brad Townsend and Peter Danworth. Well, to start off, they’re both filthy rich and live on big old Thoroughbred farms. Plus, from reading the back cover, you kind of get the sense that Ashleigh has a serious case of the green-eyed monster, and that things won’t start off right with old Peter just the way things didn’t go so hot with Brad. But by and large, the summary pretty much remains true to the plot, and it all unfolds pretty much spot-on through the whole book. Which pretty much gives away the entire plot on the back cover. Heck folks, save your $5 and don’t bother to get the book. You got the gist of it right there in those three paragraphs.

So speaking of which…

The Big Picture Plot:
I’m happy to say there’s actually multiple plots within this book. The previous books have been pretty much one-dimensional in that the key point of the story was for Ashleigh to whine and pout and sulk about how she doesn’t have a horse, and we’re supposed to feel sorry for her because of that. Now that she does have that wonderful equine friend that’s taller than 14 hands, then we move to a storyline with a little more substance. The main story plot here is that Aladdin’s Treasure, the big black stallion that Ashleigh just adores, is uber sucktastic on the racetrack. In fact, he’s so sucktastic, he pretty much reeks because he hasn’t even broken his maiden yet (but somehow despite this, the Danworths have entered him in a stakes race that he somehow meets the conditions for.) Ashleigh knows he’s this super horse and all because he’s by the same sire as Wanderer’s Quest, so it’s up to her and her family to figure out why this regally-bred horse is pretty much doing the equivalent to what The Green Monkey did, and hasn’t lifted a hoof. Therefore, our uber-wealthy friends, the Danworths (not to be confused with the other uber-wealthy friends, the Fontaines) fly the whole Griffen clan of five down to Florida on their private jet so they can get to the bottom of this mystery or else Aladdin’s Treasure will be retired at Edgardale to stand at stud (considering that he hasn’t so much as won a race at this point, if I were Derek or Elaine, I’d be insulted that the Danworths wanted to fob off a loser stallion on me considering if he’d won some races, other farms would be clamoring for him.) Which leads us to …

Peter Danworth. The good-looking son of Mr Danworth, and surprise surprise, he’s thirteen, just like Caroline. He just screams Brad-clone, you see. Everything fits, even the way he and Ashleigh clash right from the start. But lo and behold, Aladdin’s Treasure is actually his horse. And he actually cares for the horse, and doesn’t want to see him go to Edgardale. In fact, we even find out that he exercise rides Aladdin (gee, just like Brad – what is it about these rich boys who ride their daddy’s horses?) and wants to be a jockey, but will grow too tall, which leads to another source of contention with Ashleigh because she’s still little. They really butt heads when the Griffen’s return for the week of spring break, and Ashleigh has to spend time with Peter for math tutoring. Which brings us to….

Ashleigh’s not above blackmail, it seems. She really really wants to ride Aladdin even though she flunked a math quiz and has been grounded from riding. She has a few pet theories about why Aladdin is such a sucky racehorse, the chief theory involving a whip (which is as usual evil) and seems convinced the only way she can get to the bottom of the mystery is to actually sit on him herself, conveniently forgetting the fact that he’s almost 17 hands tall, and she’s all of four and a half feet which makes his head just about as big as her torso. In order to ride the horse, she blackmails Peter, and gets to ride. Which brings us to our conclusion…

Ashleigh is a friggin genius. She solved the problem of why Aladdin is such a loser. All he needed was a shadow roll. She also does stupid things like waving a whip around his face to see if he is whip shy. Oh, and falling off. There’s a reason why they call it overmounted. Ashleigh was in way way over her head. But huzzah! She solves the problem that even the super duper new trainer can’t solve. Way to go, Ashleigh. Aladdin’s Treasure finally breaks his maiden.

Some Points of Interest:

• I got a good old-fashioned heart clench reading the description of Hialeah Racetrack being called a “first-rate place.” By the time this book was written, it was just a few short years from being shut down and closed. I’ve seen pictures of the place since then; it’s got that old-fashioned classic beauty, so it’s nice to read about it as actually being alive again. Or at a time when it was alive, or something.
  

• I will never understand why these authors seem to think racehorses are just like regular horses that just run fast. Thoroughbreds don’t get “put in crossties” … that’s why you see them being held while being groomed or tacked up. Too much can go wrong in a crosstie. I was once tacking up the mare I was leasing, and she started bucking around in the crossties, she could have hurt herself. Think about it, you’ve got a possibly multi-million dollar animal, and you’re going to clip two long lines to these rings on its halter – lines that possibly will not break in an emergency – and hope that he doesn’t go bat-shit-crazy and break his neck? I don’t think so. You’re gonna get a groom or two to hold his lead rope.

• Mike Smith? Mike Smith? This just has me convulsed in giggles. Of all the names that could have been picked for the introduction of this character, it just seems so damn amusing that the Danworth’s new trainer has the exact same name as two-time Breeders’ Cup Mile-winning jockey, Mike Smith.

• Aladdin’s Treasure is “almost seventeen hands tall and was jet black with four white socks, a star and a stripe.” And yet, Ashleigh is able to brush his back. Let me show you a horse that is 17.1 hands tall.

See, that’s Bubba. He’s at our barn. There’s only a few inches of difference between him and Aladdin. And yet, I can barely reach this horse’s back. I cannot see over his back. And I am a foot taller than Ashleigh. But hey, maybe she was standing on a stepladder or something. Or has elastic arms like Mr Fantastic, Richard Reed.

• Ashleigh and Peter do not get along at first. In fact, they kind of hate each other. But unlike Brad and Ashleigh, who never seem to really reconcile their animosity, Peter and Ashleigh seem to come to a friendship. Which is weird, because you’d have thought they’d try the same kind of love/hate rivalry plot as they did with the main series.

• I said it before, and I'll say it again. Ashleigh is wasted as a jockey. If she can deliver a foal all by herself in the middle of a blizzard, she's the equine version of Doogie Howser.

So there we have it, The Forbidden Stallion. Why it had such a name like “forbidden” I’ll never know. It’s not like Ashleigh was prevented from seeing the horse, she just couldn’t ride him. But hello, she was grounded from riding horses – any horse. Not just really tall black stallions. And soon, she’ll be back in the saddle, and immersing herself in that catty bitchy world of Hunter Show Princesses. Whoop de doop.