Review: Caballo de batalla

Caballo de batalla by Michael Morpurgo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I recieved this book as gift some years ago. I know there is an adaptation for the silver screen with two of my favorite actors, Ben Cumberbatch and Tom Hiddleston in the characters of Captain Nicholls and Major Stewart and I was extremely interseted in reading the book that inspired the movie.
I must say that even though I liked it, I was expecting something more heartbreaking and tough story. The book is written from the point of view of a horse named Joey who has grown in a farm and it is sold for war during WWI in England. We follow his story until the end of the War in France. Joey was cared by a boy called Albert who loved him much and was against his sell. Joey first is cared by Capt. Nicholls, then he follows a fellow horse named Tropthorn property of Maj. Stewart throughout war. They change property to both fronts, English and German fronts, and they get to live about a year in a Farm with a girl and her grandpa.
Despite being about war, I do not think that we get to see the great extent and pain caused by a major conflict like WWI. It is true that death and guns are present in this work, nonetheless, as many and much of the works written on the topic, this book fell short for me. I could not connect with any of the characters on the book, luckly it was a short one. I felt sorry about the soldiers from both bands that were there only because they were called on duty. I imagined how many of them truly were on this situation and how many died because of duty and not because they were convinced on the most touching situation. In the end I liked how Albert and Joey get together but I felt the ending really rushed and felt. I hope to watch the movie and find more of it, but I think that the movie would be more oriented to the search of Albert and less to the short-sighted understanding of the war of Joey.

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