Azul Island in Real Life

Cueva del Fantasma, an extraordinary cave in the heart of the Venezuelan jungle.

Or, Azul Island, where the Island Stallion hangs out.

You decide!

(source)

Summer Series: The Black Stallion's Blood Bay Colt

The Black Stallion's Blood Bay Colt

by Walter Farley

Okay. Two things you need to know about why this review has taken so long.

1) It nearly broke me. Reading this book was not fun. It was not cracktastic or even occasionally thrilling, it was just mean.

2) Summer's over, so the series is on hiatus until next summer. Sorry!

So with that, I'm reasonably sure I can mock it anyway. Let's do this.

You may remember at the end of The Black Stallion and Satan, when Alec & Henry were driving to their farm upstate, Henry asked Alec if the Black's first stud service could go to his old friend, Jimmy Creech, who was a harness racer. Alec, displaying the same obliviousness that led to his blind spot about racing the Black and Satan as Thoroughbreds, thought that was a capital idea.

Instead of recapping this book chronologically, as with the others, I'm going to do some character summaries and then hit a few of the major themes. The plot of this book is a big nothingburger. Even more than usual. Colt is born. Colt grows up. Colt is trained. Colt races. Zero conflict. All the conflict is on the human side.

I'll insert some photos of harness racing at the Tunbridge World's Fair in Vermont that I took a few years ago so you have a) something to break up the wall of text and b) some actual context for the way this book wants to tell its story.

Let's introduce our cast of characters. I made a few conscious decisions about how to read this book that helped me get through it, and I'll share them each with you.

Tom Messenger. Tom is our Alec stand-in: he's a high school kid who inexplicably walks five miles (YES. FIVE MILES.) to and from the local harness track every day so he can hang around with one trainer and his two horses. Tom is somewhat endearing, if bland. My decision for Tom is that his family is black. The story reads way better that way, trust me. Tom's parents are nonexistent and have no objections to him spending waaaaaaaaaay too much time at the track. It's a step up from the Ramsays, I suppose. Tom is obsessed first with the mare Volo Queen and then with Bonfire, the colt, and Tom's only exposure to horses comes through the track and through Jimmy's teachings.

Jimmy Creech. Jimmy is an asshole. Jimmy has basically no redeeming qualities at all. Jimmy's assholery drives our plot. He owns Volo Queen and one other horse, Symbol. 1/3 of the way through the book he gives Symbol away for no reason at all. Jimmy is the kind of Trump-voting troglodyte who thinks things should stay the same (ie, the way they were when he was winning all the time) no matter what and who yells at and abuses the people around him for no good reason. Constantly. He blames everyone else for his problems. He is a shit friend who burns up good will and yet, inexplicably, people keep giving him second, third, and fourth chances. Everything in this book happens IN SPITE OF Jimmy. Also, he's never or rarely just "Jimmy." He's always "Jimmy Creech." Fuck him forever.

George Snedecker. Jimmy and George are longtime lovers and life partners. Yep. That's how I'm reading this book, and trust me, it makes it a better book. Sadly, it also makes George an abused spouse, because George spends the whole book being kind of cool. He's old-school but he understands changes, and welcomes them if they bring more people to the sport. He's actually kind to Tom. He does ALL of the actual work without, as far as I can tell, getting paid. But Jimmy treats him like absolute shit. Here's a very typical interaction.

[George] said with attempted lightness, "No need to work over Symbol, heh, Jimmy? He'll stir up enough wind to wipe him clean."

Jimmy Creech looked sullenly into George's grinning, tobacco-stained mouth. "Sure," he said. "Let's get the stuff on him now."

Fuuuuuuck you, Jimmy.

Those are our three main characters; I'll introduce others later.

The primary conflict in this book is the evolution of the sport of harness racing. Jimmy wants to keep it a small-time sport, with daytime races at local county fairs. The sport at large is moving toward dedicated tracks with evening races under the lights. That's an interesting narrative, right? There's a lot to be mined there. The thing that kills me is that Walter Farley gets it. His descriptions of the world of harness racing are as good as - or even better than - anything in the flat racing books. But the entire narrative is presented as one of Good versus Evil, through the lens of Jimmy Creech's bitterness and anger.

George has some mild opinions on the changes, and Tom has no actual character (other than being a generally easygoing kid and having a natural feel for "the reins") so the conflict is driven entirely by Jimmy. Jimmy is so upset about the way things are going that he works himself into a bleeding ulcer that has to have surgery. He eats like crap. He has temper tantrums. He screams at the people around him. He sees anyone who has anything to do with the night tracks as a "traitor" and not in the haha-teasing way, in the "you and your kin are dead to me unto the seventh generation" kind of way. He hates drivers at the big tracks so much that he crashes his cart into one of them and gets into a fistfight on the training track with another. Everyone is so afraid of his temper that they tiptoe around him, hide things from him, cater to his every whim, and yes-sir his every statement. Jimmy checks every single damn box on the abusive relationship list.

Jimmy was as highly strung as any colt and his emotions would vary from day to day and from hour to hour.

That's just the kind of guy I want training horses and/or to be my friend, amirite?

The book has three main chunks: first, the colt's birth and early life. Second, the colt's training. Third, the colt's racing. The colt, by the way, is a blood bay (hence the title) named Bonfire and despite being half-Arabian, half-Standardbred, he is the fastest harness racing horse EVAH. Because of the Black. Or something. Whatever, Bonfire has literally zero personality. After the Black and Satan, he is a big blob of nothing on four legs. He's easy to train. He wins races. He's awfully pretty. The end.

Among Jimmy's more questionable decisions in the book is the decision to send Volo Queen, pregnant with the colt, with Tom for the summer to his aunt and uncle's house. Tom displays creditable anxiety about this decision, tries to get a vet on-call, and in general takes this responsibility far more seriously than any adults in the book. What do you mean, sending a pregnant mare several hours away to live with a high schooler with zero horse experience is a great plan? On top of everything, Tom is charged with starting the colt - teaching him to be handled, led, etc. Somehow this turns out fine, though damned if I know how. (There are a few screw-ups along the way, but nothing Tom can't overcome with the power of lurrrrrrve.)

And Tom, I've got full confidence in you. Use your own judgment if anything comes up. You've got a good head and, most important, the right feeling for horses, and that always pays off in the end.

NO. NO IT DOES NOT, JIMMY.

The training is ok? I don't know. The horse gets trained. The whole middle bridge displays the fundamental flaw of this book. The training is actually suuuuuuper interesting. Jimmy clearly knows his stuff. I loved learning about harness racing from the ground up. (I have a soft spot a mile wide for harness racing, because all my earliest experiences with horse racing was at Scarborough Downs.)

But the whole middle bit is taken over by Jimmy's illness (he spends the whole book in denial that he has an ulcer until it ruptures; I'm pretty sure it's a long game for maximum attention) and by the burgeoning conflict with the night tracks. Two other horses that float in and out of the story are racing at fairs and night tracks, and they're set up to be Bonfire's big rivals, but they're not, really. But the middle bridge means it's time to talk about the best damn character in the whole book, and a top 5 for the entire Black Stallion series.

Miss Elsie. Miss Elsie is living the dream, you guys. She never married, and inherited her father's fortune when he died. She spends that money to maintain the training track, breed her own horses, and train all her own horses. She gives exactly zero shits about what anyone thinks of her. She is friendly, but laser-focused on her horses. She is compassionate but doesn't indulge anyone. She is in and out of the story and is absolutely perfect in every way. She has a filly named Princess Guy (which, ok, not the best name but whatever, she has a stallion named Mr. Guy that she loves and named her after) that is setting track records alongside Bonfire, and she has zero compunctions about going where the best races are - at fairs or at the night tracks.

So what does Jimmy think about Miss Elsie?

A month or so ago, Jimmy read on the back of [a newspaper clipping] you'd sent that Miss Elsie Topper had left the Ohio fairs and was racing her black filly, Princess Guy, a,t Maywood Park, the night raceway just outside of Chicago. I don't have to tell you how Jimmy feels about the night raceways. He bellowed for days that Miss Elsie had betrayed him, and I had all I could do to quiet him down.

Once again, in chorus: fuck you, Jimmy.

Jimmy gets himself so upset that his ulcer basically explodes (they're never more medically specific than that). He has to go on bed rest at home, and somehow a retired nurse comes to live with him but...doesn't charge any money? They explain that she just likes taking care of things, and now she has a nice place to live and people, I have been reading a lot about emotional labor lately and I am so filled with rage about this particular plot development I can't even see straight.

Whatever: Jimmy basically sits at home watching Fox News and getting taken care of (FOR FREE), and George and Tom take over Bonfire's training and then racing.

Then Jimmy has to have experimental surgery done by a doctor flow in from out of town to fix his ulcer, and suddenly they owe thousands upon thousands of dollars in medical bills. Jimmy is not in the picture at all to help fix this, when arguably he ignored every single shred of doctor's advice up to this point. (Free advice! Did I mention that? The doctor was also treating him for free because he liked Jimmy so much!) and is largely responsible for the dire straits he's in. (No, I'm not saying his entire illness is his fault, but nor do I have much sympathy either for the endgame exacerbation he brought on himself.)

Bonfire is good - he wins everything, except when Tom, who I feel I should remind you is still walking five miles to and from the track every day with zero parental input and is like 17, screws up the driving. Which is 10000% understandable! He's learning! But he has Jimmy breathing down his neck via letter and also thousands of dollars in medical bills to pay off. Because it's somehow HIS responsibility. Fuck you, Jimmy Creech.

