A Whisper of Horse by Zillah Bethell

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 368

Publisher: Piccadilly Press

Released: 11th of August 2016 

Serendipity loves horses. No-one in Lahn Dan has ever seen one, apparently they died out before the Gases - but there are statues of them around the city, paintings and drawings too if you know where to look. And there's the little lost wooden horse Mama gave Serendipity when she was little. 

When Mama dies, Seren is taken under the wing of Professor Nimbus, a storyteller. Nimbus is kind and knowledgable, but Seren has started to question the Minister's rule and life beyond the high, impenetrable Emm Twenty-Five wall. Hidden among Mama's few possessions was a map which suggests there is life outside of Lahn Dahn, and a place where horses live and roam freely - out beyond the wall and the Minister's grip. So, with the help of a trader boy called Tab and his little dog Mouse, Serendipity heads into the unknown, searching for the beautiful creatures she's always dreamed of. But the Minister is behind them, determined to hunt her down. . . 

What I Have to Say 

I kind of wanted to see more of this world than we did. I loved Seren's journey to find the horses and how she had to travel through places with people surviving in different ways, but through it all, I was so interesting in Lahn Dahn. I wanted to know more about how things changed from our world to this so controlled society being told lies about how there's no one left outside and they can't leave the city. 

The society was so interesting, how it was divided into these three castes that were vastly different from a financial standpoint. But again, I wanted to know why they were given the names they did. How exactly did it get to the point where the very rich started hoarding all the technology and hoarding themselves away. 

The language both annoyed me and fascinated me. One of my biggest pet peeves in books is when they change names to things like Lahn Dahn to make it such an obvious future setting. But again, I found myself wondering how they got distorted, what process the names went through to be changed in this way. 

So all in all, this book was rather frustrating. It was a lovely story about a girl's search for horses and trying to escape the people trying to track her down and drag her back to Lahn Dahn, but I just wanted so much more information than there was on offer.