Blood Red Horse

Title: Blood Red Horse
Author: K. M. Grant
Series: The De Granville Trilogy, book 1
Major Themes: Crusades, King Richard, Saladin, Horses, England, Turkey, Israel
Synopsis: Combine a warhorse, a beautiful girl, and two brothers going off to the Crusades and you get quite an interesting story!

I found a used copy of K. M. Grant’s Blood Red Horse a few weeks ago, and thought it looked interesting. When it came, I decided I should probably read it before putting it on the shelves of our library. It’s hard to know, when looking at a book by a new-to-me author, if it is one that I want to read aloud to my children or have on the shelves for them to read. And, since we run a small lending library, I have to consider other people as well. So, while I don’t read nearly all of the new books that come in, because of the subject matter of this one and the fact I’ve never read anything by the author, I decided I should.

Publisher’s description:

My thoughts:

So, what was my conclusion? I liked a lot of parts of the story. I liked the ending, and I liked the history that was brought to life. Blood Red Horse shows King Richard, famous from the Robin Hood stories, as a real person. The crusades are shown in all their gore. The fact that this is a horse story, and also somewhat of a romance, although that part is fairly minor, will make it appeal to girls, as it will appeal to boys who like fighting. As you can see in the warnings paragraph, there are a lot of bloody scenes. I decided, because of that, this is a book I don’t want to read aloud. However, I like the history presented, and I especially like the personal growth that is shown in the four main characters. Cause and effect are vividly illustrated, and the effects of anger and a desire for revenge appear clearly. For that reason, I am adding this book to our library, even though it is quite violent at times.

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