Book #74 of 2024: Skyriders

[thistlechaser]

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!

Comments

[jeane nevarez (from livejournal.com)]

Sounds like another one I'd probably enjoy! The naming convention with the winged horses reminds me of Anne McCaffrey books- all the dragonriders had names that started with a letter and an apostrophe, like F'lar, F'nor, etc. (Have you read them?)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yep, a lot of it reminded me of the Pern books. I did read them, but it's been decades (back when I was a teenager). I think I tried rereading one a few years back, but I'm not sure which one. Or maybe it was longer than that? I searched my reviews for Pern and dragon and didn't find it, so I might be misremembering.

I think you'd like these books, yep! I hope it will be at least a trilogy, but I can't find word of book 3 yet (and I'm not done with 2, so I don't know how the story ends).