Look at that cover, would you?  It has a horse on it.  And the word Races.  Those are two reasons why it’s taken me so freakin’ long to read The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater.

My friends, I was wrong– so very wrong— to have waited.

The Scorpio Races was absolutely incredible.

Even now, as I write a little summary, it doesn’t sound like something I would enjoy: a boy/man named Sean (he seems so much older than 19!) and a girl named Puck plan to participate in the Scorpio Races, a brutal race each November in which people die because of the bloodthirsty capaill uisce (mythical water horses) that are involved.

Horses.  Racing.  Bloodthirsty mythical beasts.

And yet, this book was SEXY.  

It reminded me all over again of why I had such a giant crush on Jim Craig from The Man from Snowy River.  Competency is so hot.

I had thought, going into the book, that the Scorpio Races would be this prolonged adventure (like the Hunger Games, I guess [though I haven’t read those]), but the race only covers a small spread of chapters.  So I think that made me feel like the beginning was slow.  But once I realized that I’d misjudged the premise, I fell in love with this book.

The writing is INCREDIBLE, and there is this dark savagery to the story.  The characters are layered and don’t fall into stereotypes.  The scenes are beautiful and intense.  The story is laced with religion and myths and lots and lots of blood.  The story is, as I said, sexy but in a beautiful, sensual way (not in a dirty or erotic way).  It’s hard to explain.  You’ll understand when you read it.

Because you WILL read it.  I require that you read it. 🙂

This book feels important to me and the next story I want to tell, just in the same way that The Fault in Our Stars was of critical import to Truest.  I want to go back and re-read so much of this book, and I just finished it.

P.S. Sean Kendrick is totally my new literary boyfriend.  He has one foot on the land and one in the sea.

“Sean reaches out between us and takes my wrist. He presses his thumb on my pulse. My heartbeat trips and surges against his skin. I’m pinned by his touch, a sort of fearful magic. We stand and stand, and I wait for my pulse against his finger to slow, but it doesn’t. Finally, he releases my wrist and says, ‘I’ll see you on the cliffs tomorrow.'”

“Sean, as always, gets by on one word while everyone else needs five or six.” 

“Sean does that slow sweep of his eyes that he does, the one that goes from my head to my toes and back again and makes me feel that he’s scanning the depths of my soul and teasing out my motivations and sins. It’s worse than confession with Father Mooneyham.”