Justin Allen's YEAR OF THE HORSE Wins Independent Publisher Book Award

Justin Allen's adventure novel Year of the Horse has been awarded the Silver Medal as the second best Independent Book in the West/Mountain Region for 2010!

The "IPPY" Awards, launched in 1996, are designed to bring increased recognition to the deserving but often unsung titles published by independent authors and publishers. Established as the first awards program open exclusively to independents, over 2,000 "IPPYs" have been awarded to authors and publishers around the world.

Year of the Horse tells the story of Yen Tzu-lu, a child of Chinese immigrants unwillingly pressed into service by a gang of roughnecks bent on stealing a gold mine from a shadowy villain deep in the western wilderness. With Tzu-lu as our guide, we experience a landscape of legend, stand toe-to-toe with those larger-than-life heroes and villains of our shared American mythos, and learn the inescapable facts that have both enriched and plagued our nation from its inception. Resonating with echoes of Mark Twain, Larry McMurtry, and J. K. Rowling, this is a book of fabulous adventure and deep resonance. Justin Allen gives readers a picture of how America sees itself, and in so doing he offers up both a heroic vision of the past and hope for the future.

Justin Allen's YEAR OF THE HORSE "Delivers the Ultimate Dose of Escapism"

Justin Allen's Year of the Horse draws more attention this week with an excellent review by Edie Adelstein of the Colorado Springs Independent: " The Western novel may be a relic in the modern book trade, but the genre isn't completely dead to young adults, thanks to Year of the Horse. Part Zane Gray, part L. Frank Baum, this read delivers the ultimate dose of escapism, from its fantastical, episodic nature to its dime-novel flavor. Leading us through rhythmically paced exploits is a willful, but pleasantly predictable, band of friends on a journey to reach Silver City and solve a mystery. Cowboy magic and landscapes with names like Hell Mouth color the fictive West while American folk legends — ghost riders and the Yankee Ichabod Crane — fuel the plot. Charming and full of heart, Year of the Horse provides quaint reading, that, although brand-new, feels like a secret discovery from the dusty back shelf of a library. — Edie Adelstein

Justin Allen's YEAR OF THE HORSE in The Denver Post

Justin Allen's Year of the Horse is reviewed in The Denver Post: "The Year of the Horse, a Western with a distinctly different twist, is told through the eyes of Tzu-Lu, a 14-year-old Chinese boy who is in his last term of school when the story opens. Unlike the other Chinese boys he knows, he has no interest in making beds or serving drinks on stern-wheelers. He simply wants to see the world. Opportunity beckons when the famous gunfighter Jack Straw enters his grandfather's shop. The two men talk. But not until the stranger is about to leave does Tzu-Lu learn that he has been pressed into service and will be going West with Straw to a world he never knew existed. On the riverboat, he meets one of Straw's friends and soon learns that what seems to be the man's son is actually a young woman, dressed not in fine woolens but in rough denim and buckskin. His next surprise comes when he is told that "you will soon dazzle your new employers with your blasting skills." As they trek West, crossing roaring rivers and balancing along narrow ledges, Tzu-Lu learns his employer is tracking down the bandits who killed his wife and son. But it is when Tzu-Lu sees a young woman whose nose has been hacked off at the roots "for some crime" that he comes to a better understanding of the kind of world he has entered. Along with the ever-present danger are wonders: a javelina, a strange variety of pig; tapping barrel cactus for water; and Tzu-Lu learns that a particular dark-green weed is actually "Saint's Tea," good for the liver. The harsh and unforgiving landscape reveals signs of earlier travelers, and they meet a family of Latter-day Saints. Finally reaching Silver City, they find, to their dismay, not the expected cozy village but a broken-down town where the chief entertainment is watching a hanging.

While Year of the Horse contains the basic elements of a traditional Western, it also succeeds in breaking the mold with the nicely drawn character of Tzu-Lu — and it entertains in the process."

Author Justin Allen Talks About THE YEAR OF THE HORSE

Justin Allen talks about his new novel The Year of the Horse in an interview on the popular blog MrsMagooReads.com:

Q: Year of the Horse is a mix of western, fantasy, and historical fiction. If you had to pick just one of the three genres to write in, which would you choose and why?
A: Darn! That’s a beast of a question. The whole basis of what I do, writing-wise, amounts to finding or making connections. How is fantasy connected to western? How is history related to fantasy? I think they’re all intertwined. Have you ever seen any of the old Clint Eastwood spaghetti-western movies? If you’re at all like me, you watch those movies and think – wait a minute, when exactly is this supposed to be taking place? You show me the Civil War, but don’t give me any details. And where are they anyway? How can that great big desert be right outside a Confederate Prisoner of War camp? That doesn’t look like any part of Georgia I’ve ever seen. Plus, how in heaven’s name does Clint’s gun always have just the right number of shells in it?
I guess that what I am trying to say is that for me these genres can not be separated. They are one and the same. They are ALL fantasy.

