And then the horse with fangs ate him. The end.

The Heavenly Horse from the Outermost West
By Mary Stanton

The Dark Horse and his minions search for the last true Appaloosa for their own nefarious purposes, while, from the Courts of the Outermost West, the Dancer enters the world to save his breed from extinction.

I don't know what came over me, but I just had to hunt down this book. As it turns out, Heavenly Horse is a bit elusive and I was forced to use my magical librarian powers for what turned out to be a huge waste of time and effort.

The reason for this is pretty simple. I loathe fantasy novels. I'm trying to think of one right now that I even marginally tolerated, and not one title is popping up in my abused little brain. It's not that I can't sit down and make myself read them, because many years ago I forced myself through The Lord of the Rings and I'm still not sure how that even happened. It's like a blur of supreme boredom highlighted with intermittent screams of horror. I know, I know. Why, then, did I even bother? How could I, a hater of fantasy, be expected to push all of that aside for a book that has a rainbow Appaloosa fighting a fanged horse with claws on the cover? How can I rise above my biases to read and review this novel of talking horses who smell like wild thyme? How?

Yet again, the answer is pretty simple. I don't.

I tried, you guys. Really, I did, but ultimately I put the book down and promptly lost it in my apartment somewhere. I really hope I can find it, because I'm pretty sure magical librarian powers aren't going to get me out of that one.

Anyway, let me present some points of interest:

1. The Dancer. I guess he's super important because he is the leader of the mystical Appaloosa breed, which seems important to horses everywhere because of a very select list of breeds in the super horse breed army it happens to be alphabetically superior. The Dancer, when off in special la la horse world, is all the colors of the rainbow. He smells like wild thyme. He uses poetry to introduce himself. He also tries to rape someone. The Dancer is kind of a dick.

2. Duchess. She is a grade mare who is probably an Appaloosa in disguise. I didn't get to that part. Anyway, she's all emotionally scarred, believing that she could get beaten at any point despite the fact that she's never been beaten. Whatever. Then The Dancer tries to rape her. And she tries to tell all the other mares about it and they're all, "OMG you have to let him rape you! That's how babies are made!" And the barn cat is all, "LET HIM RAPE YOU." And the collie is all, "OMG, you so suck." But by then The Dancer realizes he's probably come across a little too strong in trying to rape her, so he sweet talks her into getting in foal. And by that point I was out of there.

3. The Mares. Are annoying. And they have lots of rules.

4. The People. They are probably English, but they keep making soothing sounds that make me think they are maybe German. I cannot even begin to explain this rationally.

5. The Collie. Everyone who talks to him uses his name so frequently it started to amuse me. OMG, Corey. You didn't just do that, Corey. I am so sick of your know-it-all attitude, Corey.

Truthfully, I did give up on this book after the failed rape attempt/love scene. It was weirdly reminiscent of those romance novels that involve the guy accidentally raping the girl, her being somewhat traumatized, but eventually she gets over it because it's true love, rape happens, let's make babies and forget that "control issue" thing ever happened, okay? Only with horses. Regardless, I tend to put books down after these instances.

Also, I loathe fantasy. (Oh, the only one I liked was Birth of the Firebringer by Meredith Ann Pierce. I knew there was at least one.)

Dancer: If some horse books are fantasies, this one is literal.

Dancer: A Novel
by Shelley Peterson
1996

First of all, I think it's worthwhile to say that one review pointed out that this book is "as ingenuous as early Nancy Drew" and that is pretty spot on. Therefore I'm going to have to let go of some of the serious WTF? moments that this book strings along at a consistent rate, because Dancer is 100% pure horse story fantasy. Fantasy as pure as the driven snow. That sort of pure that makes you feel a little sick after being exposed to it for a lengthy amount of time. I'm actually going to tag this as fantasy, because I've got two ghostly visits and a haunted riding crop that tell me it is.

Second, if reaction to my giveaway post concerning Dancer is any indication (not to mention this book's Amazon page), there are some pretty basic schools of thought when it comes down to Shelley Peterson. Either you like her, or you just don't. I have no fond childhood nostalgia for this book, nor am I Canadian, so I really have to go with whatever impression comes to me first, and with Dancer it's that I think this book is mainly exceptionally strange.