Obviously, the conflict in this book was all headed in one direction. In order to win the kind of money they need, Tom and Bonfire are going to have to race at a night track. To scope it out ahead of time, Tom and George go visit.

"And although it isn't for me or Jimmy or maybe for you," George added sincerely, "it's good for our sport in a lot of ways. Raceways like this all 'round the country mean a lot more people are takin' to our sport, and in time they'll learn to love it the same as we do."

JIMMY DOESN'T DESERVE YOU, GEORGE.

Tom and George enter Bonfire in the Big Race (I don't remember what it's called, but it's a Black Stallion book, of course it ends with a Big Race), pooling the last of their money to do so. It's a tight race, but please use your best surprised face when I tell you that Bonfire wins. (I snark because I love; Bonfire's races are arguably the most enjoyable scenes in the book, because they get back to what these books do best.)

They win a ton of money! They pay off all the medical bills, all the feed bills, all the travel bills, they buy ALL new equipment, and Bonfire sets a new record for the mile at 1:59. Happy ending, right?

lol. Remember how they have to go back to their abusive home?

Jimmy Creech stood at the other end of the shed, bellowing fiercely. He was holding the tall gold-plated trophy in his hands, reading the inscription on it. When he had finished he looke dup and saw them; then the trophy came hurling through the air as he hurled it at their feet. It rolled past them, striking with a sharp ring against the door. Bonfire shrilled at the sound of it, then moved uneasily back and forth in his stall. Quickly Tom went to him, going inside the stall to quiet the colt. He ran his hand up and down Bonfire's head while Jimmy Creech continued raging without making his words understandable.

George finally stands up for himself, though.

"You're here...and that's the way we wanted it to be. And I wanted you to see this colt race, Jimmy. You've never in your life seen a colt like this one...let alone owned one. He's a world's champion, Jimmy. He beat the best there is. He did one fifty-nine, Jimmy. Are you thinkin' of that at all? Or are your mind and body filled with so much hatred for the raceways that you can't even see a colt like this any more? He's yours, Jimmy. You bred him. You own him. All your life you hoped this would happen to you...never dreamin' it would come. But it has, Jimmy...and you're not even looking at him."

I wish I could say that either George breaks up with Jimmy and goes and lives his best life, or that Jimmy has some kind of amazing revelation and about-face, but the ending is much less satisfying than that. The only thing Jimmy says is to order Tom to take Bonfire's blanket off so he can look at the horse, because somehow that's supposed to be an apology AND a thanks for everything he put them through and they did for him?

I don't know you guys. This was not a fun book to read. The good parts (training, racing, Tom being sweet if in over his head, Miss Elsie) were totally obscured by the rage that fueled the narrative conflict.

Have you read it recently, or not-so-recently? What did you think?

Summer Series: The Black Stallion and Satan

The Black Stallion and Satan, by Walter Farley

Okay. I have to admit up front that this will be tough. It's miles away my favorite entry in the series, and as I will argue below, it's almost like it was written by a different author - there's a noticeable jump in writing quality and overall maturity in this book. I was grateful for that.

Let's be honest, though: it's still kind of nuts. So I'm sure I'll find plenty to snark about. First, a summary.

Satan has won the Triple Crown, but he's not Alec's horse anymore. Just when Alec is feeling his most sulky, he learns that Abu Ja'Kub ben Ishak has died and left him the Black! The Black arrives and Alec finds himself wondering which black stallion is faster. He's slated to get his answer when he learns that ben Ishak entered the Black into the International Stakes, a race pitting the champions of many countries against each other. Before the race is run, however, a deadly disease sweeps through the racing barns.

Like The Black Stallion Returns, the majority of this book's plot is in its last 50 or so pages. It creeps along like molasses and then it is a lightning storm of plot devices swallowed by plot holes in some kind of endless ouroboros of bad writing. But we'll get to that.

The book starts with a bang: Alec is in the starting gate with Satan at the Belmont. The colt (who please note is still "burly" compared to the Black, like it's not enough he has daddy issues, he also gets fat-shamed constantly) has won the other two legs easily, and he crushes this one too. There's a weird moment in the post parade when some jackass in the crowd snarks Alec for...riding too well?

From the pushing, heaving wave of people at the rail, a man shouted, "Hey, Ramsay! You think it's a horse show?"

Alec heard the man's words, but his eyes never left the muddy track which he could see between Satan's pricked ears.

"A Good Hands class maybe?" the man called again.

Only then did Alec Ramsay become aware that he was sitting much straighter in the saddle than the other jockeys.

Two things. 1) Who fricking cares? and 2) What the hell kind of sadist dreams up a Good Hands class and what the hell kind of masochist enters it? (The internet tells me it's a saddle seat thing which means the catcaller may have actually displayed some deeper horse knowledge but I'm still staying on record as it being dumb.)

Satan wins, because literally no horse in any of these books has lost a horse race yet. I'll let you know when it happens.

He was all power, all beauty as he swept beneath the wire, winner by a dozen lengths and the first undefeated Triple Crown winner in turf history!

This book was written in 1951. Confirmed, Secretariat would have kicked Satan's burly ass. Also - Seattle Slew would've at the least tied them.

When Alec gets home from the Belmont, he mopes around pretty much constantly, because Satan isn't really his horse anymore. And you know what? I actually find this characterization pretty compelling. Alec isn't actually that that interested in being famous; he just wants to obsess over his horse(s). So it does make sense that he's feeling possessive and jealous.

I would like here to state my theory of this book, which is: Alec is realizing that Satan was his rebound horse, who he thought he fell in love with because he shared characteristics from his first, abusive, obsessive relationship, but has turned out to be actually a decent horse. Upon realizing this, and realizing that Satan will not be his exclusively, he's pining for that original relationship that was dysfunctional and unhealthy but at least all-consuming.

Alec closed his eyes, shutting out the Black's picture from his mind. But he opened them almost immediately, startled by the sound of his own voice as he said loudly, "Today I rode Satan to the Triple Crown championship. No one could ask for more than that. No one should. I'm the luckiest and happiest kid in the world." He repeated his words to himself, then rose to his feet, knowing well that he was only kidding himself. He wasn't happy at all.

See what I mean? He's even talking about it out loud with Henry. Seriously, he either got a personality transplant or some kind of massive maturity upgrade or...maybe he's finally going to therapy? That's my headcanon, anyway.

Alec turned to him. "Sometimes, Henry, I think of myself as a baby who's had his pet toy taken away from him," he said angrily. "I guess I'm unhappy because I can't have Satan to myself any longer. I tell myself to grow up, that I can't make a pet of a champion. I put all the cards on the table. I say this is exactly what I wanted. I'm glad Satan is everything we thought he'd be. I knew from the very beginning that, if he was to be a champion, I'd have to share him with others. I knew his training would have to go on, even though I couldn't always get to the track to ride him. I knew other fellows would be up on him when I wasn't. Everything made sense...everything was just the way I'd figured it was going to be." Alec paused, his gaze leaving Henry for Napoleon. "Yet I'm finding it hard to take...much harder than I ever thought it would be."

Henry is very pragmatic about all of this, and frankly, this way of horsekeeping makes a lot more sense to him as a trainer who's been around big horses most of his life. The "shared" model is his default, where for Alec his weird, obsessive relationship with the Black is normal. Hence, Henry has very much come around on Satan after thinking he was the devil. Henry and Satan are now besties, really.

Henry convinces Alec to take down the photograph of the Black that hangs in the barn, because he thinks Alec needs to move on, and it's not an entirely unreasonable message but he delivers it kind of shittily. He's honestly kind of a jerk through this whole book which I think might be guilty over-compensation from enabling Alec through the last through books.

Literally seconds after Alec puts the picture of the Black away (LITERALLY. SECONDS.) his father comes to the barn to tell him he has a letter from "Arabia." Turns out Abu Ja'Kub ben Ishak is dead - he was killed while riding the Black. The letter is from his kickass daughter, who is still going by her maiden name or maybe her marriage didn't go through after all? Ancillary questions, I have them.

Ben Ishak left a sealed letter saying that in the event of his death the Black would go to Alec, and Tabari notes that but for that they would have put him down which...I feel like everyone maybe should've dwelled on that point a little longer? Henry actually points out (more overcompensating!) that maybe the Black has had a few more screws loosened because straight-up killing a man who has been handling him for years is not a great sign, but our Alec is totally undeterred.

The Black arrives in style, on a cargo plane, and is unloaded at midnight by a handler who I think is supposed to be portrayed as abusive but really is just trying to install some manners (albeit roughly) in a very tenuous situation but of course that goes badly. Thankfully the Black recognizes Alec or he would've bolted, and as Henry points out.

"If he'd gotten away, everyone on the field would've know it, an' it'd be in the papers tomorrow. As it is, these Trans-World guys are just glad to get rid of him."

Yes, Henry, if a wild horse had gotten loose on a busy airfield the papers would've been the worst part of it.

They bring him home and there's this great bit:

Running to the van, Henry pushed the ramp inside. He was closing the door when Alec called, "I'll ride back here with him."

"As if I didn't know," Henry said.

Henry Dailey, bringing the snark!

Everything is immediately back to "normal" for Alec and the Black, and they team up to continue to subtweet Satan.

