El Arat insists on settling the discrepancy that night: The new horse, Dutchess, is a buckskin to everyone else, but El Arat, the Dreamspeaker, sees her as a many-colored Appaloosa. She was a buckskin, the color of corn in late summer, with black mane, legs and tail. What she had been lay in her graceful head, finely carved muscle, and slender legs. What she was now could be seen in her frightened eyes, rolled to white half-moons. The mare was young and thin and had once been beautiful. The herd of brood mares at Bishop Farm - Fancy (Lead Mare), Feather (Second-in-Command), El Arat (Story-Teller and Dreamspeaker), Susie (Caretaker) and two unranked (Snip and Cissy) are all agog when Emmanuel Bishop and his son David bring a new mare to join them. But he’s not standing in our barnyard, El Arat. Not even your own Breedmaster, Hakimer the Arabian, outranks him. "But he’s a god, isn’t he? Second only to Equus himself? The Rainbow Horse, Dancer, the Lead Stallion of the Army of One Hundred and Five? Breedmaster to the Appaloosa, too, as I recall. "The Rainbow Horse exists," said El Arat, barely above a whisper. Some herds, such as Bishop Farm’s, have Dreamspeakers – mares blessed with dreams from the mouth of Equus, the horse god. Horses, by instinct and their own Laws, are herd animals, and have a strictly observed order of precedence: Lead Mare, Second-in-Command, Story-Teller, Caretaker, and unranked. Her name was Snip, and she was unranked in the herd hierarchy. "A new horse,: said a big, clumsy-looking Thoroughbred mare.
Piper at the Gate, by Mary Stanton, illustrated, Riverdale, NY, Baen Books, May 1989, 306 pages, 0-6, paperback, $3.50. The Heavenly Horse from the Outermost West, by Mary Stanton, illustrated by Judith Mitchell, Riverdale, NY, Baen Books, June 1988, 344 pages, 0-1, paperback, $3.95. The Heavenly Horse is much more fantastically complex, with its structured organization of equine herds into formal officers, the concepts of the Army of One Hundred and Five (a representative of each of the domesticated breeds of horses) who live in the horsey heaven known as the Courts of the Outermost West and the equine equivalents of Satan: the Dark Horse, his lieutenant, the fanged horse Anor the Destroyer, and the Soul Taker, who tempts horses into betraying themselves.
Watership Down tries to be as realistic as possible except for its intelligent, talking rabbits.
Many of the reviewers of this adventure fantasy have said that it is like Watership Down, but with horses instead of rabbits. Your rating: None Average: 4.4 ( 5 votes)
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