Hilary James ('Mousie') is just sixteen when she wins The Fuller Trophy at the Royal Winter Fair jumping her horse, Dancer. Her triumph is rewarded with an invitation to perform in England for Queen Elizabeth, but she has also attracted the unwanted attention of the nefarious Samuel Owens who schemes to acquire Dancer for his niece, Sara. Rebuffed in his first attempt to buy the horse, Owens instructs his hired man, Chad Smith, to try to steal it. Mousie has a dream in which a beautiful blond horsewoman warns her of impending danger.

As far as summaries go, this one is horrible. However, it had no hope of being good, so I'm just going to give whoever wrote it points for trying to compound this book into four sentences.

Mousie is our heroine this time out, and the book opens up with her winning this Royal Winter Fair with her horse, Daring Dancer. Dancer is 17 hands high, a chestnut (12-year-old girls everywhere start squeeing in joy), a stallion, and acts like a human. By this I mean that he cannot be kept in a stall (he will jump out of it or knock the door down or both), chooses only to be ridden by Mousie, "bows" and basically acts like a showman in front of audiences without any command, and acts like a bodyguard (and by this I mean he will attack various intruders, but only to the point that he scares them or has them pinned to the ground). Saying that he is perfect is an understatement, because everything he does is so fantastic he's practically a mythological beast sent straight from Mt. Olympus. However, this is not all of the animal insanity. Mousie and Christine live on a farm surrounded by variously aware animals, such as the attack geese, goat, and terrier. They're all practically out of the movie Babe, only Babe, of course, was so much better.

Okay, so now you know what we're dealing with here. Mousie wins this show, getting the attention of Samuel Owens, who is this level of evil that is impossible to comprehend. He desperately wants the horse for his niece, Sara, and dispatches his trainer, Chad, to convince them to sell. Of course, they do not sell because Dancer is everything to Mousie, whose father has recently died and lives life as the social pariah of her school. Owens is not thrilled about this, so he tells Chad that he is going to get Dancer for him, no matter the cost. Chad accepts his fate and begins to plot.

Enter The Queen. This is Canada, and as some of us probably know, Canada just can't give up the pomp and circumstance of royalty. Thus they are a constitutional monarchy, meaning that some Canadians are crazy fangirls for The Queen (okay, that's not what it means...it's just a result). Shelley Peterson is clearly in this group of people, as are all of her characters. A letter from someone special arrives and informs her that The Queen is coming. OMGYAY! And not only that, Canada is going to put on some special show for her. OMGYAYAGAIN! And not only that, but Mousie has been selected to perform at this very show! Well, everyone about dies from the shock. Mousie and Dancer start to practice terribly hard, and when the show rolls around we are treated to Christine's rather ridiculously detailed description of it. Meanwhile, important stuff is going on with Mousie that we don't hear about until well after the fact. I have never encountered this sort of storytelling before, but it made me want to take the book and throw it at Shelley Peterson. Seriously, what? So when Mousie comes out on Dancer, and she and her saddle fly off of Dancer during the show, resulting in mass hysterics, you feel not only left out, but annoyed.

So because Dancer is a Black Stallion character, the only person who can take him home is Christine. That leaves Sandy, son of Rory, Christine's former high school flame, to go to the hospital with Mousie, who has a crush on Sandy like you would not believe. Convoluted? Maybe! Anyway, Christine leaves Dancer at the stable to go back to the hospital, relieving Sandy, who goes back to the farm with Rory to look over Dancer because Chad Smith is lurking around, being evil. When they get there, all the animals have been drugged and Dancer is gone. Sandy and Rory immediately head over the neighboring farm, conveniently owned by Owens (Rory, Christine, and Owens are all neighbors, of course), and find Dancer dyed black and drugged up in a locked barn. They escape and gallop back to Christine's. Eventually Christine and Mousie arrive home and have a good laugh because Dancer is black and wow, that's sort of amusing?