The stallion moved forward, without bolting, and his gait was effortless and easy to ride. How different he was from Satan, Alec thought. For only when the Black's burly son was in full gallop was he easy to ride; only then did Satan lose the ponderousness that was so much in evidence at any other gate.

Okay. Guys. Satan is VERY well bred. There is literally no reason for him to be bashed so constantly. His dam is supposedly the specialest and most purest Arabian left (Tabari's mare Johar) and his sire is the Black. If he still has "ponderous" gaits, Alec, it's your own shitty riding at fault.

Everyone agrees that it's very important that no one find out the Black is back, because as soon as it occurs to him that Satan might be faster than the Black, he'll go nuts and demand to prove it isn't so. And...yeah, that's exactly what happens. Satan wins some imaginary race at a mile and a quarter and sets a new world record of 1:58 and Alec just loses any semblance of sanity. He obsesses over it constantly and finally makes up a really dumb plan to to race the Black at the local golf course (living the dream!) where by coincidence he and Henry have measured out a mile and a quarter.

Not only does the Black run the mile and a quarter a full second slower than Satan, Alec gets ticketed by a cop for galloping in a public park. Somehow that never came up in all the times he and Henry exercised Satan along that same trail? The cop is also really dumb and is generally jerky and threatening, so of course the Black takes exception and tries to kick him, which just exacerbates the whole situation.

A few days later, Alec shows up to pay his fine - he has to appear in court for it, for some reason? He gets questioned by a reporter, who guesses who Alec is and then this whole plot cascade that makes NO SENSE starts in which Alec becomes convinced that everyone is on to him and will know it was the Black.

As he pulled [the gate] open, he knew what hew as going to do, and he didn't have any time to lose. The reporters would be here within an hour, maybe less.

Okay. Realistically, though? The Black won one race (albeit spectacularly) four years ago. I know that horse racing has fallen out of the American public eye, but not even Tom Brady would get this much media attention if, say, he dropped out of the public eye for four years and then showed up throwing around a football in a public park.

Nevertheless, Alec tries to hide the Black in the tack room and to convince the six (SIX!!!) reporters who have shown up that he was actually galloping Napoleon. The journalists are all super weird and invasive and for some reason Alec just caves in and shows and tells them absolutely everything they want to know? Alec doth protest too much, I think, because not once does he say something like "private property" or "nope, not today" or literally anything like that.

It's our old friend Jim Neville who finally moves our plot forward: he says that before he died, ben Ishak entered the Black in the upcoming International Cup, a race between champions of every country. Satan's already entered, of course. He pressures Alec to race with a really weird argument that he repeats multiple times, even though Alec keeps saying that their plan is to take the Black to a farm upstate and put him out to stud.

"Why don't you race him then, Alec?" Jim's words came fast; he was taking advantage of Alec's pride in the speed of the Black. "I'd like to see it....So would everyone else." He paused. "Don't you think you owe it to racing?"

A) no, Alec doesn't "owe" anyone a goddamn thing
B) if literally anyone in these books valued good ground manners 5% as much as they valued speed, I would have a billion times more respect for them

Alec is suckered into saying he'll go ahead with racing the Black in the International Cup, which makes the front page of all the newspapers the next day. Cue a whole chapter in which Alec basically goes back and forth showing the Black to the public. Seriously, people just show up at the front gate of the farm and Alec spends every waking second walking them down to the barn, two at a time, letting them see the black, and then walking them back. Alec clearly hates every second of this but he keeps doing it. For reasons.

Henry gets back while Alec is in the middle of trudging back and forth and true to his more sane, curmudgeonly personality in this book, he immediately thinks running the Black in the International is a terrible idea.

"He could raise havoc on the track, and that wouldn't do the sport any good either. There are some mighty valuable horses in the International, Alec, an' I wouldn't want to be responsible for any damage done."

Who is this person and what has he done with Henry Dailey?

Alec ropes Henry into his obsession and there is a totally fascinating exchange.

"What do you think, Henry? Could Satan beat him?" The Black pushed his muzzle toward Alec's pocket, seeking a carrot.

"It's not fair to ask me that, Alec," Henry said, after a long silence. "You know how I feel about Satan."

"You mean you're closer to him than to the Black."

"Guess you can call it that. I've done something with Satan. He has the Black's speed and he'll turn it off an' on for anyone on his back. It's a combination hard to beat...for any horse," he added, turning to the stallion.

18 months ago, Henry thought Satan was the devil himself and that he might have to be destroyed, but I guess a Triple Crown changes everything? So on the one hand, this change makes absolutely no sense. On the other, I do think there's something to Satan having changed into a horse that Henry understands much better and Alec understands much less, and in that way, I do buy this.

Here's how I can make an argument for Farley having finally upped his writing game in this, his fifth book: there are legitimately thoughtful themes that carry through this entire book. The pacing still blows chunks, but you can truly trace a dichotomy of points of view through the book. Henry represents the status quo, straightforward success, reasonable goalposts, good training, and civilization. Alec is much more interested in a primal way of understanding horses: it's pure emotion and longing, wildness as a virtue, and rampant ambition to be the very best. You can really understand why they don't see eye to eye about the two horses in their lives, and why I really think it's a great idea that Alec announces his intentions in this book to retire to their new breeding farm and manage that.

(Okay, it's also a really terrible idea, because Alec - who still hasn't finished college! - knows jack shit about breeding, business, barn management, or really anything about horses beyond galloping them around recklessly. But on an emotional level I can see why it works for him.)

Henry gets Alec to agree to pull the Black from the race if he acts up, and they set off.

[The Black] was halter-tied to the small open window of the driver's cab, and Alec was able to reach through it and touch his horse.

What the hell kind of van is this? Who ties their horse TO A WINDOW?

Along the way, we learn about the geniuses behind the International Cup. The track, by the way, is somewhere north of Saratoga. Saratoga is pretty damn far north, you guys. A brand-new track even further north? I call shenanigans.

"How come they're holding the Cup race there, Henry? Why not at Belmont or one of the other tracks closer to a big city?" 

GREAT QUESTION, ALEC!

"Because the International was their idea.  And what better send-off could you give a new track than to sponsor such a race? I guess the track's board of directors figured it that way. And the International Cup race is just before their first regular meeting, so the people coming to the International will most likely stay on for the meeting."

This makes so little business sense that critiquing it is almost like shooting a fish in a barrel, but *cocks shotgun.*

Okay: the plan is to sponsor a massive international race at a track in the middle of nowhere as the very first thing ever done at a new track. It's the only race not only on its day but in that entire week. And their hope is that people will come out to the boonies, watch this one race, stay for a full other week, and then hang around for the next week's race? I just. To be a fly on the wall at that bankruptcy hearing...!

Alec is right there in dreamland with them.

"I wonder if they'll know each other?"

"Who?" 

"The Black and Satan." 

Henry smiled. "No. They've forgotten all about each other. Satan was only a few months old when they were separated. 

Alec turned to the Black. "Anyway, it's going to be interesting to watch them together." 

"Yeah," Henry muttered. "Mighty interesting." 

LOLOLOLOL.

Things start to happen very quickly after this; remember what I said about plot devices chasing plot holes? Well, in defiance of international quarantine, common sense, veterinary best practice, and any kind of sanity, it turns out that El Dorado, the horse from South America, has been running a high fever and isn't feeling well. He's better now, though, so it's totally cool.

"I wonder if you could loan us one of your pails?" the man asked. "El Dorado banged up ours yesterday."

"Sure," Alec said, leaving the stall. 

The man followed him. "We're getting a couple more, so I'll return this to you by afternoon," he said when Alec gave him the pail.

Oh. My. God. This makes so little sense that my only plausible explanation is some kind of sinister industrial espionage. Maybe there's a conspiracy among the owners to chase insurance money? A racing stable that houses the South American champion (yes, in this world, like Arabia, South America is one country) does not have extra buckets? So they go begging from down the aisle? And then say they'll return it? AFTER THEIR HORSE HAS BEEN SICK? Sweet zombie Jesus on a pogo stick.

Soon after that, Satan (I'm sorry; "the burly colt") arrives and loses his brain because he sees the Black. Of course they want to kill each other. Literally no one but Alec thought they would have a touching slo-mo soaring music reunion.

And as Alec remained with his horse he thought of how much he had looked forward to the day when the Black would meet his colt. He'd even thought they would recognize each other for what they were, father and son. But it hadn't worked out that way at all. There was no love between them. They were two giant stallions, both eager and willing to fight. No, it wasn't the same as he'd thought it would be at all.

You know, I'm almost a little sorry for Alec; the narrative requires him so be so unfathomably stupid.

Henry has a theory that the Black "brings out the instinctive savageness and hatred in every stallion to fight his kind." Which is obviously bullshit, but he's not wrong that the Black can't be trusted around other horses, and he loses his marbles when Alec tries to work him on the track. Thankfully, Alec sees sense and agrees to withdraw the Black from the race, and holds firm when Jim Neville tries to bully him into going through with it. They're going to leave in the morning.

Except they're not! The plot continues to move at the speed of light in the background.

"It's serious, Alec," Henry said solemnly, turning to the boy for the first time. "El Dorado has swamp fever, the most dreaded horse disease known. They're putting him down tonight," he added quietly. "There's no cure...it's the only thing they can do."

