War Horse

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SYNOPSIS:

Joey is a warhorse, but he wasn't always. Once, he was a farm horse and a gentle boy named Albert was his master. Then World War I came storming through and everything changed. Albert's father sells Joey to the army where the beautiful, red-bay horse is trained to charge the enemy, drag heavy artillery, and carry wounded soldiers not much older than Albert off of battlefields. Amongst the clamoring of guns and slogging through the cold mud, Joey wonders if the war will ever end. And if it does, will he ever find Albert again?

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REVIEW

2 STARS

Before going into this, I had never heard of it (I didn't know it was adapted into a popular movie) and I didn't know it followed the perspective of a horse, otherwise I would've thought twice before buying it. Not that I have any issues with books told from an animal perspective (although I haven't read many), but I would've tried to know more instead of impulsively buying it.

Even though the perspective didn't bother me, the plot that was H-O-R-R-I-B-L-E as the same thing kept happening time and time again: horse meets human, human loves him, the human is forced to leave him behind / give him to someone else. This throughout 180 pages was no fun at all! It bored me to death, it didn't teach me anything about the first World War and on top of that, it wasn't accurate. For instance, I know our main character is a horse, so we have to stretch the line of what is possible, but HOW DID THE FREAKING HORSE UNDERSTAND THE GERMAN AND THE FRENCH SOLDIERS? This angered me so much and it's so common in English literature: being lazy and self-centered they end up disrespecting other cultures. If you were a tourist and you didn't speak the native language of the country you were visiting, you wouldn't understand a thing of what the people were saying and that's okay. It's part of the experience. In a book that's supposed to "celebrate" the World War, the only respectful thing to do would be to homage other languages, embracing this as an opportunity to educate people – since the book is so simple in terms of vocabulary, creating simple dialogues in German or French wouldn't be that hard. It angers me, really, how everything must be "englishified" – it's like the horse had a translating machine with him at all times.

Lastly, the pace of this book was so fast that despite making it an easy read, it made it impossible for me to get attached to the characters or feel any deep connection with the story. The author tried so hard to create drama and sad moments that none of those were believable or heartbreaking. This was a mediocre read for me.