The Scorpio Races is the sixth novel by Maggie Stiefvater.
Some race to win. Others race to survive.
The Scorpio Races take place on the tiny, fictional island of Thisby. Each November the capaill uisce - carnivorous water horses - emerge from the black ocean and gallop the beach beneath the cliffs. Riders attempt to keep hold of their horses long enough to make it to the finish line.
Some riders live. Others die.
At age nineteen, Sean Kendrick is the returning champion. He is a young man of few words, and if he has any fears, he keeps them buried deep, where no one else can see them.
Puck Connolly lost both parents to a water horse attack when she was a child. She never meant to ride in the races - and no woman ever has before. But fate hasn't given her much of a choice.
Only one can win.
Tropes used in this series:
- Abusive Parents: Benjamin Malvern. His bastard son Mutt is a horrible human being, but that's no surprise given the open distaste with which Benjamin treats him.
- Aloof Big Brother: In his desperation to leave the island Gabe has become this to Puck and Finn, causing them both a lot of pain.
- Artistic License – Biology: It's impossible that an animal with the body composition of an ordinary horse could live and hunt underwater for most of the year without significant physical adaptations. Yet the capaill uisce look almost the same as land horses, albeit creepier.
- The Big Race: The basis of the plot. The stakes are impossibly high for both Puck and Sean.
- Bittersweet Ending: Puck wins the race, earns the money to remain in her parents' house with her brother, and persuades Benjamin Malvern to let Sean buy Corr. Unfortunately, Corr was so badly lamed in the race that he will never be able to run again.
- Hellish Horse: The capaill uisce, and how. They're huge, carnivorous predators who can hunt on land as well as underwater. They also possess supernatural allure which mesmerises those who ride on them, in order to distract them while the horse leads them into the ocean.
- Horseback Heroism: During the race, Sean risks his own life to allow Puck to escape from the horses attacking her.
- Human Sacrifice: It's mentioned at several points in the novel that humans used to be sacrificed to the capaill uisce. In Malvern's stable there is an old teind (a tithe paid to the devil in human flesh) stall with
bloody human handprints inside, where victims were fed to the uisce horses within. - I Choose to Stay: When Sean turns Corr loose at the end of the novel, Corr returns to him instead of swimming away.
- Inadequate Inheritor: Benjamin Malvern views Mutt this way, and makes it clear despite his friction with Sean over the course of the novel that he would rather he took over the Malvern stables than Mutt.
- Only the Chosen May Ride: Only Sean can ride Corr (although he accepts both Sean and Puck riding together). At one point Mutt attempts to ride him, with lethal consequences.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: We never find out where Thisby is located. It's a tiny island and several characters reference 'the mainland', but this is also left ambiguous. We know that it isn't America, because George Holly is outright stated to be from there, and the water horses' mythological origins and use of the Irish name capaill uisce (literally "water horses") would suggest that Thisby is off the coast of Ireland. To make matters more confusing, characters also occasionally use Scottish dialect ('wee', meaning small) as well as Americanised terms like 'suit coat' and 'switchblade' instead of the UK terms 'sport coat' and 'flick knife'.