Now, fully expecting Walter Farley to have made up some bizarro disease, I faithfully Googled "swamp fever" and to my amazement: it's an old name for EIA, equine infectious anemia. That's the disease that the Coggins test looks for. There's still no cure, and infected horses are still destroyed. I found this long PDF from the USDA to be a great read about a disease I really hadn't thought a lot about. It's largely gone from the US horse population today thanks to aggressive testing and isolation, but it was absolutely a very realistic fear in 1948. Kudos to you, Walter Farley! Too bad you didn't put that kind of thought into international quarantine procedures, or you would never have had a book.

Alec finally realizes that lending a bucket to El Dorado was a terrible idea, and loses his shit. Henry is cool as a cucumber and points out that the odds are in their favor.

The vets, meanwhile, have been paid off by plot device and have decided on the most cumbersome, most suspenseful way possible to proceed.

"The only definite way we have of finding out is to take blood samples from your horses and, pooling this blood, innoculate it into the bloodstream of a horse who has not been exposed to the disease. If no evidence of the disease appears in the innoculated test horse, your horses will be given a clean bill of health and released. However, if swamp fever develops in the test horse, each of your horses must be tested individually to find out which one or more has the disease.

THAT MAKES ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY NO SENSE NONE. NONE AT ALL.

But wait! Remember plot device? Our good friend, racist caricature Tony has arrived with Napoleon in tow. He wants poor Napoleon to be the one that get the Black and Satan's blood.

"My Nappy...I'm sure he wants it this way," Tony said more soberly. "He's-a like brother to the Black and Satan. And now he will have their blood in him. It's the only way, Meester Veterinary."

No. No. No. No. No. Christ, poor Napoleon suffers more than any other character in this series with the possible exception of Mrs. Ramsay (whose only appearance in this whole book is to look "plump" at the Belmont back at the beginning).

All the horses are moved to a state quarantine farm even further upstate, and they wait for forty days. Cue montage of Alec spending a lot of time moping around, taking care of the Black and Satan, basically all alone because everyone else has peaced out. (After the vets said for them to leave their forwarding addresses, because 1948!)

It's fine, though: everyone is healthy! They all make plans to leave the following morning to this long-awaited breeding farm, but plot device strikes again: Alec wakes up in the middle of the night at the hotel to smell smoke and see a forest fire in the distance. He and Henry drive to the farm to see the flames almost there. The vets have let all the horses out, but they're all just hanging out in a field, except the Black. Alec lets the Black out, but Satan won't come with them, on account of his daddy issues.

They start to leave but Alec turns back around, and Jim Neville (who just...randomly showed up?) has to restrain Henry from following him, and they both drive away, leaving Alec to his equine-assisted suicide.

Alec uses the Black to chase the other horses to a gate he saw earlier, that leads to a lane that...well, he has no idea where it leads, but at least he admits that in the text.

What follows is a genuinely suspenseful and exciting race through a forest fire. Yes, it's beyond dumb that all the horses are a-ok with galloping pell-mell through flames, but I would argue that actually this scene works overall. Especially since the point is less to get away from the fire than it is to provide a contrived set of circumstances in which the Black and Satan finally get to have their match race.

Rather than recap the race, I would like to type out the best passage in the book, and perhaps the best scene in the entire series. (If you really need to know, the Black wins by pulling ahead at the last moment.)

"Satan was behind the others when I saw you. Did he catch any of them, Alec?"

"He did, Henry."

"Then you think he could've beaten the in a race. Is that right, Alec?"

"He did beat them, Henry," Alec returned quietly.

"Y'mean he made up the whole distance?"

Alec nodded.

"I knew he could do it," the trainer said proudly. "I just knew he could!" It was a long while before Henry asked hesitantly. "Was the Black able to catch 'em, too?" His face was tight-lipped, intense.

"Yes, he did," Alec returned slowly.

After a long pause, Henry said, "It was a lot to ask of him, carrying your weight." The trainer turned again to the rear-view mirror and his husky jowls worked convulsively as he added huskily, "Too much of a handicap to expect him to catch Satan as well." He turned to the boy. "Not a colt like Satan."

Alec raised his eyes quickly to meet Henry's gaze. Without hesitation he said, "No, Henry...you couldn't expect that of him."

Henry's heavy jowls relaxed; his tight lips parted in a smile. "We've got the finest horses in the world, Alec," he said almost in awe. "They don't come any greater than those two. We know that now."

No objectivity from me, I straight up have tears in my eyes every time I read that scene. Everyone thinks their horse is the best horse in the world, and no one is wrong. Alec, building on the emotional maturity he's slowly started to achieve through this whole book, reads Henry like an open book. He doesn't say that Satan lost; he just lets Henry think what he wants, and he just shuts the hell up. He knows the Black is faster, and he's the only one who needs to know.

They pull in to Hopeful Farm, and just as they're arriving in the driveway, Henry asks if Alec would do him a favor, and breed the Black to his friend Jimmy Creech's harness mare. Alec agrees...and we will cover the stupidity of that decision in the next book, The Black Stallion's Blood Bay Colt.

Summer Series: The Island Stallion

The Island Stallion, by Walter Farley

Oh, boy. Okay. First of all, for those of you who like this book: my sincere apologies.

For the rest of you: let's do this.

A quick summary.

Steve visits his childhood friend Pitch on the Caribbean island of Antago after Pitch sends him a newspaper clipping of wild horses on nearby Azul Island. They discover a hidden herd of wild horses, loads of Conquistador artifacts, and one magnificent chestnut stallion that Steve names Flame. Steve tames Flame, and Pitch and Steve witness a duel between Flame and a piebald stallion who also seeks to lead the herd. They decide to keep the island their secret, and return there whenever they can.

The first thing I need to say about this book is that Steve and Pitch are both unutterably, insanely, disturbingly, weird. SO WEIRD. They have half-formed personalities that basically shift constantly and how on earth do they deal with basic social norms and other people? In short: they are both really badly written.

The book starts by placing Azul Island with precise latitude and longitude coordinates.


Can I admit that I was kind of hoping they would be in the middle of a landmass in, like, Asia?

Steve is arriving to spend a few weeks with his childhood friend and next door neighbor Pitch, who has moved to the island of Antago to live with his older stepbrother, Tom, who owns a sugar cane plantation. Before we even go on can I just say that at no point does anyone in this book grapple with or even mention the history of brutal conquest and slavery that was the Caribbean sugar industry? Yeah. Here, read about it if you want to get (even more) depressed.

Anyway, Tom is a dick, but he at least has a well-defined character and a narrative purpose in the arc, because he thinks Steve's proposal to spend two weeks camping on Azul Island is dumb and he tells Steve that if he can hack it for two weeks he can have any horse he wants. It's not clear why he thinks Steve can't hack it, other than he's the kind of guy who doesn't think anyone is competent at anything. In fifty more years, Tom is going to be hanging around internet forums posting Pepe memes and calling people cucks.

Let me give you a taste of how weird Steve & Pitch's interactions with. This is one of their very first interactions after being apart for several years.

Steve pointed to Pitch’s shorts and said, smiling, “And you couldn’t get by with an outfit like that at home.” “No,” Pitch returned very seriously, “no, you couldn’t at all. And it’s a shame, for they’re so comfortable.”

...shorts? You can't wear shorts in America? I mean, I know that standards for men's clothing have changed and Steve and Pitch are both at a precarious point when they're not yet full adults and therefore are navigating the boundaries between acceptable young adult clothes and acceptable adult apparel but I somehow don't think that's what Walter Farley was trying to say here.

Steve & Pitch set off for Azul Island, a trip that mostly consists of Pitch whining about what a greenhorn he is and the two of them talking rapturously about the Conquistadors. They both think the Conquistadors are, like, history's greatest unsung adventuring heroes instead of rapey, pillaging douchebags.

Pitch’s eyes were bright as he went on excitedly, “From here, Steve, those infamous Conquistadores, men like Cortés, Pizarro and Balboa, may have selected their armies, their horses, guns and provisions, and set forth to plunder the Incas and the Aztecs of their gold!”

WHY ARE YOU EXCITED ABOUT THAT, PITCH?

The Conquistador fanboying also leads quite nicely into the other theme of the book: equine eugenics. And look: we select for traits when we breed, and as humans who control the breeding destinies of our animals, we are obviously creating what we want, and I know that the term eugenics doesn't quite apply in the same way. But there is a difference between "selecting for desired traits within a breed standard that is part of a wide array of different breeds" and the over the top bizarreness that Steve and Pitch engage in here. I'll provide examples as we go on, but here's one of the first, when they arrive on the sandy beach that everyone thinks is the only accessible part of Azul Island.

It was obvious that Tom had left the worst of the horses upon Azul Island, Steve thought. Certainly the Conquistadores couldn’t have ridden puny animals like these in their long, arduous campaigns into the New World! He remembered the pictures of statues he had seen in his schoolbooks of men like Pizarro and Cortés sitting astride horses strong and powerful of limb, capable of standing the rigors of long marches through strange and hostile lands.

Pretty is as pretty does, Steve, and basing your conceptions of history off of pictures of statues from elementary school textbooks is...really dumb.

Speaking of the island, can we talk about its ecology for a second? Azul Island is about 95% steep canyon walls (how steep? steep enough to block the sun, but not so steep that Steve & Pitch can't climb them by hand later) with a sandy beach a few hundred yards wide by a quarter mile long that is believed to be the only accessible part of the island. On this beach lives a herd of horses with such viability that Tom can round up 30 horses every few years from them. How do they not all starve to death? Great question! Never answered.