After this Rory tries to profess his true love to Christine, completely out of nowhere. He is unhappily married to the (evil, alcoholic) Helena, and is not yet divorced, but Christine doesn't know how much he wants to be divorced and turns him away. Meanwhile, Sandy has inadvertently caused a scene with Mousie by trying to take both her and the hated Sara Owens to school in the same car. How dare he! Mousie ignores Sandy for months, toiling in her friendless solitude. Or maybe she finally found a friend in these few months. I can't remember, because Shelley Peterson decided it wasn't important to show Mousie interacting with anyone, making me wonder if this friend is imaginary. Oh, yeah, and Chad Smith dies trying to euthanize Dancer. Mousie interrupts his attempt because some bleeding woman in a dream tells her to, causing Chad to fall over and accidentally stab himself in the chest with a hypodermic. Don't worry! We are assured he felt no pain, and Mousie gets over this trauma fairly quickly. Then Owens appears to inform Christine that he's a NICE GUY REALLY and she TOTALLY BELIEVES HIM because she is incomparably stupid because she is so sweet and nice. And Rory arrives to tell her all about his marriage and convince her that he'd like to date her when he's finally divorced. This pushiness, perhaps not shockingly, relieves her rather than sets her on edge. I'd be backing away slowly and/or screaming for help.

Enter The Queen. Because Queen Elizabeth just loves it when people fall off of seventeen hand horses, she invites Mousie to present Dancer to her court (or something) in England. OMGYAY! And then Mousie's grandmother sends them tons of new, fashionable clothes because they can't go to England wearing their farm rags. OMGYAYAGAIN! They wear their fashionable clothes to the airport, where they are treated to first class and all the wine and crackers they can conceivably eat. Then they are picked up in a limo and taken to the most quaint English cottage in the history of vine covered quaint English cottages. Everyone faints from sheer joy!

Dancer, of course, cannot live in their quaint surroundings, so he is relegated to some super awesome royal stables. There he still won't stay in his damned stall, freaking out one of the grooms to no end. At night, Mousie receives another dream from the bleeding lady, sending her straight to the barn, where Eddie, the unsettled groom, has roped Dancer and is freaking out. Mousie just tells Dancer to go to his stall, and he does, making Eddie look like an idiot. Only Christine then overhears Eddie nefariously plotting to steal Dancer, and wonders who could be behind this plot because surely it is not Samuel Owens! Surely! Christine has Eddie fired, thinking that's the end of it.

Enter The Queen. Mousie performs perfectly for Queen Elizabeth, and Dancer bows and rears to applause because he's that annoying. They win a pretty silver bowl. OMGYAY! Then they dance and eat with royal people and Mousie talks to The Queen. OMGYAYAGAIN! Then the royals indicate that they would really like Dancer for themselves, and Mousie goes into this long speech about how she couldn't possibly, so they relent and ask if they can breed him to their super fabulous mare. Everyone faints from sheer joy!

Then Rory and Helena get divorced and Rory speeds to England with Sandy so he can tell Christine about this. Sandy and Mousie nearly get kidnapped by Eddie, who surely couldn't be employed by Samuel Owens! Surely! Rory is not buying it that Christine keeps dealing out about Owens, not that this matters because it's fox hunt time! Sandy and Mousie get into a highly irritating conversation about the moral qualms of fox hunting, and Mousie is so for ripping those foxes to shreds but do not call her bloodthirsty, damn it! It's a totally non bloodthirsty sport! She thinks! Sandy backs down, because all horse story main characters are right and he has no hope of voicing an opinion. And then Mousie and Prince Charles fox hunt together and have a marvelous time until Eddie comes out of nowhere in an attempt to kill Dancer, but only winds up smacking his head into a tree and breaking his neck. He dies. Mousie and Prince Charles call for a doctor and then proceed with the marvelousness. And she helps some ghost get over her trauma of dying during a fox hunt. Eddie, apparently, will take her place.

Returning to Canada, time passes. Sandy and Mousie are dating, as are Rory and Christine. Samuel Owens is keeping a low profile. Sandy is learning how to ride and buys a horse so he can ride around with Mousie. Another royal letter arrives with pictures of the foal conceived between Dancer and the English Mare of Awesomeness. After about six to seven months of gestation, which makes me want to throw the book at Shelley Peterson again. Mousie dismisses the foal as scraggly and wet, wanting to hear nothing more of it because apparently she was expecting a seventeen hand, fully grown stallion to come popping out of that mare? Christine tries to explain that the foal is a day old, if that, and Mousie ignores her. Confused? You bet I was.

