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Library | Audience | Home Location | Material Type | Shelf Number | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Central | Teen/Young Adult | Open Stacks Fiction | Open Stacks Teen Book | ALLEN | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Year of the Horse is literary fantasy at its very best'a novel that delves into our myths, legends, hopes, and fears; a coming-of-age fable set in our fondly remembered (if often fictional) past'an adventure more than capable of setting your hair on end.Year of the Horse tells the story of Yen Tzu-lu, a child of Chinese immigrants unwillingly pressed into service by a gang of roughnecks bent on stealing a gold mine from a shadowy villain deep in the western wilderness. With Tzu-lu as our guide, we experience a landscape of legend, stand toe-to-toe with those larger-than- life heroes and villains of our shared American mythos, and learn the inescapable facts that have both enriched and plagued our nation from its inception.Resonating with echoes of Mark Twain, Larry McMurtry, and J. K. Rowling, this is a book of fabulous adventure and deep resonance. Allen gives readers a picture of how America sees itself, and in so doing he offers up both a heroic vision of the past and hope for the future.
Author Notes
Justin Allen received his MFA in fiction from Columbia University and his BA in philosophy from Boise State University. He is the author of the fantasy epic Slaves of the Shinar , also published by Overlook. He lives in New York City with his wife, Day.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-A Western adventure swollen with minor incidents and bits of devilish sorcery occasionally spliced in, this novel lacks cohesion, historical imagination, or fantasy flair. Fictionalized place-names take readers uncertainly (sans map) from the Mississippi to the Pacific; the style nods faintly to Twain and McMurtry. Detail is often irrelevant; atmosphere is spotty (e.g., many cigarettes are smoked, none rolled). Gratuitous gore and firearms abound, but dramatic action is absent for the first 100 pages, sparse thereafter. Although the crew is nominally multiethnic, little distinguishes Hispanic, black, or Asian characters aside from their names. No one is very bright or has an interior life. The 15-year-old ostensibly Chinese hero and the 16-year-old unromantic heroine (whose rough speech is oddly unlike the polished diction of the Southern-gentleman father who raised her) seem about 11. A legendary white gunslinger/shapeshifter implausibly speaks "Indian," Chinese, and horse. Post-Civil War Yankees are prejudiced, arrogant, and aggressive, and "Saints" (Mormons?) are also vilified. A pile of gold provides a stilted, simplistic ending to an unheroic journey with a tacked-on patriotic message.-Patricia D. Lothrop, St. George's School, Newport, RI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Allen, author of the historical fantasy Slaves of the Shinar, plots a supernatural wild west adventure in his sophomore outing that should hold appeal for younger readers. Chinese-American teenager Tzu-lu finds his life upended when his grandparents send him on an expedition west with famous gunslinger Jack Straw and his rag-tag crew of mercenaries. Exploring anew the tropes of the cowboy western-Indians, polygamous cultists, "Ghost Riders" and the perils of the open desert-Allen follows the gang to Silver City, the very edge of settled America, to reclaim a treasure stolen by a mysterious man known as "the Yankee," and perhaps illuminate the fate of Tzu-lu's dead father. With a few playful nods to Washington Irving, Allen mixes western and fantasy into a high adventure coming-of-age, keeping his world's more outre elements grounded with a surfeit of dead-on historical details. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Allen (Slaves of the Shinar, 2007) sends the 14-year-old son of Chinese immigrants into the western territories of postCivil War America. When Yen Tzu-lu (nicknamed Lu) hears his grandfather speaking in Chinese with a mysterious white man named Jack Straw about some kind of mission, he never dreams that he will be plucked from his Mississippi River hometown to join it. Jack, a legendary gunslinger, is leading a group of roughnecks that includes a former slave who fought in the Union army, a Mexican outlaw and ex-Confederate John MacLemore and his daughter. They're out to reclaim a gold mine that MacLemore says belongs to him, and Lu has been hired as an explosives expert. (He's not, but only Jack knows that.) En route, the group encounters Native American tribesmen, bullying Union soldiers, supernatural ghost-riders and a dark figure who may just be the devil himself. The harsh realities of frontier travel are slightly mitigated for Lu by the pleasures of learning to ride horses and hunt. The author clearly has a great love for old-style boy's-adventure tales, but he doesn't allow the genre's tropes to keep him from trying new things. In particular, the multicultural cast of characters, while perhaps historically improbable, is refreshing, and Allen doesn't gloss over the widespread racial prejudices of the time. Best of all, however, he knows how to tell a cracking good story. Exciting, original update of the ripping-yarns formula. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In this intriguing genre-bender, Allen places a coming-of-age fantasy quest in a western setting, with both explosive and head-scratching results. He wastes little time in assembling the unlikely band of heroes: an enigmatic and perfectly grizzled gunslinger; a genial ex-slave sharpshooter; a sly Mexican bandit; a Scotch treasure-hunter; his bloomer-wearing daughter, Sadie; and Tzu-Lu, a teenaged son of Chinese immigrants who gets sucked into the group as the explosives expert, even though he doesn't know a blasting cap from a drill bit. Together they venture through all manner of impeccably imagined peril (including an obligatory harrowing desert-crossing) on their way to avenge a decades-old wrong perpetrated by a mystery bandit who just might be the devil himself. Here things become a little shaky, as the fantasy aspects (from magic truth-revealing bullets to ghost riders in the sky) aren't clearly integrated or explained, and readers might be baffled by the cryptic ending that caps such a well-handled buildup. Still, this hybrid weaves literary adventure with a uniquely American sense of mythology and lore, and does it all rather well.--Chipman, Ian Copyright 2009 Booklist