Then we get to the next part of the story, in which Steve finally confesses to Pitch why he came to visit him in Antago. Pitch had sent a newspaper clipping of the most recent roundup of Azul Island horses, and it reminded Steve of a literal fever dream he had as a small child.

It was the anaesthetic, but I didn’t know that. I breathed in the sweet, sickly odor, and I was still thinking of my pony when the fiery pinwheels started. I followed them round and round as they sped faster and faster. Soon they were going so fast that they no longer made a circle, but were one ball of fire. It came at me hard, bursting in my face. “It was then that I first saw Flame. I didn’t name him Flame. The name just came with this horse, for his body was the red of fire. He was standing on the cliff—” Steve stopped and glanced behind him. “That cliff,” he added huskily. “Below, too, was the canyon and the rolling land beyond. All this …” His hand pointed to the canyon and then fell to his side.

[...]

“I grew up,” Steve went on, “and put Flame aside along with my tricycle and scooter. But I never actually forgot him, Pitch,” he insisted. “I never forgot Flame, or the canyon and cliff. Then a few weeks ago your letter came—your letter with the picture of a place I’d thought an imaginary one for so many years!” Steve’s voice had risen and there was eagerness in it now as he turned toward Pitch. “How could I have seen this canyon ten years ago, Pitch? How could I, when I’d never heard of Azul Island until a few weeks ago when your letter came? That’s what brought me here, Pitch,” he confessed.

So of course that very night they wake up in the middle of the night and what do they see? A giant chestnut stallion standing on that very cliff! (Later in the book it will be pretty clear that there is no way to get to the top of the cliff from the inside of the island except by climbing up a rope. Pretty much everything to do with this island is a plot hole so large you could drive a dump truck through it.)

This sends Steve straight into a frenzy, and they pack up their campsite and circle the island in the hopes of finding where the horse came from. They find a rock that they tie up to, and then foot and handholds up a fissure in the rock that they climb up. At the top of the cliff is a man-made hole, and they rappel down it into some caverns. Then they wander through the caverns for hours and hours. At one point they stumble across a room entirely full of skeletons chained to the wall. The lose all their matches, and then their flashlight. Because there is no justice in the universe, they do not starve to death.

“This tunnel is partly natural in formation, Steve. It could have been cut as far back as the Ice Age, then pushed up by some giant upheaval.” Pitch paused, then added with great awe, “But a lot of it has been worked out by hand. Notice the perfect regularity of the cutting on each side and on the ceiling here.” Steve’s eyes were following the beam of light. “By whose hands?” he asked. “The Spaniards, Steve, the Spaniards,” Pitch returned quickly. “They probably started work on it early in the sixteenth century and continued for well over a hundred and fifty years—until shortly after 1669, I’d say.”

Can I just get this off my chest? All the online summaries you read about this book call Pitch an archaeologist. PITCH IS NOT A FUCKING ARCHAEOLOGIST. He is an overly enthusiastic amateur idiot. We have no idea what he does on Antago other than skulk around his stepbrother. He has a creepy hard-on for the Conquistadors and he digs shit up. That's it. He's an archaeologist in the same way my husband is an electrician which is to say my husband wanders through the house leaving lights on for hours at a time and unplugs my iPhone chargers at the worst possible moment. Pitch jumps to bizarre conclusions, has no sense of context, has no interest in interrogating or documenting the things he finds. He's a worse archaeologist than Indiana Jones, who at least managed to get a doctorate and puts things in museum collections occasionally.

They emerge into a magical valley that comprises (most of) the interior of Azul Island, and there they see a band of horses! What kind of horses, you ask? Well, if you've read my other reviews you know that Walter Farley is obsessed with typing every possible kind of horse as an Arabian, no matter how unrealistic or unlikely it is that they would be.

Leaving the herd, moving from shadow to sun, stepped the giant stallion of the cliff! He walked toward the pool, his proud head raised high, his muscles moving easily beneath sleek skin. The sun’s rays turned his chestnut coat into the glowing red of fire. Under his breath, Steve murmured, “Flame!”

[...] 

“They all have Arabian blood in them, Pitch. Notice their wedge-shaped heads.” And then Steve went on to point out every physical characteristic of the Arabian that he had observed in the horses. He concluded by saying, “They’re the same horses the Conquistadores rode centuries ago, Pitch."

One of them does the math and realizes this single herd of horses has been here for ~300 years, which is...interesting. Steve's fine with it.

But I’ve read,” he went on, “that inbreeding is perfectly all right if the horses are of the purest blood and don’t have any bad traits or weaknesses; because if they do, the bad traits in both sire and dam show up in the foal worse than ever.” Steve paused. “But that hasn’t happened here—at least, as far as we can tell.”

...that is not how genetics work, Steve.

They watched the horses for a few more minutes before Pitch said, “I was thinking of the Arabian blood in these horses, Steve. You know that seems logical to me too, now, because the Arabs invaded Spain in about 700 A.D. They remained in Spain for five hundred years before they were forced out, and I’m sure that by that time their horses had become native to Spain.” Pleased with his own reasoning, Pitch looked at the horses with renewed interest.

 ...that is not how history works, Pitch.

The next sequence of events is super weird and really kind of awful. (I feel like I'm overusing the word weird in this review, but at the same time I feel like my review is making this book feel more coherent than it actually is. Imagine me writing and erasing "weird" about twice as often as I actually ended up using it.)

First, a bay stallion comes out of nowhere (nowhere!!! there's only one herd of horses!) to challenge Flame, because if there's one thing this book series has established, it's that stallions are crazed assholes who fight to the death at every opportunity. Probably 10% of this book is horse-on-horse MMA. Flame kills the bay stallion, and then another stallion emerges out of nowhere to challenge Flame.

Then he, too, saw the monstrosity of a horse that now stood a few hundred yards from the red stallion. He had come with the falling of the sun behind the walls of Azul Island. In the shadows, his massive body penetrated the darkness like a luminous thing. It was as though he belonged only to the night. He was as grotesquely ugly as the red stallion was beautiful. Thick-bodied, he stood still, waiting … waiting as he had done all through the fight of the other two stallions. Small, close-set eyes—one blue, the other a white wall-eye—gleamed from his large head, which was black except for the heavy blaze that descended over his wall-eye. His neck was thick and short, as was his body, and black too except for the ghostly streaks of white that ran through it. His mane and tail were white. Arrogant and ruthless, fearing nothing, he moved toward the red stallion at a walk, hate gleaming in his beady eyes. His heavy ears were pulled back flat against his head, his teeth bared. Suddenly he stopped, with ears pitched forward, and screamed his challenge again. He was the embodiment of ugliness, of viciousness. Only the high crest upon his neck and the high set of his tail gave evidence of the Arabian blood in him.

Read that description, and then read it again slowly. Yeah. It makes even less sense the second time, doesn't it? You see what I mean about equine eugenics now? The Piebald actually sounds like a horse I'd rather ride than Flame, to be honest. Good bone, cool coloring, a bit sassy but way smarter than Flame. Sure, he's supposed to be the embodiment of evil, but Flame doesn't exactly have moral high ground to stand on either.

The Piebald kicks Flame's ass, and Flame runs away and disappears at the far end of the interior canyon. Steve is apoplectic and convinced that the Piebald will ruin the herd of horses in the valley by spreading his inferior seed, and it will be the end of this majickal breed of horses because nothing like this has ever happened in the last weird incestuous 300 years of this herd being entirely alone. (With no natural predators, and a couple square miles of grazing space! How is this place not ten feet high in horse bones?)

Steve, of course, follows Flame, and as he does so somehow the geography of Azul Island gets even more confusing. He goes through a narrow passageway to find another small canyon, where Flame is hiding out. Then Flame runs away from him into another narrow passageway, and emerges into a huge natural sea cavern. There are all sorts of small caverns off the main one, and in one of those small caverns is a pit of quicksand. With a sort of...winch over it? Like the Conquistadors used to...lower things into it? Is it some kind of torture mechanism? Why quicksand? What the actual fuck?

Of course Flame falls into the quicksand, somehow. (I'm honestly not sure how. I think trying to escape Steve? Good job, jackass.) Steve gets a rope around him and stops him from sliding further in. The rope is hooked to the 300 year old winch mechanism, which works perfectly. Then Steve leaves to go get Pitch.

Pitch thinks the whole thing is weird, and could Steve just calm down for a bit and have some dinner before they go rescue Flame?

“I didn’t mean to be unkind,” Pitch said quickly. “I’m sorry, Steve. It’s just that I’m finding it difficult to keep pace with your reasoning. Why are you so certain that Flame won’t return to his band?

Pitch is all of us.

Then I'm pretty sure he roofies Steve because...Steve falls asleep. Just out cold. While Flame is dangling from a winch in a pit of quicksand on the other side of the island. Holy shit.

When he wakes up, he has to talk Pitch into going to help him, which Pitch eventually does, and on the way there they do a lot of little side trips to look at Conquistador stuff because Pitch's hard-on continues unabated. In order to get Pitch's help, Steve promises specifically that he won't pursue Flame anymore, because Pitch is worried (not unreasonably!) that Flame is a wild animal who will kill Steve. Steve promises, and then spends pretty much the rest of the book whining about that promise.

