My friend Kat recommended me this book a while back, and now I got the ebook. Let's take a gander. Spoilers ahead.
Duchess is a traumatized buckskin mare who arrives at a farm. Here, she meets the herd of mares and is eventually joined by a mythical stallion known as the Dancer, who lures her and another mare named Susie away from the farm, into the wild. There, he hopes to establish his herd and continue his bloodline, as specifically Duchess is the last mare who can carry on the pure Appaloosa bloodline. But life in the wild is not without dangers, especially when supernatural powers are stalking you...
Overall I think that, yes, this is a solid xenofiction. It has a lot of good elements going for it. I like the characters quite a bit, especially Duchess and Susie. Pony could get on my nerves but she was never truly evil. Just obnoxious sometimes. The Dancer was also...fine. Honestly I never really felt that much for this character, but I didn't dislike him either. The rest of the cast of mares I also liked (except the racist one), and of course Cory the collie is one of my favorites from the entire book. The cast felt well-written and even if not all characters get the same amount of depth, you still get a clear sense of who is who just based on their dialogue and personalities, which is great. I've read one too many xenofictions with bland and "same-y" characters.
The plot also kept me engaged enough, I like how we didn't just stay on the farm but also got to go into the wild, and that there were quite a few supernatural elements involved. There's also plenty of lore to this world, and while I'm never too big a fan of when a xenofiction just starts dumping lore on the reader it was done sparingly enough here.
I also like that this book ditches the "all humans are evil and you're supposed to be wild and free" trope present in so many xenofictions. Sure, some of the people are bad (e.g. Duchess' previous owners), but overall humans are seen as kind and friendly in this universe, which made for a nice change of pace, honestly. These horses also don't seem to have any shame in living with humans, which is another pro. Sure, Duchess and the crew run wild for a while, but it's not out of true contempt for humans or captivity or anything.
If I do have an issue with this book, it's that its insistence on pretty much every female character being quite literally a broodmare who is there to bear foals left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Xenofiction, especially older xenofiction such as this, already has a sexism problem. And while I wouldn't call this book outright sexist, it did really stand out how pretty much every major female character bears or has borne at least one foal during the span of the book, which just felt a bit overkill to me.
Would it really have been that hard for there to be at least one or two major female characters who aren't made into mothers? It just kinda feels like it's falling into the stereotype that every woman wants to be a mother at some point. Again, this is by far not the worst portrayal I've seen of female characters in xenofiction and I wouldn't even say it's outright sexist, but it did leave a bit of a bad taste in my mouth to see literally every female character of note in this portrayed as (literally) a broodmare.
But barring that, yes, I think that this is genuinely a good xenofiction book. I might pick up the sequel sometime, if that has an ebook. Apparently getting physicals of these is quite hard.
Rating: 4/5
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