Q: Which of the characters in your novel do you most relate to?
A: You know, I’d like to say Lu. I really, really like Lu. Plus, he is the boy who gets chosen. But facts being what they are, I guess I am probably most like Sadie. Her upbringing is not so very different from mine. She grew up in the west, and so has a generous dollop of that coarseness that we westerners so like and admire. I think I am fairly loyal, as Sadie most assuredly is, and I hope I am as open to new ideas, new people, and new experiences (maybe I’m not, but at least I’m trying). Plus, I gave Sadie my desire to travel. I wish I could be as good-looking as Sadie, and could wind up with all her money, but those are just surface things. Money and looks aren’t everything - they’re not even the most important things. Sadie knows that, I think. I think she would agree with me in saying that character, the deepest most core attributes of a person, are what really count.

Q: What advice would you give to any aspiring young writers?
A: I’ll give you two pieces of advice - no extra charge.
First of all, read! And don’t just keep reading the same thing over and over. Read widely. New insights will come from reading books, articles and stories that seemingly have nothing whatsoever to do with the subject you think you are trying to hack out of the jungle of your mind. Read comic books and medical manuals, newspapers, blogs, the backs of cereal boxes, children’s picture books, mysteries, science fiction, the textbooks you are supposed to read for school anyway (but often don’t), plays and movie scripts, books that feel beyond your level, and books that are too young for you by far. Doesn’t hardly matter WHAT you read, merely that you READ. And second, strike adverbs from your writing. The adverb is the single most poisonous thing to be injected into any sentence. It steals from your verb, leaving it wimpy and weak. Worse yet, the adverb seldom (maybe never) adds any useful information to a sentence. The context of most any story or novel is such that the adverb is almost always superfluous. I tell you, adverbs ought to be declared illegal.

Strong Review Attention for Justin Allen's THE YEAR OF THE HORSE

Just posted on FantasyLiterature.com: "Justin Allen’s The Year of the Horse is one of the more original fantasy amalgamations I’ve come across — a mix of fantasy, historical western, and coming-of-age boys’ adventure tale peppered with some Devil and Daniel Webster / Washington Irving / Mark Twain / Zane Grey, and topped off by a heaping of multi-culturalism. . .The Year of the Horse is an enjoyable YA read that probably won’t have much cross-over adult appeal, an original and often humorous mix of historical western and fantasy with more success on the historical side than the fantasy side, with a strong central character. Recommended for YA readers with an interest in the time period and geographical setting, or for younger readers looking for a break from the usual medieval fantasy setting."

More Praise for Justin Allen's THE YEAR OF THE HORSE

Kirkus Reviews takes a look at the splendid new novel by Justin Allen, The Year of the Horse: "When Yen Tzu-lu (nicknamed Lu) hears his grandfather speaking in Chinese with a mysterious white man named Jack Straw about some kind of mission, he never dreams that he will be plucked from his Mississippi River hometown to join it. Jack, a legendary gunslinger, is leading a group of roughnecks that includes a former slave who fought in the Union army, a Mexican outlaw and ex-Confederate John MacLemore and his daughter. They're out to reclaim a gold mine that MacLemore says belongs to him, and Lu has been hired as an explosives expert. (He's not, but only Jack knows that.) En route, the group encounters Native American tribesmen, bullying Union soldiers, supernatural ghost-riders and a dark figure who may just be the devil himself. The harsh realities of frontier travel are slightly mitigated for Lu by the pleasures of learning to ride horses and hunt. The author clearly has a great love for old-style boy's-adventure tales, but he doesn't allow the genre's tropes to keep him from trying new things. In particular, the multicultural cast of characters, while perhaps historically improbable, is refreshing, and Allen doesn't gloss over the widespread racial prejudices of the time. Best of all, however, he knows how to tell a cracking good story. Exciting, original update of the ripping-yarns formula."

Justin Allen's THE YEAR OF THE HORSE in Publishers Weekly

Justin Allen's The Year of the Horse in Publishers Weekly: "Allen, author of the historical fantasy Slaves of the Shinar, plots a supernatural wild west adventure in his sophomore outing that should hold appeal for younger readers. Chinese-American teenager Tzu-lu finds his life upended when his grandparents send him on an expedition west with famous gunslinger Jack Straw and his rag-tag crew of mercenaries. Exploring anew the tropes of the cowboy western—Indians, polygamous cultists, “Ghost Riders” and the perils of the open desert—Allen follows the gang to Silver City, the very edge of settled America, to reclaim a treasure stolen by a mysterious man known as “the Yankee,” and perhaps illuminate the fate of Tzu-lu's dead father. With a few playful nods to Washington Irving, Allen mixes western and fantasy into a high adventure coming-of-age, keeping his world's more outré elements grounded with a surfeit of dead-on historical details. "