The Centaur Wars

A captivating adventure and a spectacular journey... Rule one: don’t trust the centaur. Sixteen-year-old Dee knew something was imprisoned beneath the old motel, but she never expected this. The centaur is shackled. He’s injured. He’s furious at being captured by humans. And he’s exactly what she’s spent her whole life searching for. Rule two: don’t talk to the centaur. Dee needs answers. Her family has a dark history and she has to know why. She’s grown up beside a forest with mutated creatures that modern science can’t explain: flying newts. Winged snakes. However, a centaur is far beyond anything she’s spotted in the trees. Rule three: don’t free the centaur. If he wasn’t chained he’d have killed her already. But Dee strikes a bargain with the human-hating centaur: in exchange for his freedom, he’ll give her answers. His herd is murderous. Even worse foes lay beyond the haunted forest. But the epic voyage Dee embarks on leads to far more than the source of winged snakes, as she uncovers the greatest secret ever hidden from humankind… if she can survive it. A rollicking modern fantasy, perfect for those craving action, pet sea serpents, and plenty of witty banter.

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND THE PRIX DU MEILLEUR LIVRE ÉTRANGER The Centaur is a modern retelling of the legend of Chiron, the noblest and wisest of the centaurs, who, painfully wounded yet unable to die, gave up his immortality on behalf of Prometheus. In the retelling, Olympus becomes small-town Olinger High School; Chiron is George Caldwell, a science teacher there; and Prometheus is Caldwell’s fifteen-year-old son, Peter. Brilliantly conflating the author’s remembered past with tales from Greek mythology, John Updike translates Chiron’s agonized search for relief into the incidents and accidents of three winter days spent in rural Pennsylvania in 1947. The result, said the judges of the National Book Award, is “a courageous and brilliant account of a conflict in gifts between an inarticulate American father and his highly articulate son.”

Two Thousand years have passed since the Centaurs and their allies were banished to another realm, following a devastating war.The time has come for a prophecy to come full circle, and the Centaur Army to return. their spell of banishment will be broken, by an idiot. Now it's up to him to stop their wrath.