Then everyone goes on a ride, and Sandy's little sister falls. While Mousie is sitting with what's her name, somehow Samuel Owens comes out of nowhere, having been driven insane, and attacks Dancer with a knife. Dancer nearly dies, but of course he doesn't. Samuel Owens is hauled off, Mousie's dead dad appears to reminisce with Christine and Mousie, and then Christine and Rory get married. The end.

Okay.

Either you like Dancer for being the cute, slightly wacky fantasy it is or you dismiss it as unrealistic insanity. Here are some random thoughts (in which I don't rip it apart for being unrealistic, because really that's a waste of breath):

1. The story is invested in appearing innocent, making death practically comical or something easily risen above (Dancer's recovery that is mainly explained by his awesomeness, similar to Wonder's Pride's recovery through love in Pride's Last Race). The characters are black and white, no shades of gray to be found. Even Helena, who might have been good at some point in her life, is evil by the end of the book (drink and bitterness = evilness...remember this kids!).

2. Shelley Peterson is telling the story when she should be showing. That whole scene during The Queen's visit to Canada is the best example of this, as well as deus ex machina. Instead of showing us something relevant to whatever nonexistent plot she's trying to develop, she tells us what's going on in the show through Christine. You know what? I don't give a crap what's going on in the show. You want to know what I care about? THE DAMNED MAIN CHARACTER. Where the hell is she and what is she doing? Do I care about how much The Queen likes seeing some 8-year-old boy from Calgary rope a calf? Nope. Not at all. Then, after the hospital and the plan to dye and kidnap Dancer, Mousie tells us what happened when we were wasting our time with Christine during the show. How much do I care now? NONE AT ALL. Everyone's telling me what happened and jacking up the word count when we could have accomplished everything in half the time by just showing me what was going on with Mousie and Dancer backstage, explaining how she and the saddle fell off of Dancer in the first place.

3. There is no plot. Sure, there's (resolved immediately, yet unnecessarily drawn out) conflict. Sure, stuff happens. Sure, people do things. Mainly? It's about a year in the life of a perfect girl and her supernatural horse, in which they squee over the royals. I couldn't get into this because I ultimately saw no point to the story.

4. Relationships do not work like that! Seriously, no. Rory and Christine can get together. That's fine. Sandy and Mousie can have as much step-sibling sex as they want in the future. I don't care about that either. The whole relationship between Rory and Christine scared me, in total honesty. Rory lives a sham life with his uncaring wife, wants to get divorced but doesn't, randomly tries to tell Christine he loves her after ONE DAY of reminding each other that they exist after YEARS of separation (despite being neighbors!) and is rejected. Then they have a quick "yeah, I'm not happy and want to get divorced" discussion that lasts all of two seconds, he gets divorced, and is (practically the next day!) proposing to Christine? The hell? Who relates to anyone that way and could be called fairly normal by most people? A lot of this book can be chalked up to impatience on the part of the author, I think. This is not good, because it makes the book so much more wacky.

So that's a brief overview of my opinion. It's obviously an unrealistic story, so much so you can't even point that out as a reason to dislike it. This story totally owns up to the fact that it's unrealistic, so you can feel free to like it for its fantasy. Or you can dislike if for some of the facts which I have presented here, realism aside. Or you can dislike it for being totally and unabashedly unrealistic. Whatever you like.

Ruby: I may or may not have picked this book up because of the cover.

Ruby
by Francesca Lia Block and Carmen Staton
Published: 2007

I realize I'm stretching here, but why not?

From the beloved author of Necklace of Kisses comes a modern-day fairy tale of a willful and intuitive heroine and a world of shocking realism and transcendent magic.

Francesca Lia Block, this time with co-writer Carmen Staton, introduces readers to Ruby, a Midwestern girl named for the jewel that is believed to ward off evil spirits. Ruby's special gift is a sixth sense that makes her at one with nature and gives her the ability to know her own destiny.

