There are moments that you’ll remember for the rest of your life and there are moments that you think you’ll remember for the rest of your life, and it’s not often they turn out to be the same moment.

It’s island life–a small town, far out on the water that lives and dies by the one big event a year. Just in this case, that one event is a race involving murderous meat eating horses that come from the sea and would like eating the racers just as much as carrying them. It’s a magical combination of worldbuilding, with the quiet island life and violence of the sea horses complementing one another nicely.

Plotwise, the entire story is revolves around the race. One point of view is young woman Puck / Kate Connolly determined to be the first woman in the races–and first on not on a sea horse–in order to somehow save her family and make everything right. The other point of view is Sean Kendrick, 19 and with the island, the sea horses, and the race in his blood. Of course there’s going to be romance, but it’s a slow sort of thing. They both share one thing in common–they were both orphaned by the sea horses.

I think that my biggest problem is that the entire book is building up to the races… literally. The race itself comes in the final few percent of the book and we’re done. It’s not much for action, certainly. There’s enough to keep it going in my opinion, but barely.

It’s quite the story for the atmosphere alone I think. Worth a try.