Jamieson Findlay creates a fascinating and credible world in his first novel, The Blue Roan Child. Imbued with an ancient Celtic atmosphere, this fantasy is dominated by horses. Findlay’s lyrical prose is redolent with scents, which represent the horses’ language. The book’s focus on smelling – our most neglected sense in both art and life – is original and satisfying.

The heroine, Syeira, an orphan stable hand, has a special gift: she can smell horses’ thoughts. When Ran, the tyrant king from a neighbouring country, comes to exact his tribute from the king’s horses, he takes two wild colts born in the magical land of Arva, leaving their mother behind. Syeira feels the terrible anguish the mother exhales with every breath. She steals the mare and gallops off on a perilous quest to reunite the three Arva horses. On her epic ride, Syeira encounters many eccentric figures, all of whom have great skill with either horses or herbs. This strains credulity somewhat, as Syeira relies on these specific talents to journey to Ran’s stables.

Syeira’s empathy with horses is related to her own longing for her dead mother. Thus, Findlay indirectly suggests the depth of a child’s need for a family without falling into sentimentality. Nevertheless, Syeira herself is somewhat underdeveloped.The adult characters seem more three-dimensional, perhaps because the limited third-person point-of-view casts Syeira as narrator as well as heroine. I didn’t get a sense of her habits, her voice, her own desires apart from the most obvious one. She lives vicariously through the mare.

Despite these caveats, The Blue Roan Child is a beautifully written fantasy that utterly transports the reader to a richly imagined, vivid-smelling world.