Now here's a western for anyone who thinks they don't like westerns. In this delightful tale our young protagonist, Tzu Lu, finds himself swept away on an adventure through the untamed American frontier. At the tender age of 14, and with no experience to speak of, Tzu Lu's grandfather volunteers the youngster to be the explosives expert for a well-to-do Rebel out to reclaim his gold. He encounters many you'd expect in a western novel -- Native Americans, bandits, buffalo. But werewolves and ghost riders?

Tzu Lu's innocence is endearing and kept me cheering him on as the novel unfolded. The ending came as a total surprise, despite the hints sprinkled throughout. A western with a splash of the fantastic. I'd recommend this to anyone. ( )

Summary: Tzu-lu (Lu for short) is a teenaged son of Chinese immigrants, who lives with his mother and grandfather in a small town at the edge of the Western frontier. When Jack Straw, the fabled gunslinger, arrives in town, Lu is excited... but then Lu's grandfather informs Lu that he'll be traveling with Jack on a mission to retrieve some stolen gold hidden in a mining town in the wildest part of the wild west. They're traveling with a motley company, and they'll have to face Indians, ex-Confederate soldiers with a grudge, fearsome canyons, and lethal deserts before they can retrieve the gold... but to do so, they're going to have to face the biggest danger of all.

Review: Year of the Horse is an interesting mish-mash of genres: part western, part fantasy, part historical fiction, and part coming-of-age story. The overall effect is like the characters are riding through a continuous string of tall tales and legends - very similar to the Fables universe's vision of Americana, actually. The real-life historical inspiration for every adventure is clear, but it feels like Allen took the actual history, and turned the dial up to 11: everything is just a little bit more exciting, dangerous, and larger than real life. It's an effective bit of worldbuilding; at times I forgot that the actual wild west probably wasn't quite so fantastic as the world through which Lu and his friends moved.

This book also neatly avoided the common downfall of adventure stories; each incident worked both as an episodic adventure as well as part of the overall storyline. There are all the gun battles and horse chases and sun and dust that you could want from a Western, and the final confrontation with the gold-stealing Yankee is nail-bitingly tense. The book's main flaw, I think, is that it tried to do a little too much. There were some characters that were underdeveloped, and some elements (like Lu's father) that were brought up too often without ever really panning out. On the other hand, the elements which get most of the focus (Lu's growing up, the adventures, and the mythology/worldbuilding) are all done really well. I don't read a lot of westerns, but I do read my fair share of young adult fantasy adventure stories, and on that tally, Year of the Horse is among the best I've come across. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Fans of westerns, Americana, legends, and modern mythology will enjoy Year of the Horse, as will anyone else who's looking for a fun and unusual adventure story. ( )

Lu, the child of Chinese immigrants; Henry, first a slave then a Union soldier and now free; Chino, once just a Californian and now a Mexican with no homeland; and of course Jack Straw, also a former Union soldier and now a privateer of sorts; are all hired by John MacLemore, former Confederate loyalist, and his daughter Sadie to get their gold mine and homestead back from the man who murdered Sadie's mother. They travel across mountains, canyons, plains, and deserts. They also deal with Mormons (one of whom really wants to make Sadie one of his wives), dwindling supplies (Oregon Trail style), fatal weather, Confederate soldiers, many forms of racism, and, of course, actual demons.

That's right. This is a Western/fantasy, and as such, it's pretty unique.

I'll be honest, the first half, almost pure Western, was a bit slow for me. I liked getting to know the large cast of characters and found their trials pretty interesting, but I wasn't truly hooked until the fantasy set in. When it did, I felt the need to devour the second half of the book to find out what would happen to everyone. At the expense of my beauty sleep. The forgotten journal of a man no one remembers that is covered with Lu's grandfather's Chinese writing, ghost-riders that pretend to be shooting stars, were-coyotes in the middle of an unlivable desert. And none of that even begins to encompass what Lu, et al. are really up against. It's good stuff. I highly recommend this book for fantasy readers who are sick of paranormal romances taking up all of the magic in young adult lit right now and for adventure readings who might be willing to let the truth stretch a little. Neither group will regret the small step outside of their comfort zones.

Now on to the serious stuff. One of the greatest things about this book is the large cast of multicultural characters. We are also given main characters that hail from both sides of the recently ended Civil War, in addition to soldiers in saloons with differing loyalties. This book does NOT use the /fantasy part of its description to make all of these people live together harmoniously. From the author's note:

"Not all of the characters in this book are to be admired, however. History, as it turns out, is littered with men and women (and boys and girls!) possessed of vile, even shocking beliefs, language and manners. As your narrator I will admit having felt tempted to censor the more disturbing bits of racism from the nineteenth century folk that people these tales. But as fact is my watch-word, I have resisted that temptation."
p.7

And it's true, Allen doesn't remove the racism from the story. I don't think the n-word makes an appearance (not that Henry is called by his name by anyone outside the group), but Lu gets called a chink often (not within the group), or better yet, referred to as "Jack's chink." What Allen does, instead of removing the racism from the book, is take all of these characters beyond their stereotypes for the readers. Yes, Lu starts out as the explosion expert because, genetically, he must know how it's done, right? He is Chinese, after all. But then we also see Jack teaching Lu how to blow up a boulder early on in the trip. All of the other characters similarly move beyond their stereotypes: the rich Confederate and his wild-child daughter, the religious former slave and the nature-conscious Mexican, a variety of mystic and/or violent American Indians and the wife-hunting Mormons. It's all very Breakfast Club, except without the all-white cast.

Book source: Philly Free Library ( )

(I've now finished the book so am revising my review.)

I was a big fan of Justin Allen's first book, Slaves of the Shinar, and enjoy this one for much the same reasons. This book has an enjoyable mixture of accurate historical detail and myth-making. The characters are lively and interesting, and though tension builds slowly through the first part of the book there's enough foreshadowing and detail to keep you interested. The book is officially marketed as a "young adult" novel and I expect that it would appeal to kids as young as 12 or so, but I'm enjoying it very much, despite not being a "young adult" myself. You don't have to have a special fondness for westerns to enjoy the book, but those who do would perhaps especially like it.

In many ways Allen most reminds me of Neil Gaiman. There are significant differences in their writing styles but both have the ability to take old stories and myths and craft new and interesting tales from them. Allen did that in his first book and does so with even more success, I thought, here. In some important ways this is a book about America and what it means to be an American. This story is told by a highly creative re-telling of many classical American characters and stories, both literary and historical. The result could have been obnoxious but here turns out to be highly satisfying (though a few bits work less well than others as they seem a bit more forced.) Finding and exploring these references and creative re-tellings allows the book to be of significant interest to adults, too. Kids likely won't get many, perhaps most, of these references but I think they'll still enjoy the straight-forward adventure and fantasy elements, and discovering the references may well encourage them to look again at classic stories.

It's a terrific book, one I highly recommend. ( )

Mostly, Year of the Horse is a well-written but standard coming-of-age adventure story, set in the post-Civil War West. But what made it so special for me was the vein of supernatural running through the story. It was so subtle at first, but by the time they get to climatic fight with the mysterious Yankee, this story has morphed into a tall tale, in the very best sense of the term.

I won't say this book was perfect, but it was great. I think kids of all ages will love it.

http://archthinking.blogspot.com/2009/10/review-year-of-horse.html

ETA: Here's a link to an interview I did with the author on my blog:
http://archthinking.blogspot.com/2009/11/interview-with-justin-allen-author-of.h... ( )