Chapter by Chapter features me reading one chapter of the selected book at the time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as read-along book club.
Maybe I need to do a web search or something to explain why this plan is so evil? Why can’t the Captain simply arrange a mating between these two? Is it too close to the new racing season? Does mating ruin a horse’s racing career somehow? It’s a sticking point that is making it hard for me to get into this story. And yet we keep seeing the Captain lulling Alec further into some insidious web rather than trying to start a breeding program between Black and Ghost. We’re almost half-way through the book so I don’t think answers are going to be forthcoming.
Chapter 8: The Legend
Well, we get a partial answer to my plight. The Captain finally comes out and admits that he wants Black and Ghost to mate so he can have a new horse to train as Ghost gets too old to perform. Alec refuses and then, as the Captain (who as you may recall way back in the prologue stated that he is used to getting what he wants) is visually upset about it reminds him what that would mean to the Black and his racing. I mean, he doesn’t tell US, or to be more specific, ME, someone who knows nothing about horses, and says that they could wait until after racing season. Then Alec wouldn’t fight him. Now, I don’t know when racing season is. All I could find is that it differs from state to state but there must be a period where this could be arranged without what I’m assuming is chicanery.
Okay, I may be wrong about voodoo not playing a part since this story opens with Alec believing the Captain was really into his Haitian roots despite his French upbringing, including the more mystical side of Haitian culture/religion. Specifically a legend of a being named Kovi, which a quick Bing search only brought up a fabric company and a few other businesses while Google brought up another review of this book and a DeviantART posting swearing it’s a Cajun Indian legend but also pointed to this book. (That link describes the legend well enough.) And the Zemanta service that finds tags and links for me brought up a Hungarian porn director. This is the wrong site to make certain jokes.
The Captain swears it’s true that he is descended from a tribesman that betrayed his people to Spanish Conquistadors under the command of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, who had scared the Carib because they thought horses were gods and seeing the Conquistadors riding horses scared them. Anyway, events convinced the Captain that Kovi, who eliminated the Spaniards and punished his ancestor is now targeting him, but the Captain is convinced he hasn’t been drawn here to die and that for some reason Alec (also a horseman and thus also under the threat of Kovi) was drawn here as well. This is totally out of nowhere. Yes, we’ve seen the Captain is a superstitious man and his ancestry if not is upbringing would tie him to that, including the way Philippe first met Odin as described in this chapter, but I thought this story was about getting the Black to mate with Ghost. Why are we suddenly tossing the supernatural into this story? Remember, this is the only Black Stallion story I’ve read, having never read the other books or seen the movie, so I don’t know if this is normal for this franchise, but it feels like a second plot.
The Captain trying to get the Black to mate with his horse makes a certain kind of sense and I initially thought that the mystical talk meant that he was trying to convince Alec that the stars or whatever wanted the horses brought together. There’s another discussion where the Captain and Alec are discussing the effects of horse breeding, like Ghost being unable to perform if she is with colt. And then we suddenly get this talk about horse-guardian deities that the Captain traced to the Everglades. It feels like the wrong direction, really, like Farley decided to change plots mid-story.
The story continues next time and with the title of the next chapter we can guess Alec won’t be sleeping well after this ghost story.
Next time: Nightmare!
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Haha, I can’t believe that my picture came up in your search results. That drawing was not only done years ago, it was my interpretation of Kovi and the info in it was specifically alt for an RPG, I was aware Kovi was not a real Deity. There are however Haitian legends and monsters very similar that I believe Kovi was based off of.
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It certainly explains why the Captain was so afraid of it. It’s nice work, coming from someone who usually bypasses horror, and the only connection to this book the image search came up with. So I’m glad it’s a good one, with such a good explanation of the fictional legend. Ace job!
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Thank you!
As for the breeding thing, it’s generally frowned upon to breed stallions during their racing career because it spikes their testosterone and they’re a lot more difficult to handle, more likely to get into fights with other horses and in some horses it can lead to them losing some of their running shape.
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I wish the book had explained that for any readers like me who aren’t horse enthusiasts but I figured it was something like that. Actually I thought it was the opposite and they slowed down. Thanks for the full info.
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