War Horse: strong bonds?

War Horse was an intriguing story. It had some refreshing aspects that do not show up in
books a lot which makes it fun to read and gives you a whole different experience than other
books. It tells the story of a horse and the strong bond he has with his owner. They get
separated because the war starts and Joey, the horse, is sold to the army.
The whole story is told in the perspective from Joey, which is quite unusual, because almost
no books are out of the perspective of an animal. It was a new experience and that was super
cool. Although it was sometimes confusing, because Joey sounds and thinks so much as a
human that you forget that he is a horse. Also Joey is pretty bland during the whole story. He
is a horse so he has to listen to the humans and does not do anything that made the story
exiting. If he goes somewhere it is because that the humans that wanted or because the army
lost a battle and he is taken to work for the other army. He never has strong emotions either,
he does not hate anyone or has any strong feelings towards anyone than his horse friend,
Tophorn and Albert. So many exiting events that are caused by feelings are not there in the
story or have become less exiting than when the main character has strong feelings. The story
is very emotional in certain scenes, like with Tophorn’s death and the battle field scenes were
very good, but there were no parts of the story where I felt like something could go really bad
or would cause a lot of trouble.
The biggest thing that is not really there during the story is the strong band between Albert
and Joey. You know it is there, but you do not feel it. During the biggest part of the story Joey
has Tophorn and he is always there, he supports Joey and cares for him. Joey also really cares
for Tophorn and it is repeatedly shown how much he cares for Tophorn. it feels like Joey has
a stronger bond with Tophorn than with Albert. Even the start when Joey and Albert just met
you could see that they have a strong bond but it did not really feel that strong. The only
moment where you could really feel the bond was at the end of the book. They missed too
much bonding time, there was not enough energy put in the creation of the bond. When
Albert and Joey were supposed to bond another horse was there to support Joey. In the movie
the horse was not there and the bond between Albert and Joey felt also immediately a lot
stronger. During the book the bond felt so weak that I sometimes forgot that Albert still was
a part of the story.
Then the end. This is really a book about bonds and family, but the ending did not show
anything of those things. All the emotion that could have been there was skipped. The plan
was to find Joey and when that happened there was a lot of emotion and I felt a really strong
bond between them. But the moment when Albert sees his family again is entirely skipped. I
really felt that I missed that because that would have been also a very important moment in
the book. At the beginning you are told about all the problems Albert has with his father and
what his father thinks about Joey. But the ending does not really show that everyting is fixed
and that his father tries to be a better father. It just misses so much emotion.
The book is overall okay, but it misses too much for me. There are good parts. But the story
was boring. There were no moments that made me really exited and Joey was pretty bland. It
was certainly nice to read the story through the perspective of a horse. That was something
new for me, but he became so much like a human. That is not bad but a bit weird, because
you have to keep on reminding yourself that he is a horse and not a human. The story is also
to be supposed about the bond between Joey and Albert but I really missed that bond during
the most of the story, Tophorn just replaced Albert. So I would not recommend it.
Milla Derhaag
Ta3a