They came in with the tide. The moon illuminated long lines of froth as the waves gathered and gathered and gathered offshore, and when they finally broke on the sand, the capaill uisce tumbled onto the shore with them. The horses pulled their heads up with effort, trying to break free from the salt water.

I had to restrain the squealing, fangirly Maja and shove her in the closet so that the adult, critical Maja can sit and write this review. Believe me, it’s better this way.

With The Scorpio Rac More...

I am seriously excited for this. As excited as this kitten, in fact.

Also posted on STRANGEMORE.COM.

This is basically the paranormal version of Misty of Chincatigue with (gasp!) romance!

Like Hidalgo, on the beach instead of the desert with (gasp!) kissing! Between two riders! NOT between the horse and it's rider though. Well... sometimes between the horse and it's rider. Just a little.

When this book started, it felt like a breath of fresh sea air, not rife with the smell of YA cliche. That was mainly because I thought this book was told from the alternating persp More...

March 2012
Pittsburgh, PA

My Dearest Maggie,

Sometimes I can be a total prick, but I'm not above apologizing for it. About a year ago, I eviscerated your novel Shiver. Then I took another jab at you when I reviewed Franny Billingsley's Chime. I will not take those statements back. Shiver is an incredibly shitty book, Maggie.

But I will apologize for saying you're a worse writer than Stephenie Meyer. She's way shittier than you. You've sorta redeemed yourself with The Scorpio Races. Sorta. I am not More...

Absolutely fantasical! More please...

First off, a huge thanks to Flannery from thereadventurer who is touring this book with the Street Corner Bookers and allowed me to experience this crazy sauce of a book! Thank you!

Wow! Just wow!! Maggie Stiefvater has definitely cemented her status in the YA genre and Scorpio Races is her full access ticket to the game. I've enjoyed her Mercy Falls trilogy for over a couple of years, but this book has definitely pulled her away from the pack and shown she ha More...

This was a book I was ready to hate. Actually, if I'm being honest, this was a book I wanted to hate. What? German foosball players aren't the only ones capable of schadenfreude.


Plus, this was a story about horses, those vicious, four-legged beasts that naive children are tricked into riding at summer camp before they're brutally thrown off. Hypothetically speaking, of course. Yet I found myself drawn into this story, this mythic tale of savage water horses in a barbaric race created by all too More...

In the Scorpio sea, somewhere in the Atlantic, lies the island of Thisby. It's a small island mainly inhabited by fishermen but it's also popular for its capaill uisce and its Scorpio Races. Capaill uisce are fearsome water horses. They feed on meat and blood and they are predators, killers.
The Scorpio Races are held each year in November and they're a tradition in Thisby. They're also dangerous, brutal and the cause of several casualties each year; because of course riders, in these races, com More...

The capaill uisce plunged down the sand, skirmishing and bucking, shaking the sea form out of their manes and the Atlantic from their hooves. They screamed back to the others still in the water, high wails that raised the hair on my arms. They were swift and deadly, savage and beautiful. The horses were giants, at once the ocean and the island, and that was when I loved them.

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater is a difficult novel to describe: it is one-part race novel, one-part horse appreci More...

Edit: I feel it worth nothing that this is my 250th Goodreads review. Yay milestones!


This is the first time I've felt even a little guilty about not liking a galley. I didn't really enjoy this book, but I didn't hate it enough not to care, and so here I am stuck in limbo, not really sure what to do with it.

The idea is absolutely fabulous. A race run on killer water horses? Yes, please. And there's the element of romance between two competitors, both with a reason they need to win, which just amp More...

This was the most gorgeous audio book I’ve listened to yet. I am wavering a little in saying that because it is up against Flo Gibson’s reading of Wuthering Heights, Mia Farrow’s reading of What Falls Away, and Stephen Fry’s reading of The Hitchhiker s Guide to the Galaxy. But, this audio was outstanding. Let’s not compare them all to each other because they are all outrageously excellent, and I don’t want them to fight. But, oh, this book. So beautiful. So, so beautiful. Listen to the audio of More...

The Scorpio Races is one of those books that you can read as much as you want about and raise your expectations to seemingly unreachable levels, but nothing can prepare you for the story within its pages. It’s beautiful – from the writing, to the descriptions, to the characters and their relationships – everything about this novel is a beauty. Yet, what truly moved me as I read this novel was the sheer amount of passion it contained. I have never read a Maggie Stiefvater novel before, but if More...

Tarot card reading for this book: inverted Tower. The Tower is leaning into the sea, crumbling, with thrashing waves and stormy skies, and while it can be a card of destruction, it can also be a card of fundamental change--which describes The Scorpio Races down to the letter.

A fierce and hungry book. Even the wind is hungry here, "a live, starving thing." The tomboyish Kate, otherwise known as 'Puck,' and her brothers have been orphaned ever since the carnivorous water horses killed their parent More...

Originally posted here.

I enjoyed reading Maggie Stiefvater's books in the past but it wasn't until I saw glowing reviews from blogging buddies and Goodreads friends that I became really curious about The Scorpio Races. It sounds different from anything else that she's written and Maggie herself said that this is her favorite out of all of her books. How's that for encouragement? I couldn't pass up reading this one and I like that it's a standalone novel.

Sigh, what a lovely, lovely book this turn More...

Guest reviewed by Sarah for Book Chick City. 7/10 on the blog.

As a big fan of Maggie Stiefvater's 'Wolves of Mercy Falls' series I was really excited about reading "The Scorpio Races". Although the books couldn't be more different in terms of the worlds Maggie has created they both have her beautifully descriptive style and you are fully pulled into the story. I did find that "The Scorpio Races" was a bit slow to get started, I struggled a little to get into the story and found the mythology of More...

