PBOTD 15th September: Patricia Leitch - Running Wild

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The astute will notice that I've skipped to number 12, Running Wild, the last in the series. This is because I'm saving number 11, Horse of Fire, for December, because it's a perfect book for the Christmas month.


Running Wild quite possibly wasn't intended to be the last in the Jinny series - when I interviewed Patricia Leitch, she said the series was only stopped because Collins (who published Armada books), were taken over, and after the takeover the series was dropped. Pat wasn't, though, unhappy with the way the series ended. The book does make a fitting end: you know Jinny will carry on through life, blazing through it in her own way, and you have no fear that she will stop learning, or being utterly passionate about everything that happens to her. Little danger for Jinny of turning into one of the plastic people.


In Running Wild, something Jinny created, the mural of the golden horses in the Wilton Collection, will be destroyed when a new motorway is carved through the area. In typical Jinny fashion, she has completely failed to take on board what everyone else has known for months, and only learns about the destruction when it's within days of happening. As ever with Jinny, she combines her passionate desire to do something with fear: in this case, again, it's fear of the Watcher, the interface between Jinny and the Red Horse. She runs from the Watcher again, but in the end, accepts what he has to tell her, and she is able to let go of her creation, and enable it to be part of another dimension; no longer the conventional human one of the museum.

We see the people who were affected by the golden horses, and at the end of the book, when Jinny is given the statues of Epona, it seems entirely fitting that she will be the one who keeps them as she grows up.

~  0  ~

The Jinny Series
For Love of a Horse
A Devil to Ride
The Summer Riders
Night of the Red Horse
Gallop to the Hills
Horse in a Million
The Magic Pony
Ride Like the Wind
Chestnut Gold
Jump for the Moon
Horse of Fire
Running Wild

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