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Painted Horses, by Malcolm Brooks
Painted Horses is a novel that my young daughter had pulled from the library shelf, seemingly at random, the last time we were able to actually go there in person in the before-times.
I had sort of put off reading it, but now that the library is up and running again it was almost due, so I wanted to try it out and see what it was she selected.
I'll admit that I enjoyed the story, or perhaps rather the whole execution, more than I expected, and more than the pretty low Goodreads score (if that is even to be referenced) would have led me to believe. Proving yet again that it's never worth reading reviews, just make up your own mind.
The story follows an archeologist Catherine as she follows her passion, disappoints her parents, learns the craft and catches the enthusiasm in London, and lands a seemingly fascinating opportunity to perform her own site research at a remote canyon location out West, looking for reasons why a massive new proposed dam should not flood the whole area.
The author does a fair job of creating and fleshing out the characters we meet and describing the rugged geography of the plains. He seems to have a special affinity for horses which was likely the inspiration for this book - always write what you know - and describes them in loving detail.
Perhaps the most interesting and strongest part of the work were the war chapters, as the lead male chracter goes over there, and has his experiences.
A big arc of the plot ends up being resolved very neatly about 75% of the way through the book, and it would almost have been a nicer place to end, save for all the other loose ends. The remainder ends up getting sort of darker and incongruous with what came before, and one wonders at the different point in life that the author reached when writing those closing chapters.
Overall, there are many better ways to spend your reading time, but this was not a bad book and the author clearly put a lot of effort and passion into creating it.
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