The story of Alexander the Great as told by his horse, Bucephalus.

It sounds very twee, and is obviously meant for a younger readership, but turned out to pack quite an emotional punch. ( )

Based on real-life events, this book describe the relationship between Alexander the Great and his horse. We follow the ambitious young king on his long campaign to conquer the Persian empire along with India and form the largest empire in ancient history, the twist being that the story is literally told from the horse's mouth. The description of their initial encounter in the novel is very similar to that stated in wikipedia:

When Alexander was ten years old, a horse trader from Thessaly brought Philip a horse, which he offered to sell for thirteen talents. The horse refused to be mounted by anyone, and Philip ordered it to be taken away. Alexander, however, detected the horse's fear of his own shadow and asked for a turn to tame the horse, which he eventually managed. According to Plutarch, Philip, overjoyed at this display of courage and ambition, kissed him tearfully, declaring: "My boy, you must find a kingdom big enough for your ambitions. Macedon is too small for you", and bought the horse for him. Alexander would name the horse Bucephalas, meaning "ox-head". Bucephalas would be Alexander's companion throughout his journeys as far as India. When Bucephalas died (due to old age, according to Plutarch, for he was already thirty), Alexander named a city after him, Bucephala.

In this fictional account, Roberts invents a young groom, Charmedes who is attached to Bucephalas by a strong spiritual connection, and since the horse is dangerous to handle by anyone else, Alexander appoints young Charmedes as his official horse groom. When it turns out that Charmedes is actually Charmeia, even though it is unheard of that a girl should do a man's work, Alexander still keeps her on as she is the only one who can give the special care required by Bucephalas to heal all the wounds he receives in battle, and he also relies on what appears to be her prophetic dreams.

I really wanted to like this book a lot. I'm usually immediately taken in by stories about animals and this one was recommended by Kerry, who's suggestions usually hit the spot for me, but it just didn't click. One of the problems is that I don't enjoy stories of battles to begin with and this book described Alexander's conquests step by step. I might have enjoyed it more if it had not been written for young adults, because the tone and approach sometimes grated on me. For example, most of the chapters ended with a tally by the horse of the results following each battle with numbers of enemies dead, numbers taken as slaves, numbers of Macedonians dead and how many horses have perished. The last statistic was usually accompanied by a comment from Bucephalas such as: "Horses dead: 100, including Zoroaster and Aura's foal (VERY sad!)" One interesting aspect was that we got Bucephalas' unbiased view of the great conqueror, who believed himself to be the son of Zeus and was obsessed with reaching the end of the world where it was prophesized that he would attain immortality. Not surprisingly, Alexander comes across as an insecure brute who is intent on forcing the world to regard him as a great king. An interesting book, but unfortunately not quite my cup of tea. ( )

You never truly know anything until you see it through a horse's eyes. This book was amazing. ( )

This is a pretty good book, but is long and can get a little stale in the middle; but it is not bad. It is about Alexander the Great's war horse. It tells the story through Brucephalas (Alexander's war horse) eyes and ears. ( )

A fine book thanks to its wonderful main character, Bucephalas, the proud, ornery and honorable leader of King Alexander's "herd." His horseiness is effective and fun--"I gave him flat ears"--and effectively applied to the human behavior he sees, like Alexander and his many enemies forever engaging in "squealing contests," people giving each other the human equivalent of flat ears, etc. His perspective is altogether horsey, as when he gives the statistics after each battle of however many thousands of enemy dead, X-number of Macedonians, X-number of horses (many by name--"sad, sad, sad, sad, sad!!!"). When he names the guard that led into battle, it's the horses he names (starting with "Me, Bucephalas") followed by which soldier each was carrying. His own and other horses' extraordinarily brave behavior in battle is given attention seldom considered, as he--being kind of a nasty tempered stallion anyway--is biting and rearing and inspiring fear in the enemy just as he does with grooms and other horses--and dodging spears the way a cutting horse works a cow and giving his all to keep his rider safe. It's a point of desperate shame for a war horse to allow his rider to be wounded, let alone to return from battle riderless. He has his best friends, favorite mares, and lesser-character types among the horses, but interestingly, as the narrative is conceived here, the animals don't "converse" among themselves, though they communicate beautifully with their neighs and nickers and squeals. They don't need a bunch of "boring" talk about honor and glory--the kind of stuff that pumps up the troops and sends B back to his hay. Alexander and B are a perfect pair as lead stallions--B literally and A figuratively "dominating dung" (the horsey equivalent of territorial pissing, of course) everywhere they go. One of B's greatest lines is the prideful exclamation at the end of a successful battle or squealing contest: "Ha! dominated."

A very effective trope in the book is B's sixth sense--he sees ghosts, and it is the terror of this at times that causes him to act up--freeze or run in fear, as horses will. He always sees a killed horse's or soldier's ghost rise into the air, and he knows, even from a distance, if someone has died. This becomes an extraordinarily eerie and powerful thing as the book progresses and the numbers of dead rise and Bucephalas himself ages. One friend, Borealis, dies a terrible death on a snowy mountain pass; when the army takes that route again, B starts in horror at the sight of the skeleton--and of the ghost of Borealis waiting there. Borealis pricks his ears and joins his friends and is never far away again, grazing nearby or even entering an empty stall next to B at a stable--an omen if ever there was one, and Alexander sees him, too. As they retrace other battle sites, the ghosts of other dead horses shimmer into view and rejoin the guard--Zoroaster the Persians' kindly sacred gelding, Psylla the brave little mare lost early on, etc. B always neighs after a battle to check in on his personal herd and ticks off their return neighs to be certain they're okay--and among the neighs he recognizes is that of Borealis. A shock--the first time he's ever heard a ghost neigh. When B is gravely injured in battle, the ghosts become more solid. His death is handled with extraordinary delicacy. His great heart stops beating...then begins again. He rises, feeling strong and pain-free, his ghostly friends whinny joyfully to him... There's no mention of realization that he's a ghost himself as he hurries with the guard to the site where word is the king is dying. (He's a great and powerful ghost, by the way, splashing his favorite mare in a water crossing till she gets annoyed with him, giving flat ears to guards who feel intimidated as ever by SOMEthing...) He's at Alexander's bedside when the king's ghost rises. He takes his king on his back once more and they ride into eternity together, conquering death--"Ha!"

Unfortunately, the weak links in this otherwise powerfully imagined magical history are the humans. Alexander comes off pretty much as a megalomaniacal, psychotic knucklehead (not exactly a nuanced portrayal to vie with Mary Renault's), and the fictitious add-ons are blatantly just that: the evil horsemaster, hated by B and dismissed by A, who's around every corner plotting and figuratively twirling his mustache; and Charm, the girl groom first disguised as a boy, who's the only OTHER (uh-huh) person who can ride B, who runs around having psychic dreams and blubbering a lot, and is clearly invented to reel in teenaged girl readers. These are the elements (primarily) that make this a young adult novel. "The great horse" doesn't need their "help" to tell his brave story. ( )