by Danielle Steel
Delacorte Press (Random House) 2014

Method of selection: Brought down a Malaysian jetliner with its shittiness. Found floating in the South China Sea, bone dry and in perfect condition. Possibly the world’s most evil shitty book.
First sentence: It was already nightfall when the stable boys heard the horses approaching.
Final sentence: Pegasus had come home.
Plot that happens in between which I made up: A cybernetic clan of hive-mind horses is sent from the future to exterminate the human race, in retribution for the years they spent enslaved to the circus. But, unable to find the cybernetic future oats they need to power their fusion bobsleds, and with their visionary horse leader, Pegasus, perishing ignominiously in a glue factory, they are ironically reduced to performing in a horse circus to survive, forced to prance around for the rest of their cybernetic lives, which is the one thing horses hate the most.
Books that are still worse than this: the Bible, James Patterson’s autobiography, Lady Chaddiwickington’s Horse-Fancier’s Guide to Horse Prancing

Other reviews: Momzinga, Always Me

This is a book about horses. Pretty pretty white fancy horses prancing prettily and doing cartwheels page after page after pretty white page. Did I mention they’re fancy? Also white. And pretty. And possibly Nazi horses. I know this because horses are referred to 14 times in the first three pages. If you include horse-related words like “stable boys” and “sidesaddle” and “riding school” and “Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DERP)” it’s more like 30-35. Also, the horses’ bloodlines are pure. This is a book about the horse master race and the donkey genocide. Supposedly it’s also about an aristocratic German family and the Nazis, but seriously, this is a book about horses. It’s horse porn. And thank god all the gay marriage prohibitions have been repealed in America because after the public reads this there will be an unstoppable wave of horse marriages. Which means I can finally do the right thing and marry your mom.

The writing itself is full of words which say things, but I’m not sure what. There’s a fox hunt, some detail about horse dancing, and something about somebody’s mother dying in childbirth, but it was glossed over so it must not be important. Little happens, except for the riders returning from the fox hunt, with ladies riding sidesaddle (of course, because this is a fancy book about fanciness and fancy horses shooting horse cum everywhere) and horses prancing. There is no shortage of prancing in the first three pages.

The synopsis also claims this is a book of “hope and sacrifice, tragedy, challenge, and rebirth”. This is accurate. I hoped it wouldn’t be shitty, but it was, so I sacrificed my dignity to read it, reflecting on the tragedy of the life of a grown man who pecks out unread words for a virtual world that gives nothing back to him, challenging myself to do something more meaningful with my life, and ultimately being reborn as an angrier, more cynical shitty book reviewer.

Fuck this book. And fuck you. And fuck every horse that ever lived and the people who make them prance.

Also, fuck Danielle Steel’s kids. She has nine of them, and dedicates this book to them, an act tantamount to pony punching, and there’s nothing lower than punching a pony. Look:

Beatie, Trevor, Todd, Nick, Sam, Victoria, Vanessa, Maxx, and Zara,
To history, magic, survival, and new lives,
To the Pegasus in each of our lives, to carry us forward,
And the courage to pursue him bravely and embrace him.
I love you so very much
Mommy/d.s.

I’m not sure what “d.s.” stands for. Maybe “duck slavery” or “dog shoving”? What a mean lady. She really hates animals.

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