Daughter of the Centaurs

Daughter of the Centaurs by Kate Klimo (Ross?)

The amazon summary to get my bearings: "Malora knows what she was born to be: a horse wrangler and a hunter, just like her father. But when her people are massacred by batlike monsters called Leatherwings, Malora will need her horse skills just to survive. The last living human, Malora roams the wilderness at the head of a band of magnificent horses, relying only on her own wits, strength, and courage. When she is captured by a group of centaurs and taken to their city, Malora must decide whether the comforts of her new home and family are worth the parts of herself she must sacrifice to keep them. 
Kate Klimo has masterfully created a new world, which at first seems to be an ancient one or perhaps another world altogether, but is in fact set on earth sometime far in the future." Amazon Link

First off, I need to talk about how this book read. It's in third person, centers around Malora, and was thick like a history book. The humor in it's pretty subtle, but if you give the book a chance, it picks up. Malora reads at first as a child that's curious about things before she seems to develop the attitude of 'I have learned enough, now let me be a grown up.'

This all takes place in the future, but in a future that's without electric technology. Think the stone age, but they have books left over from our time.

The story picks up as her town where the People live (humans) are attacked by Leatherwings; creatures that have human heads, and basically the bodies of giant killer birds. I imagined vultures, but I'm not entirely sure if that's accurate.

Anyways. So the men are first killed by the Leatherwings who swoop down upon them after they are returning to the village after a hunting excursion. Malora witnesses their deaths and one horse survives, Sky, and Malora brings it back to the village tells them what she saw. Soon, the bones of the dead men and horses begin to sprinkle into the village a little bit a day. Really freaking creepy. The village tries to protect themselves, but after being slowly picked off, Malora's mother sends her off into the Plains to survive. Malora's mother forbids her from returning to the village.

Malora lives with Sky and she slowly accumulates more wild horses before she's traveling with a herd of horses. She beings to long for the village, and against her mother's wishes returns. She discovers that the village died as they poisoned themselves and offered their poisoned bodies to the Leatherbacks. Malora discovers many Leatherbacks dead next to humans.

While Malora is up in the remains of her village, the centaurs have closed in as they want her herd of horses. The centaurs manage to capture her, and end up bringing her back to their home.

That is when it got REALLY tedious for me to read. I think too much time was spent on the centaurs going "GASP, A HUMAN?!?!" at her and not enough time on them being freaking centaurs. The book seemed to drag us through the damn mud when she reached the home of the centaurs for too long. In truth I have been reading this book for three days because I struggled to get through the middle section so much. Then it finally moves on to more interesting things that would be all the spoilers.

Something I would like to touch on is that while Malora is being educated by being taught how to read and write as well as mathematics, a character lists off the greatest romance writers of all time (in her opinion) and FREAKING INCLUDES STEPHANIE MEYER. NO. NO NO NO. NOOOOO. While I will admit I was a sucker for the series, that by no means makes it good writing. FREAKING PANTS.

...URGH.

Anyways. ...but still URGH.

So with this book, if you enjoy the discovery of culture stories, third person writing, and horses; this would be a good book for you. I tend to stray away from the overly-accurate historical fiction books, but this is new fiction. I mean, I really want to know what happened that drove the humans back from their technological advances that they clearly reached at one point to the stone age. Was there an ice age? A plague? Had the centaurs murdered everyone smart? What happened? Sadly, none of those questions are answered.

This is book one of a series, and perhaps when I can invest a few days into reading the second book, I will pick it up. But at the moment, I'm not entirely interested.

Happy reading!