After growing up in an abusive family, Ruby escapes to Los Angeles and learns of her soulmate -- Orion -- a British actor. She travels to England, where she works at a potions and herbs shop, and through a series of coincidental circumstances, ends up nursing Orion back to health without confessing that she has been on a quest to find him all along. But just when she thinks her dream is becoming a reality, Ruby is stopped in her tracks by the violent demons of her past. Only by facing the darkness together can she and Orion finally fulfill their destiny.

As with Necklace of Kisses, Block, here with Staton, breaks the mold. In Ruby, readers will find a story about the power of our minds to overcome the past and ultimately change the course of our lives.

This is a pretty nifty, slightly insane book. It is, essentially, this: Ruby comes from an abusive background, sees Troy on DVD, develops an obsession with Orlando Bloom, travels to England to surreptitiously gain the trust of his family, and somehow cause him to fall in love with her as she battles the demons of her past. All with Francesca Lia Block's edgy fairy tale qualities spun throughout.

No, really.

Only it's not ever that easy. Although, I really do think Orion is Orlando Bloom, and I will now refer to him as such. Ruby goes to England and seeks out Orlando not because she's obsessed with him in a creepy fangirl way, but because she just happens to know a few things and why not her. I don't know whether to be amused by the simplicity of this idea, or take it up as my new life motto. Why not me? Indeed. Why not. Due to fiction's cute little conveniences, Ruby gets a job at the magic shop that Orlando's mother owns, and Ruby starts coming over to Orlando's parents' house for dinner, only Orlando is never there. Cruel fates. But fiction has to go be convenient again and reveal that Orlando has been there all the time, he's just in seclusion because he fell off of his horse and apparently broke his back in ways backs have never been broken. He's more or less paralyzed, but because the writing style isn't exactly explicit you're left to assume that.

Ruby has some ideas on how to fix this, so she magics him into wellness (and full body function) using paste and water. Magic paste and water! Orlando is all patched up and ready to go again. He takes a liking to Ruby, as we all knew he would, and eventually they decide to go riding together because he really wants to get back on his horse, Day. Simple name. I'm tempted to like it, if Day's brother didn't happen to be Night. Seriously, that wasn't so hot. Neither is the angry temper Night casually sheds upon meeting Ruby (only this is acceptable because Ruby's sixth sense is her connection with animals and so forth, and in this world it's actually possible). Nor is it that great when Ruby randomly says, "I'll take a Western saddle please" like she's ordering ice cream. And she is in England. I'm not sure how likely it is to just walk into a stable in England and say, "Western saddle here!" without having someone look at you like you're an asshole. Anyway, Ruby rides with Orlando Bloom through the forest and he shows her where he fell and why he fell (that guy with the leaves on his face, and that giant stag...totally would have freaked a horse out). Eventually they return to the stable and Orlando Bloom informs her that he has a new movie, etc. They have sex, Ruby agonizes over the fact that she's basically built all of this on a lie, so she writes a book about her life (this stunned me a little, because she kept saying she'd use this book as a cover for why she's really there, and I had no idea she was actually writing it in the end) and what led her to England and sends it to Orlando just as she leaves to go back to the States because her father died.

I can't even get into her father. That was a messed up situation that you know is horribly messed up all the way to the point where you're wincing and thinking "that's messed up" and Ruby is justified when she admits being scared out of her mind at the possibility that this guy would come back to haunt her (because in this world, ghosts are possible). Orlando comes back to help her through this experience, and her dad never comes back from the dead. Ruby is successfully over the trauma, and Orlando still loves her despite all that weirdness. Although I guess Orlando is used to it, what with his mom sort of being a witch or something.

The strength of the story isn't Orlando, or Ruby's trip to England to find Orlando, but the backstory with her family. It's...just really messed up. You want her to find the ability to move on and become a new person and shed all of that crap. It's also beautifully told in a minimal sort of way. A little too short, and you sort of don't care about Orlando given that he's hardly there and not nearly as important as the rest of the story. I liked it, despite some shortcomings.

And yes, it's so obviously Orlando Bloom.