They rescue Flame in a harrowing and highly improbable sequence of events, and then we get a whole long montage in which Steve makes heart-eyes at Flame from across fields while Pitch digs up extraordinary artifacts and just puts them in his pockets because they're shiny. That's maybe 10 days of their 14 day trip. (Everything else I have recounted was days 1-3, yes, seriously.) Eventually Flame approaches Steve and Steve says that he hasn't violated his promise to Pitch because he didn't pursue him, Flame came to him! That seems like really weaselly logic to me, but whatever. Steve then spends all day riding Flame and fixing up his cuts from his fight with the Piebald.

Steve is pretty determined to get Flame off the island, because he thinks Flame can be the horse that Tom promised him. He thinks that Flame is now ostracized from the herd and he doesn't care about equine racial purity anymore, just about "his" horse. He's convinced that Flame is to afraid of the Piebald to go back into the main valley.

Pitch and Steve get ready to leave on their last day, and the last 10% of the book is just them making up, and then changing, their minds about whether or not to tell people about the island. I wanted to knock their heads together really hard many times during this sequence. Make a plan and stick to it, fer fuck's sake!

But no! Flame follows Steve out of the valley like a lovesick puppy, whistling/screaming/making impossible noises the whole time! And the Piebald sees him, and Steve and Pitch. He chases down the boys and breaks Steve's arm somehow (maybe by knocking him over? it's really not clear). We get another multiple-page long stallion fight after which Flame finally emerges victorious, shockingly enough, and that convinces Steve that Flame has to stay on his island.

They get back to Antago in the boat which has miraculously been tied up to a random rock on the side of an island in the middle of the Atlantic for two weeks without sustaining any damage or sinking, and Pitch changes his mind five more times on the way there about whether to tell people.

Steve finally makes a vanity appeal, saying to Pitch that he could be the only person to study the island and he could make genius archaeological discoveries and Steve will come help him whenever he can! On all his school vacations and summers! Pitch thinks that sounds just swell, and he's going to excavate an important untouched archaeological site entirely by his untrained and uninformed self and everyone will be just thrilled!

Aaaaaand...end book. Seriously, that's it. What a long, strange trip that was, from the fever dreams to the equine racial purity to the Conquistador wet dreams to the utterly unlikable personalities of...literally everyone. Do I even need to mention that there was not one single woman in the entire book? Not "no women who spoke" or "no women with names" but not a single solitary woman even in the background. Oy.

I feel like I should say a few good things here, and what I have to say is that the most appealing parts of this book are pure wish-fulfillment. A secret tropical island with a hidden valley and a herd of magical horses? Sign 12 year old me! (Hell, sign 34 year old me up.) Obsessing about the Conquistadors at least gives Pitch something to do with his sad, weird life. And of course, the boy-and-his-horse trope is still strong here. The wistful, "I have a secret place were I'm accepted and loved" vibe is strong here, and there are moments when it really works.

Next up, I will have to try and be snarky about The Black Stallion and Satan, my own personal childhood favorite.

Summer Series: Son of the Black Stallion

Son of the Black Stallion, by Walter Farley

At the end of The Black Stallion Returns, Alec left the Black behind in "Arabia" but was promised the first foal by the black out of the Arabian mare Johar. Spoiler alert: this book is about that foal. Here's the basic summary.

Alec is gifted the first foal by the Black, a colt he names Satan, but there's something wrong. Satan has a mean streak a mile wide, and Henry doubts it will ever be cured. After many, many, many violent interludes, Alec eventually bonds with Satan, and they train him for the track. He overcomes training problems and villainous machinations to win the two year old Hopeful Stakes and start a great racing career.

Much like the key to The Black Stallion was understanding that Alec has PTSD, the key to understanding this book is that Walter Farley wanted to try his hand at writing a horror novel but have it all turn out okay after all. There's just no other way to explain how Satan is written.

Let's start at the beginning, our third visit to the port of Addis, where a mysterious group of Arabs load a young colt onto a steamer ship. Two sailors watch, and decide a) the horses are really super nice and b) the colt is 5 months old and already a complete shit who bites one of his handlers.

The two sailors also helpfully spend several pages recapping the first book, including telling the reader that the Drake went down with all hands on deck, which makes yet another retcon. I don't have a good explanation for why I care about this so much except it's just so damn lazy. Read your own books, Walter Farley! They're not all that long, it's taking me about two hours for each one!

Cut to Flushing, where Alec helpfully catches us up on the events of The Black Stallion Returns via internal monologue and also lets us know that Henry is off working for Peter Boldt, "who has one of the finest racing stables in the country," except his wife is still Alec's neighbor and didn't Henry retire and what in God's name did he do in "Arabia" that merited offering him a job? Wouldn't Volence be the one that would actually be impressed by Henry? I give up.

Anyway, this is just a way of getting to the real moral of this book, which is that no one in this entire narrative deserves Alec's mother, Belle. (We only learn her name in an aside toward the end of the book, fuck you, Walter Farley.)

She was afraid. Afraid of what this new horse would bring. Twice before a horse, his horse, had led Alec to undertakings few men had ever experienced. Undertakings which for him had been adventurous, exciting. But for her and her husband, they had meant months of anguish and concern.

I grant you, this is exceptionally poorly written, but augh, Belle. She basically spends this entire book quietly in agony and if anyone acknowledges her at all its either as a joke or as an obstacle to get around.

Speaking of obstacles to get around, Mrs. Dailey, Henry's wife, who never does get a name!

"Mrs. Dailey?" Alec smiled. "Dad! Don't tell me you've forgotten...Henry's wife...lives in the big house on the corner, and owns the barn and field."

"Oh, yes! I guess I'm getting old, Alec," Mr. Ramsay said, laughing. "Come to think of it, your mother has been charging me with forgetfulness of late." A slight pause, and he added, "I shouldn't have thought Mrs. Dailey would make you pay anything, though, what with Henry having that good job on the coast, and her taking in boarders.

Later events will bear this out, but Mr. Ramsay? IS THE ACTUAL WORST. Holy shit. They're rolling in it, he's got a job and everything, why won't they feed your horse for free?!

The colt arrives, and things are...not good. First, he almost kills Alec's dog, and then Alec gives him daddy issues on, like day one.

Still looking at the blazing eyes, he said softly, "You're fire, boy. You're full of it, just like him. You're mine, boy. We're going places together...you and I. We're going to use that fire to burn the tracks. We're going to make him proud of you. He'll hear about you, boy. Hear the pounding of your hoofs, even though he's way back in the desert. It's going to be the way he wants it, boy."

For my money, this right here? This is the moment that the colt decides the only solution to his current predicament is to murder everyone, and I do not blame him one bit.

Just for the WTF-ery, I will also give you this bit.

"He's it, Henry!" Alec almost shouted. He's everything we hoped for. I know he is. I can feel it right here in his muzzle even?" 

JESUS CHRIST ALEC WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?

Alec announces he's decided to name the colt Satan, which...do I even need to explain the ways in which that is a terrible idea? Is anyone even mildly surprised that the next ~75 pages of the book are a descent into a storyline right out of The Omen?

What, you think I'm exaggerating? Literally the next whole segment of the book is a see-saw between Alec expressing the same sentiments as above (he's perfect! he'll come around! I lurrrrve him! the Black will be so proud!) and Henry saying and thinking things like, well:

And it was his eyes that Henry looked at more and more often as they walked along. They were smaller than his sire's, and the glare from them was fixed and stony. They bothered Henry. For throughout his life the old trainer had prided himself on being able to tell much about a horse from his eyes. And he didn't like what he saw in the black colt's. Too much lurked there...craftiness, cunning, viciousness, yes...and something else, too. Something which Henry couldn't figure out. Something which he could only feel...and it was sinister. He'd never seen it in the eyes of any horse before, even the Black.

Satan is indeed a little shit, but can you blame him? He's being trained by an 18 year old kid who has no idea what he's doing, he gets barely any turnout, he has no interaction with other horses of any kind (he went after Napoleon and so they keep him far away) and basically his only entertainment and enrichment is trying to murder the people around him. Which he does. Over, and over, and over, and over, and...well, you get the idea.

The colt rose above them all in all his savageness, his blood on fire and the urge to kill great within him. No longer did his eyes smolder with contempt. Now they were alive and gleaming red with hate. And Satan's black body trembled with eagerness as his savage instinct drove him toward the kill.

There's something deeply ironic about the way Satan is handled, because you know what he needs? He needs a mare to kick the shit out of him and teach him some manners, and he needs friends. That's basically what Alec needs in his life, too. His mother is abused by the narrative and not allowed to express human feelings without being mocked by the men around her, and Alec spends the whole book isolating himself even further than he already was. He rebuffs the last of his friends who want to spend time with him and then transfers to community college so he can have even less claims on his time.

Anyway. Henry manages to get Satan sort of leading, and there's a whole bit where Alec sees a length of chain and is worried Henry is beating the colt, but of course Henry isn't, so with that resolved, Alec looks at a 17hh yearling (not making that up, it's explicitly stated) that can't even be lead and won't stand still for grooming and still tries to bite, kick, or run down everyone around him and well, you know what Alec does, right?

He convinces Henry to put a bridle and saddle on Satan and then gets up on him all within about...an hour? Henry even flat out says this is too fast, but maybe it's also a good idea, because Satan is so awful this won't give him time to plot. Jesus, none of these people should be allowed around horses.

Predictably enough, Satan rears and then I think we're meant to understand that he deliberately flips on Alec and tries to squash him on the way down. Henry later remembers it this way:

Never would Henry forget the hideous sight of Satan, in all his fury, intentionally falling over backwards, hoping to pin the boy beneath his giant body. Never had he seen it happen before, with any horse, and he hoped never to see it again. If Alec hadn't kept his wits, if he hadn't been the horseman he was, he wouldn't have thrown himself clear of Satan's back as he'd done, and just in time.

