Author: aragornstrider

Genre: Short story

What I liked about this book:

Anyone who knows anything about me knows why this one got bumped to the top of the queue immediately upon reading the title.

What I did NOT like about this book:

I know a lot about racing. I follow it, I handicap, I own an off-track thoroughbred. I've been to two grade one stakes races and hung around the backstretch at the local track for long enough to know a little. By no means am I an expert, but a few things jumped out here.

The first is that breeders almost always pinch one of the twins if a horse has twins. This is because twin foals will not only usually die but can also kill the broodmare, which is an expensive proposition. In fact anyone who doesn't do this is arguably being irresponsible.

From there, the odds of two twin horses both making it to the Kentucky Derby are astronomical. It's rare for even half siblings to both make it because there are 20,000 thoroughbreds born yearly in the US and 20 Derby slots, some of which are taken by people out of the country. You're trying to sell me that both these horses, who were almost certainly disadvantaged due to being twins, qualified with enough points to make it to the Derby?

Pfft, okay. That would literally never happen. Suspension of disbelief broken.

A second problem is that being deaf definitely wouldn't cause issues for a racehorse. A lot of them get cotton stuffed in their ears because the noise scares them. A deaf horse likely wouldn't stand out from the crowd apart from being slightly more bombproof. If you're gonna go with a disability, go with missing eyes. Patch ran in the Derby this year with one eye missing, and he's not the only one that has.

Apart from that this story is just not that well written. It reads like a summary of a longer book. I don't give a fuck if Twinkles McGee The Racehorse won the triple crown if you just type out in a paragraph that he did that. Take me through all three races. Show me his struggle, or even better, that of his connections.

Do some more research on thoroughbred racing and then make this a book then maybe I would find it tolerable.

Overall:

It's unfortunate when you hand a reviewer bad stories about their favorite thing.

Rating:

1/10. Maybe 2/10. Needs research and to be novel length.