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This book has a charmingly bizarre premise. In a fantasy land, reincarnation is a fact of life, and extremely bad people are reborn as monsters called kehoks. So naturally, there is kehok racing! It's exactly like horse racing, down to betting and racing commissions, except that the animals racing are bad people reincarnated as monsters and the riders have to use willpower to psychically control them or the kehoks will kill them. (A common form of cheating is the trainer sneaking close enough to help psychically control the kehoks.) The kehok who wins the equivalent of the Grand National gets a magic token that enables it to be reincarnated as a human again; otherwise it will permanently reincarnate as a kehok.
Tamra is a former kehok rider who was forced to retire due to a disastrous race that disabled and disgraced her. She's now a small-time trainer in danger of losing her young daughter. This is because augurs, who can read auras and tell people what they'll be reincarnated as or who an animal used to be in its last life, are wealthy and respected, run augur training schools, and can grab any child whose aura is pure of heart, mandate them into augur school, force the parent to pay its exorbitant fees, and take away the child permanently if they can't afford them. Tamra's daughter was chosen by the augurs, so she has to find a winning kehok or else.
Meanwhile, the former emperor died unexpectedly, but his brother who is next in line can't ascend the throne until the augers find the former emperor's current reincarnation (assumed to be any animal but a kehok) and this is causing political problems.
Tamra finds a very unusual kehok who doesn't seem as vicious as most kehoks, and also an unusual, first-time rider who fled augur training and is being pursued by her parents who want to force her into an arranged marriage. Kehok Grand National, here we come!
This book has a lot going on (and I didn't even mention some plotlines); impressively, it is one book rather than a trilogy. The premise is extremely fun and original, though the overall shape of the story is predictable--you can probably figure out big chunks of it just from my summary of the set-up. It's written in a breezy contemporary style, with all the characters talking basically like modern Americans. It's clearly a deliberate choice and is sometimes funny, but I'd have preferred it to be either non-contemporary or else more deliberately anachronistic.
I liked it but didn't love it. It's hard to put my finger on exactly what I was missing, because it has a lot very appealing elements, but I think it was just a little too sketchy for me. The characters sound up my alley from descriptions, and they sort of were, but they needed to have hobbies or something to make them come to life. The reincarnation aspect was fascinating, but also a little sketchy.
Tamra is a former kehok rider who was forced to retire due to a disastrous race that disabled and disgraced her. She's now a small-time trainer in danger of losing her young daughter. This is because augurs, who can read auras and tell people what they'll be reincarnated as or who an animal used to be in its last life, are wealthy and respected, run augur training schools, and can grab any child whose aura is pure of heart, mandate them into augur school, force the parent to pay its exorbitant fees, and take away the child permanently if they can't afford them. Tamra's daughter was chosen by the augurs, so she has to find a winning kehok or else.
Meanwhile, the former emperor died unexpectedly, but his brother who is next in line can't ascend the throne until the augers find the former emperor's current reincarnation (assumed to be any animal but a kehok) and this is causing political problems.
Tamra finds a very unusual kehok who doesn't seem as vicious as most kehoks, and also an unusual, first-time rider who fled augur training and is being pursued by her parents who want to force her into an arranged marriage. Kehok Grand National, here we come!
This book has a lot going on (and I didn't even mention some plotlines); impressively, it is one book rather than a trilogy. The premise is extremely fun and original, though the overall shape of the story is predictable--you can probably figure out big chunks of it just from my summary of the set-up. It's written in a breezy contemporary style, with all the characters talking basically like modern Americans. It's clearly a deliberate choice and is sometimes funny, but I'd have preferred it to be either non-contemporary or else more deliberately anachronistic.
I liked it but didn't love it. It's hard to put my finger on exactly what I was missing, because it has a lot very appealing elements, but I think it was just a little too sketchy for me. The characters sound up my alley from descriptions, and they sort of were, but they needed to have hobbies or something to make them come to life. The reincarnation aspect was fascinating, but also a little sketchy.