Can we be clear about something here? Alec had never touched a horse until the summer he spent with his uncle in India. He pretty explicitly says that in The Black Stallion. Then he rides the Black for maybe a couple of months. THAT'S IT. That is the sum total of Alec's entire experience with horses. Satan is maybe the fourth or fifth horse he's ever ridden. EVER.

Mr. Ramsay said quietly, "I know better, Henry. Alec is too good a horseman to fall off, with or without stirrups. You had trouble with the colt." 

Because, see, Henry brought an unconscious Alec to his parents' house saying only that he'd fallen and hit his head. Also, fuck you, Mr. Ramsay. Alec is not any kind of horseman and far far far more talented riders than he have fallen off. Like me, for example. And probably you. Yes, you! If you're reading this, you're probably a better rider than Alec Ramsay!

Alec's accident prompts Henry to go out and have a come to Jesus session with Satan, and let's bullet point out what Henry does here because it is so mind-blowingly awful and misguided and just plain dumb that if you're surprised at how it ends I don't even know what to say to you.

• Step 1: grab a crop and a length of rope 
• Step 2: go out into Satan's field and yell at him, which causes him to charge straight at Henry
• Step 3: smack Satan really hard on the face with the crop when he runs by
• Step 4: lasso Satan, throw him to the ground, and tie a blindfold over his eyes
• Step 5: chase him around the field, still lassoed, now with a blindfold, get knocked down many times
• Step 6: make one final effort to wheel him around with the ropes but actually drive him to jump the fence into some undergrowth, lose consciousness
• Step 7: profit?????

Alec hears Satan screaming from his sickbed, and comes out to see Henry out cold in the field and Satan gone. Henry tells him that he's killed Satan, because the colt jumped the fence with ropes still attached to him, and he's definitely strangled himself.

Of course he hasn't strangled himself, or this book would be even shorter. Alec finds Satan immobilized and lying in undergrowth and slowly being strangled by the ropes. He wades right in and loosens the ropes and...that's it. The act of saving Satan magically transforms him from the hellspawn described for the last umpteen pages into a spirited but manageable horse.

No, really. It's that fast and that complete. Like flipping a switch. Satan is not overly fond of Henry, but the rest of the summer is a training montage of Alec riding Satan around the field, and then heading to the track for workouts. In maybe four or five rides, Satan has the knack of not murdering other horses he's galloping with (poor Napoleon, who spends his nights galloping around a track and his days pulling Tony's vegetable cart). 

The next problem to overcome is that Satan is afraid of whips, but it's fine, they hang crops in his stall and rub them over his muzzle and put blinkers on him and magic! He's off to the races, literally - he wins his first race, the Sanford, even though he veers all over the place to get away from the other jockeys' crops so he really runs, like twice as far. He's just that good, you guys.

Now we have a complication. Peter Boldt, Henry's old boss, is trying really hard to be the villain of this book, even though it's really Satan. I've been neglecting his part of the book in favor of the horse bits, but here it is in a nutshell: he's a bad guy who wants to buy Satan. Earlier in the book, Alec sold Satan to his father for $1 to get around Jockey Club rules so that he could also ride him in races. Boldt offered Alec's father a lot of money ($35,000 in 1947 dollars, which is about $400k in today's money, adjusted for inflation. Mr. Ramsay refused, saying the horse belonged to Alec.

Now Boldt is back, trying to prevent Satan from running in the Hopeful Stakes so that his horse, Boldt's Comet, will win. So he files a complaint saying that Mr. Ramsay lied on his paperwork and that Alec is the real owner so Satan can't race. You know what? HE'S NOT WRONG. But on paper, Mr. Ramsay is the owner and he just has to show everyone the bill of sale that Alec wrote to prove it.

Let me backtrack for just a moment and say that the bill of sale scene was the most emotionally touching scene in the whole book, because these stories are best when they really show how deeply emotionally involved Alec is with these horses. Not in the creepy obsessive way (a line that Farley crosses with gusto) but in the boy-and-his-horse way.

Problem: Alec's dad has lost the bill of sale. He was showing it off to some people at work (THE WORST) and now he can't find it. He and Alec and Henry and poor Tony search the entire house over and over again and...enter Belle Ramsay again. First, yet another example of how she spends this book getting shat on.

Turning to Alec, [his father] added, "Don't mention my buying these riding silks to your mother, Alec." Pausing, he said confidingly, "She wouldn't understand." 

Nodding, Alec smiled. "Yes, Dad, I know...she wouldn't understand. 

It literally never occurs to anyone in this book to talk to women like they are people. But she gets her revenge.

Only half-heartedly had she helped search for the paper. She hadn't wanted to find it. She didn't want to spend next Saturday afternoon waiting at home, thinking of her son riding Satan in that big race. It would be dangerous, and she was afraid for him. 

Only person talking sense in this whole book? Yes, I think so. Notice, too, how she assumes no one will want her there to watch the race? Women's lib cannot come fast enough for Belle Ramsay.

You know what she does next? She logics that shit right out. She does exactly what women do. She thinks about where the paper was last, what her husband was doing, and within an hour she has accomplished what four men working twelve hours could not do. It's awesome, but it's also a really weird moment, narratively, because the whole book has been trashing her and her womanly emotions and now she saves the day in a practical, smart, and efficient way. Kind of whiplash-y, honestly.

Anyway, the day is saved, the big race is here, and...if I ended this recap right here you'd know what happens. There is a legitimately great scene with all of the other jockeys, and a really cool older jockey who takes Alec under his wing, and the predictable shenanigans of one jockey being a jerk during the race. Satan wins, though, fending off Tom Volence's Desert Storm (sired by one of the horses Volence brought back in the last book) in a stretch duel. In the winning circle, Belle Ramsey gets one last moment to being a secret hero, after her husband told her she should not have come to the race.

Mrs. Ramsay moved forward and placed her hand upon Satan's neck. "He's hot, Alec," she said with great concern. "We should get him away from this crowd."

HOORAY FOR BELLE RAMSAY.

Hey, guess who traveled to America to see the race? Abu Ja'Kub ben Ishak, that's who, and at the very end of the book he drops the bombshell news that he's thinking of bringing the Black back to America to race, which lets Alec twist the screws on Satan's daddy issues one last time.

Abu had said the Black would be in the States next spring! And next spring Satan would be a three-year-old, eligible to race for the biggest stakes! It could happen that Satan would race the Black!

Satan pushed his head against him, and Alec rubbed the colt between the eyes. "Your pop is coming," he whispered. "And he'll be proud of you, boy. I know he will." 

Next up: we take a sideways journey to Azul Island, home of archaeologists and Spanish horses and, eventually, aliens, for The Island Stallion.

Summer Series: The Black Stallion Returns

The Black Stallion Returns, by Walter Farley

Oh, boy, you guys. You know what happened? Walter Farley had his book published, at long last, and he said, "you know what everyone loved about the first book? The random bit with the Black being loaded onto the ship at the beginning, and the casually racist stereotyping of the port. How about I write a whole book about that, with, just for shits and giggles, 75% less horse content?"

Which is to say: this is a way different book than the first one. First, a rough summary:

Hours after a mysterious stranger tries to kill the Black, a man appears claiming to be the horse's real owner. He takes the Black away, but Alec is given a second chance to see his horse when Tom Volence, owner of Sun Raider, decides to take Alec and Henry on a trip to the Middle East to try and buy more horses like the Black. They arrive after a long journey and a series of mishaps to find themselves in the middle of a tribal war. The fighting isn't long over when Alec has to ride the Black in a major race to help his owner win horses and save face.

So the original book is pretty thin on the ground in terms of plot. Boy rescues horse, boy races horse. This book has like 5x as much plot crammed into weirdly paced sprints amidst pages and pages and PAGES of pointless, dumb, weird, travelogue.

But let's start at the beginning, shall we?

"He was out of his stall. Someone's been here...there's been a fight of some kind. He's sweated."

I mean, if you heard a disturbance in your barn in the middle of the night and found your horse roaming the aisle and sweating heavily, wouldn't you think that he'd been in a fistfight? (Again, we see more of the Black's magical colic immunity, because to me loose horse + heavy sweat = colic.)

Turns out there's a random needle lying on the ground! Henry will have the police analyze it and get fingerprints and figure out what's in it, because that's what the police have time for in WWII America.

Many things have been retconned for this book, including Alec getting a whole lot of common sense all of a sudden about how the Black is not, and never will be, a Thoroughbred. Another is that somehow it turns out there were survivors from the Drake after all, which there definitely were not in the first book. What a pointless thing to change.

Rest assured, Alec is still kind of an idiot, though.

"Y'mean you think he had stolen him?" [asked Henry]

"Yes. For one thing, he acted as though he had...always kept to himself. Then he was too cruel to the Black. If he owned him, he wouldn't have done the things that he did."

Oh, Alec, you sweet summer child. Thankfully, Henry disabuses him of that fantasy right quick.

They deduce that the man who tried to kill the Black was from the Middle East because...reasons? (Actually they think he's from Arabia but once again, not a country, guys!) But they barely have time to catch their breath because the police arrive with a man named Abu Ja'Kub ben Ishak (who is really only ever referred to by that full, weirdly fake Arabic name throughout the book) who says he owns the Black and he has papers! that prove it.

