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I read a bunch of this series when I was a kid-- there are 25 of them-- but not all, and I must have missed The Black Stallion Returns because it didn't seem at all familiar, and I am pretty sure I would have remembered the ending, if nothing else.
These were much as I remembered them: pulpish but evocative writing about a boy and his horse, the joy of riding and communing with a powerful and half-wild animal, and enough races, troubles with registration papers, and thrilling adventures to make up a story upon which to hang the overarching point of the series, which is the love between Alec Ramsey and his stallion, The Black. (Shut up, it is totally platonic.)
The best part of the first book is the first half, in which teenage Alec survives a shipwreck by hanging on to the halter of the wild black stallion the ship was transporting, and whom he'd earlier tried to befriend by leaving sugar in his stall. The Black swims to a desert island, where Alec manages to feed them both by drying seaweed, and tames The Black and learns to ride him. The second half, where they are rescued and Alec brings The Black back to America, breaks him to saddle, and races him in a test match between the two fastest horses in the country, is a bit of a come-down after the primal desert island scenes.
The Black is absent from much of The Black Stallion Returns, for his original owner, an Arab chieftain, shows up to claim him. Alec offers to buy The Black, but the chieftain refuses to sell and taes him away. Alec manages to get the owner of one of the horses The Black beat in the test match to take him and The Black's trainer to Arabia, to seek out the chieftain, Abu Ja Kub Ben Ishak, and no I am not going to type that out every time I mention him, so they can buy some of his other horses as breeding stock, since he's obviously got an excellent breeding program. This does not square with the fact that The Black appeared to be a captured wild horse in the first book, but whatever.
Arabian adventures follow, as Alec and company get lost in the desert and have to drink water vomited up by a dying camel, get mixed up in a complicated scheme involving a feud between two Bedouin tribes, get shot at, get tortured, see significant Arabian medallions, are instrumental in returning a house-boy with a significant birth mark to his rightful place in a Bedouin tribe, and, of course, Alec races The Black.
This is kind of Orientalist-- it was written in 1945-- but I prefer the "They are a noble race, terrible in battle yet bound by honor" Western narrative of the Middle East to the current one of "They are a race of evil suicide bombers."
The first book also assumes that women can't ride and have no interest in horses, but the second one introduces a tough Bedouin princess who rides The Black's intended mate. (She hooks up with another Bedouin, not with Alec. I think Alec is still fourteen at that point.) The Black Stallion and the Girl includes two female jockeys, although one is unfortunately a bit of a Mary Sue of a free-spirited hippie girl and the other is hard as nails.
Fun stuff. I look forward to reading The Island Stallion, which I vaguely recall involves aliens or weird experiments or Atlantis or some other sf-nal elements, unless I'm totally hallucinating.
These were much as I remembered them: pulpish but evocative writing about a boy and his horse, the joy of riding and communing with a powerful and half-wild animal, and enough races, troubles with registration papers, and thrilling adventures to make up a story upon which to hang the overarching point of the series, which is the love between Alec Ramsey and his stallion, The Black. (Shut up, it is totally platonic.)
The best part of the first book is the first half, in which teenage Alec survives a shipwreck by hanging on to the halter of the wild black stallion the ship was transporting, and whom he'd earlier tried to befriend by leaving sugar in his stall. The Black swims to a desert island, where Alec manages to feed them both by drying seaweed, and tames The Black and learns to ride him. The second half, where they are rescued and Alec brings The Black back to America, breaks him to saddle, and races him in a test match between the two fastest horses in the country, is a bit of a come-down after the primal desert island scenes.
The Black is absent from much of The Black Stallion Returns, for his original owner, an Arab chieftain, shows up to claim him. Alec offers to buy The Black, but the chieftain refuses to sell and taes him away. Alec manages to get the owner of one of the horses The Black beat in the test match to take him and The Black's trainer to Arabia, to seek out the chieftain, Abu Ja Kub Ben Ishak, and no I am not going to type that out every time I mention him, so they can buy some of his other horses as breeding stock, since he's obviously got an excellent breeding program. This does not square with the fact that The Black appeared to be a captured wild horse in the first book, but whatever.
Arabian adventures follow, as Alec and company get lost in the desert and have to drink water vomited up by a dying camel, get mixed up in a complicated scheme involving a feud between two Bedouin tribes, get shot at, get tortured, see significant Arabian medallions, are instrumental in returning a house-boy with a significant birth mark to his rightful place in a Bedouin tribe, and, of course, Alec races The Black.
This is kind of Orientalist-- it was written in 1945-- but I prefer the "They are a noble race, terrible in battle yet bound by honor" Western narrative of the Middle East to the current one of "They are a race of evil suicide bombers."
The first book also assumes that women can't ride and have no interest in horses, but the second one introduces a tough Bedouin princess who rides The Black's intended mate. (She hooks up with another Bedouin, not with Alec. I think Alec is still fourteen at that point.) The Black Stallion and the Girl includes two female jockeys, although one is unfortunately a bit of a Mary Sue of a free-spirited hippie girl and the other is hard as nails.
Fun stuff. I look forward to reading The Island Stallion, which I vaguely recall involves aliens or weird experiments or Atlantis or some other sf-nal elements, unless I'm totally hallucinating.