Review courtesy of All Things Urban Fantasy

THE SCORPIO RACES by Maggie Stiefvater is very different sort of book from her Shiver or Ballad series. It still has the same lovely writing and emotional layers, but the romance is much more like the classical definition of that word and less like the modern understanding. There are several love stories, but they aren’t just the sort where a boy falls in love with a girl (although I did particularly love that sort here). This is a thrilling and heroic More...

**This review also appears here on my blog, Tripping Over Books**

I've read all of Maggie Stiefvater's books and really enjoyed every one, but I think that The Scorpio Races might be my favorite. I love everything about it: the characters, the atmosphere, the plot, the writing. I was particularly taken with the setting, Thisby. It reminded me of one of those old sleepy New England coast towns that is full and buzzing in the summer but empty of everything except the quirky, tight-knit locals durin More...

Oh no. I hate leaving negative reviews. I'll just be quick about it.

What I liked:

-Maggie writes pretty. Has hit the nail on the head in this regard. Not tediously overwritten like Shiver, just beautiful and evocative. Two stars for that.

What I didn't like quite so much:

-NOTHING HAPPENS. N-o-t-h-i-n-g. A third of the way through, bored to TEARS, I had to check a review or two...and that is when I found out that the Scorpio Races don't actually begin until the last 12 pages of the book. All the re More...

Review originally posted on The Book Smugglers

All cards on the table: I have always been on the fence when it comes to Maggie Stiefvater’s books. I read Lament and tried to read Shiver but didn’t like either book. I was irritated by the characters, by their lack of logical development and above all by the no-holds barred, insta-love/obsessive – type of romance story that drove those stories. However, I have always been able to appreciate this author’s beautiful prose (despite a certain tendency More...

This book gave me fits, I was prepared to fall in love with it from the beginning because I follow Stiefvater's blog and enjoyed her Mercy Falls trilogy. I think she writes beautifully and creates strong characters. That being said, the first 200 pages of this book were a struggle. Like her other books, the story is told in alternating POV's between the male and female main characters. I liked the slow build for the romance but I really needed more to happen in the first half of the book than bu More...

Alrighty then. I've been terrible at doing reviews lately, and I finished this book, like, a month ago. So now I'm going to review it. Because I have like two other books that I really, really want to review. Not that I don't want to review this book, because I do. But yeah. I guess I just don't have anything very entertaining to say about it.

So, to briefly explain what The Scorpio Races is about, I made this illustration:



Uh yeah. So it's basically about an island where horses eat people. Awesom More...

This review also appears on The Dreaming Reader.

Actual Rating: 3.5 Stars

My AP U.S. History teacher used to joke that he'd given us fun projects for the final couple months of the year because they always erased the bad memories we had of the grueling tests and homework packets we had to do for the majority of the year.

And that's what the last fifty pages of The Scorpio Races have done. They were so intense, they basically obliterated the mind-numbing monotony of the other 350 pages. I would've More...

Originally reviewed on my blog, Books from Bleh to Basically Amazing.

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater was a book I was really excited to read. I've heard almost nothing but good things about Maggie's Shiver series, and the early talk I'd heard about this book was also quite positive. And, it was a book about hard-core, killer water horses... Sounds fascinating! But alas. I was seriously disappointed in this book, mostly because I didn't actually feel like anything really happened. I read More...

4.5 stars

There's something magical about Maggie Stiefvater's writing. She has this ability to capture my attention with her beautiful lyrical writing, relatable characters and creative story telling. Much like her fey and wolf series, Maggie has a talent for taking a well known lore and making it her own. She does this by taking a mythology that's been around for ages and gives it a fresh, unique, engaging re-telling that's all her own.

The Scorpio Races rich mythology is based on water horses, More...

Whilst I let this story percolate in the hollow cavern that is my brain-brain, I shall say five things:

a. This story is beautifully told.
b. It is NOT however what I thought it was advertised to be.
c. What I thought it would be was a swashbuckling adventure of a tale about racing and that maybe there be some scorpions involved.
d. What I got was an Irish ditty about two young love birds, an island filled with mythical creatures, and a smattering of delightfully colorful secondary characters.
e. Oh More...

(2.5 stars) Maggie Stiefvater is just one of those authors whose writing doesn't sing to me. It's nothing personal. I've been holding a book grudge against her since the awful experience I had with Lament and all the things I've heard about the Shiver books, but after cajoling from a few different people in different places, I decided to give it a try.

Stiefvater is an excellent scene setter. Her thick description is vivid and lyrical (though reading this after Francesca Lia Block dims her light More...

This book was awesome! the seahorses were great, the main characters were wonderful, and I just want more.

This and other reviews can be found on my blog (un)Conventional Bookviews.

I had no idea what to expect when I picked up The Scorpio Races, and I was completely blown away by it all! The characters, the vicious cappal uisce and the mystery surrounding both them and the race.

The Scorpio Races is a very slow and subtle story. Maggie Stiefvater has said that she will sacrifice many things in her story to make readers feel something and it shows. Contrary to what the title may imply this is not an action packed racing story, and I feel like that may be why so many of the reviews are all over the place, because readers came into the story expecting something different. It’s not that the negative reviews citing lack of action are wrong, that’s all a matter of personal pr More...

Maggie Stiefvater’s writing is like music. Her words flow from the pages and land softly on your tongue…you can almost taste and feel and breath in the story as if you had the neurological condition called Synesthesia. Stiefvater’s writing is larger-than-life, interesting, original and profound. In the end it is just a story of a girl, a boy and two horses but the writing in-between makes it resonate.

On an island called Thisby water horses rise from the sea hungry and confused at the onset of wi More...

4.5 stars. I had a lovely time reading it. Maybe more later.