"I'd like to see them," Alec interrupted, turning to Abu Ja'Kub ben Ishak.

The tall man handed the papers to Alec, who read them carefully. After a moment he looked at the policemen. One of them, guessing what was foremost in his mind, said, "We've checked Washington and he's who he says he is."

Again...do I need to remind you all that this is in the middle of World War II? This book was published in 1945.

There's not really anything more to the next 30 pages. Ben Ishak takes the Black, because PAPERS, and Alec spends the rest of the spring moping. Also, he becomes like the world's greatest student and locks himself up in his bedroom all the time studying which is...totally what happens to 17 year old boys when they get depressed? There are some genuinely painful moments, though.

"He saved my life, Henry," Alec said. He attempted to go on, but his voice broke. His shoulders swept forward, and Henry knew that he was crying.

<3 Alec, even if in his shoes I would have murdered anyone who tried to take my horse with my own two bare hands. He does love the Black, and the only really good parts of this book (apart from Tabari, whose awesomeness we will expound upon at length later) are the moments of their relationship.

Tom Volence shows up, and tries to buy the Black. When he finds out the Black is gone, he's bummed, and lets drop that he's going to England to buy horses. Alec and Henry convince him to go to "Arabia" instead and look up ben Ishak and buy horses like the Black. Volence is nothing if not a canny, astute businessman so of course he thinks this is the best idea ever and immediately arranges for just the three of them to head on over.

Before we embark on the world's most boring travelogue, I'd like to say a word about Alec's parents, who have improved in some ways and gotten waaaaaay worse in others. Primarily, his mother; there are one or two lines in here that indicate that she's really upset and conflicted that Alec is jaunting off again, but also that she doesn't dare say or do anything about it because she is a 1950s housewife right out of Mad Men who is going to suffer a mental breakdown behind the scenes somewhere because Walter Farley doesn't think women are real human beings with complexities and motivations.

Whew. Glad I got that off my chest. Anyway, Alec's father is still the worst.

"Sure, Mom, I will...honest, I will. I'll be careful as I can. Why, this trip will do me worlds of good, so don't you worry. Travel is the best education a guy can get."

 His father grabbed him by the belt of his trousers. "And that reminds me. Don't get back here months after everyone else has started school. Remember, you're going to college next fall."

lololol complete abdication of parental responsibility is always best enforced by threats of physical violence.

Commence the trip, which is like 6 legs long and described in excruciating detail and I think involved seaplanes? I don't know, I blacked out from boredom a lot. The only plot-related thing about the trip is that there is a man on the plan who the reader knows is the same person who tried to kill the Black (at least, the even marginally not braindead reader, because he's described in precisely the same language) but Alec just think is a random weirdo who knows everything about his entire life.

Still, since he was an Arab, it was in all probability only natural that he should take an interest in American racing.

God damn it, Alec.

When they land, Alec notices that the random guy (now named Ibn al Khaldun) has a medallion just like the one they found near the Black after the aborted attempt to kill him. Which leads them to commandeer a car and chase him all through a random city they just landed in for...reasons? I don't know. Everyone gets even stupider once they land.

They find out that ben Ishak is way far away from where they are, and they need an expedition and a guide. Thankfully, Volence's college buddy has a ward named Raj who will accompany them on their trip. They set off. There are lots of descriptions of camels and sand and heat and after a sandstorm, they're all abandoned with only one camel. Thankfully Raj is around, both to save them and to provide a crush object for Alec.

He wanted to know Raj better...to find out how he felt about everything - horses, books, school, his life in Arabia. And in turn Alec wanted to tell him about the United States, about his home, about his horse. 

I BET YOU DID, ALEC. (I know it was 1945 but this book would have been 1000% better with a romance storyline between Raj and Alec. If you think I'm making any of this up, there are about a half a dozen similar bits that I chose not to quote because this is getting way too long already.)

They make it to the mountains and meet a mysterious man riding a chestnut horse who is described much like the Black - savage, wild, huge, small-headed, all of the above. He escorts them to the edge of ben Ishak's territory and leaves them, and then we meet the best character in the entire book in a weirdly objectifying and racist way.

Her skin was honey-colored; sleek-oiled hair crowned a heart-shaped face, and oblique almond eyes peered curiously at them. She was neither white nor black, neither of the East nor of the West. Her full lips parted and she spoke in Arabic, her voice low and husky.

Turns out she's Tabari, ben Ishak's daughter, and she rides a white mare named Johar, and basically she swans around the rest of the book being awesome. Oh, and she is not half-English or anything else, that description was just pointlessly weird and Farley's attempt to exoticise her.

Oh and just for kicks:

"I think, in fact I am certain, Mr. Volence, that you have seen only one Arabian of purest blood, and that was Johar, the white one my daughter, Tabari, was riding today. There are few others like her in Arabia, and certainly none in any foreign country."

sigh. I know some of you are Arabian people: were there really none of them outside the Middle East in 1945? That seems unlikely in the extreme to me.

We learn several things in quick succession, so I'll bullet them out for you.

• Ben Ishak is holding on to the Black, nice try, Alec
• The guy who escorted them up the hill is named Abd-al-Rahman, and he hates ben Ishak, because he thinks ben Ishak killed his parents, which he totally didn't
• The Black is entered into a race that happens every five years, and the winner of the race gets his pick of 15 horses from everyone else entered, which is like the shittiest zero sum game ever. Ben Ishak has been losing a lot, so he needs the Black to win.

Remember what I said about pacing? That info dump is in a couple of pages, and the last ~50 pages of the book get INSANE. After literally hundreds of pointless pages about drinking camel vomit and being hot, the narrative goes turbo-charged right through to the end of the book.

First things first: the Black is stolen by the guy who has been exercising him with plans to ride in the big race. Alec was already upset at the way the guy rode the Black but honestly given the Black's attempted murder of everyone else who touches him it's damn impressive the guy can ride the horse at all. Alec and Raj go on a very romantic moonlight tracking expedition to find him, at the same time as for some reason ben Ishak is riding to lay siege to Abd-al-Rahman's fortress...I think because they thought he stole the Black? Or something? Like I said, it all happens very fast.

Alec and Raj find the Black, held captive by the very same shady character who tried to kill him on page 1 and rode over on the plan with them. Al Khaldun then monologues (for three pages!!!) his way to explaining the entire background plot of the book, to wit:

• He has an entire group of outcasts ready to murder everyone out of revenge and to take control of this corner of the desert;
• He was the one who killed al-Rahman's parents, who, SURPRISE PLOT TWIST, were also Raj's parents, because Raj was found abandoned as a baby in the desert;
• He stole the Black because he wanted ben Ishak to lose the race because then al-Rahman would win the race and they could kill him and ben Ishak or...I have no idea, you guys, the Black is totally incidental to this plot.

Oh, and he had twenty years to make this plan. TWENTY YEARS, and that was the shitty plan he came up with? Jesus.

His brain whirled with the rapidity with which everything had fallen into place.

Alec speaks for us all.

Raj leaves to warn everyone, and Alec stays to rescue the Black, of course. He gets on the Black, and there is a very confusing scene in which they run back and forth in a canyon, trapped. It's no wonder, because we get descriptions like this.

He gave the Black his head, but kept him to a walk.

[...] 

The stallion attempted to break out of the running walk at which Alec had held him.

Magical gaited stallion!

Alec and the Black are captured, and I guess tortured by al Khaldun, who tries to pull Alec's arm out of his socket. Then the crux of the plan.

"You are wondering, aren't you?" Ibn al Khaldun asked. "It is simple and you are fortunate, for death will be quick. It is a pity I can't take longer, but it will, I suppose, take a little time to find your friend in the canyon, and all must be done before morning for we have other work then." He paused and grinned. "Just a short distance up the canyon there is a cliff with a perpendicular drop of three hundred feet or so to the rocks below. You and your Black shall be driven over it. It is a pleasant way to die, is it not? The two of you inseparable even in death?"

Oh my God someone should send this guy rules for being a bad guy because between the monologuing and the elaborate Bond-style death scene he is just terrible.

They get out of it basically because the Black is taking no shit and attacks the horses of the people charged with driving them forward...and also at that exact moment Raj brings the cavalry in the form of the combined forces of ben Ishak and al-Rahman.

Everyone returns home, and with the original jockey a traitor and also dead, ben Ishak says Alec can ride the Black in the big race. It's a four mile track with both straightaway and a mountain climb, and Alec has not a moment's worry or hesitation despite his promise to his mother to try and be safe: he is all in.

The race itself is basically a blur of galloping over terrain that really should barely be trotted through, neck and neck with al-Rahman and his chestnut Sagr. Halfway through the race, though, they get shot at, and surprise! It's Ibn al Khaldun, who's not dead yet! So they both deviate to chase him down, shoot him, then rejoin the race, still in the lead. Then there's the straightaway gallop to the finish line.

The Black left the trail and pounded onto the desert. Stumbling as his hoofs sank into the sand, he recovered and drove forward.

...with magically unblemished tendons.

Look: do I need to tell you that Alec and the Black win? They do. Of course they do. There is much rejoicing, and Alec is all of a sudden okay with the Black staying behind, because he is where he belongs.

The last bit of the book sets up the next one, and arguably, the whole series: ben Ishak will give Alec the Black's first foal, out of Johar, Tabari's white mare.

Bring it on, Son of the Black Stallion!