Book #74 of 2024: Skyriders

Continuing "reading all books on my Kindle with 'dragon' in the title or a picture of a dragon on the cover", though once more I've tripped up due to cover images being tiny on my Kindle. That's a chimerae, not a dragon.

Skyriders by Polly Holyoke.

Quick synopsis: In a world where many people bond to flying horses, Kie and her winged horse N'Rah go from a simple courier team (sort of like a Pony Express rider, but on flying horses) to being in the middle of a fight to save humanity.

Brief opinion: What a fun book! Who doesn't love the idea of having a "talking" winged horse as your best friend? (Skysteeds are telepathic, but only with his or her bonded rider.) The story is MG, but adult me really enjoyed it.

Plot: Kie lives on an orchard with her sick uncle, they're too poor to get him the heart medicine he needs on a regular basis. She works as a courier carrying mail over the dangerous mountain routes.

Her uncle has an odd obsession with his great-grandfather's manual about how to fight monsters (chimerae -- spelled that way) that were wiped out long ago and he twists Kie's arm into training how to fight them.

Turns out it's a good thing he does, because suddenly lots and lots of chimerae are back...

Writing/editing: Both were excellent!

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I heard the opening theme to the Young Riders show about the Pony Express/Wild Bill and company in my head through much of this book, and that made it even better.

All the skysteeds (the flying horses) had names that started with " N' ", N'Rah, N'Kal, N'Sella, etc. I wish the book had explained where that came from, but maybe it comes up in book 2.

I really liked that the skysteeds weren't human-level intelligence creatures. They were smarter than normal horses, but they were still horses.

The worldbuilding was great. I understood the land and the races of people on it and I was interested in both. There were some teases about things like wild skysteeds, which apparently we'll learn more about in book 2.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved/ 5 stars. On to book 2!