I enjoyed this book - it really felt like someone's diary. Some bits were a little scattered, it included quotes and notes, but this made it all the more readible.

I felt as though I was part of a blog from Lara and being party to some of her innermost thoughts.

I had never heard of the Derby before now, and would like to investigate further. The characters involved, the competitors, team and the family in the gers where she stayed, are vital to this tale.

This is certainly a book I would recommend to horse people and travellers alike. The relationship with the horses is certainly one that unless a rider will not make sense!

I've had this book on my kindle for ages and didn't get around to reading it. Now I wish I had read it sooner - it's great!

I'm not a horse person. In fact, I don't really follow any sport. But I do like memoirs written by people who have done something out of the ordinary. And this is exactly what this book is. Lara Prior-Palmer competed in the Mongolian Derby, a long distance, endurance, horse race, at the age of 19 and won the race! She took a copy of William Shakespeare's The Tempest and makes reference to different passages along with other literary quotes throughout her book. I like this because it makes me feel that this author is also a reader.

How Lara pulled together all the details for this book, I am not sure. She makes reference to her 'Winnie the Pooh' notebook a couple of times, but it gets wet on more than one occasion. I assume that the notes she wrote in this would be barely legible by the time she got home! Despite this, she writes a great narrative - sometimes a stream of consciousness and at other times a detailed account of her extraordinary experience.

I loved it and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a non fiction read. Thank you to NetGalley for an early copy in exchange for an honest review - I'm only sorry it took me so long to get around to reading it!

God this was hard work. It’s hard to know whether she was aiming for edgy philosophy, but she came across as an airy fairy clueless wanderer floating along, loads of fuzzy wuzzy woo woo navel gazing, multiple bits that didn’t even make sense (“For an hour we trundle along. We’re only jolts of motion-in-the-making, but when the grafting lapses into the past there appears a gliding trail behind us, as though we didn’t exert ourselves to get where we are, as though the earth is water and we have been fish, until now.” Or maybe the bit about being as well loved as a teabag?). Or the way she dismissively writes about others (her father comes across as dictatorial, her mother just as airheady as Lara), she has a real thing against Texan Devan, she endlessly name drops her eventing aunt Lucinda Green… I can’t say I liked Lara at any point, and the only reason she won is Devan had a time penalty for her horse’s heart rate. I speed read the last third of the book just to be done with it.

I received a free ARC copy of this via NetGalley and the publishers in return for an unbiased review, apologies for the delay.

In 2013 Lara Prior-Palmer became the first woman and the youngest ever competitor to win the Mongol Derby, billed as the longest and toughest horse race in the world. Competitors ride a course 1000km long, riding semi-wild Mongolian ponies for each leg of 40km. Six years later, her memoir, Rough Magic, was published.

Lara subtitles the book ‘Riding the world’s loneliest horse race’. This seemed a deliberate choice of adjective. As she describes her almost whimsical decision to enter the race, her haphazard, desultory preparation and her diffident, almost ambivalent attitude to riding the race itself, what emerges is a picture of a young person in limbo. Pulled between childhood and adulthood, between bravado and fear, brashness and timidity, confidence and uncertainty, Lara appears as unsure of her place in the world, in her family, in her own skin. A lonely place. Once underway, Lara’s attitude to the race shifts. She had no expectation of winning and was well back in the rankings at the end of the first day. And yet, and yet…

My attitude towards her story and to the book itself also went through a range of responses which seemed to mirror Lara’s journey. I was excited to read initially. I lost interest. I plodded on. I was hooked back in. I was holding my breath by the end. Along the way I learned more about a country and a culture far removed from my experience. And I was glad to have read this unusual account.

This book was a bit of a slog, especially in the second half, when the excitement died down and just sort of fizzled out. Still, I don't know why I felt compelled to read it (maybe to find out how Lara 'beat' Devan to win!) Loved the descriptions of Mongolia and the glance into its rich and complex culture and history - it made me discover a land I knew very little about, and for this, it was a good story

Rough Magic; Riding the world’s wildest horse race by Lara Prior-Palmer is the true story of Lara's experience of riding in the Mongol Derby, which is the world's toughest horse race.  Every August, riders have to ride wild ponies over a 1,000 km course within 10 days.

This is a fascinating read, and takes you day by day through her adventure!  It is an epic ride, and is very atmospheric. 

I hadn't heard of this race before, but was hanging on to the book, wanting to know what would happen next.  You're told the race outcome early on, but not how it happened, and that's what kept me turning pages!  Literally a wild ride!

 Rough Magic  was published on 6th June 2019 and is available from  Amazon ,  Waterstones  and  Bookshop.org .

I'm afraid I couldn't find a link for you to follow Lara Prior-Palmer.

I was given this book in exchange for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley and to  Ebury Publishing .

This book was published in 2019, 6 years after Lara Prior-Palmer won the Mongol Derby. And 3 years after she had cancer. To date this is her only book, but her voice is such, that I expect her to write more.
Her writing shows the maturity of those 6 years since she competed and her extensive studies at Stanford and beyond of Mongol history and culture; and Persian poetry and language.
The book is scattered with quotes from poets. Philosophers and Shakespeare as the book she took to read, during those mad 7 days of her life, was The Tempest. An she often compares her Derby experiences to those happening in the play quoting Prospero.
The first chapters set the scene of a madcap young girl with too much energy and an uncertain path to her future.
Not university then but an adventure, and an aunt with extensive horse experience (see the discussions about eventing and the Olympics), and a rather unusual family background.
She turns up for the race grossly under-equipped even forgetting her toothbrush, but through the generosity of other competitors, most of whom dropped out for a number of reasons, and the Derby staff, the press followers, and of course, the local,people she encounters, she struggles through. The grand under-dog that ends up winning by default. A great British tradition that she encapsulates to the extreme.
A book that needs to be read by all teenage girls but mothers beware in case they want to emulate her!

I think that the students in our school library need to hear lots of diverse voices and read stories and lives of many different kinds of people and experiences. When I inherited the library it was an incredibly sanitised space with only 'school readers' and project books on 'the railways' etc. Buying in books that will appeal to the whole range of our readers with diverse voices, eclectic and fascinating subject matter, and topics that will intrigue and fascinate them was incredibly important to me.
This is a book that I think our senior readers will enjoy very much indeed - not just because it's well written with an arresting voice that will really keep them reading and about a fascinating topic - but it's also a book that doesn't feel worthy or improving, it doesn't scream 'school library and treats them like young reading adults who have the right to explore a range of modern diverse reads that will grip and intrigue them and ensure that reading isn't something that they are just forced to do for their English project - this was a solid ten out of ten for me and I'm hoping that our students are as gripped and caught up in it as I was. It was one that I stayed up far too late reading and one that I'll be recommending to the staff as well as our senior students - thank you so much for the chance to read and review; I really loved it and can't wait to discuss it with some of our seniors once they've read it too!

It's nice to read a memoir that highlights the wildness of entering a horse race that would be deemed too dangerous for any of us mere mortals.

A very interesting read and if you like the idea of reading about the dangers of endurance racing then have a read.

I was provided a free ARC from NetGalley and the publisher in return for my honest review.

I galloped through this, and didn't want it to end.

I am a horse nerd, and would have happily read it just for the equestrian adventure, but it is far more. It is an inner journey too, a voyage to the very essence of wilderness. The Mongolian landscape is a vast space where you are just a speck with nothing around you but distance. The horses are Lara's main companions, as removed from human concerns as the land itself. She rides a different one for each leg of the journey, sometimes several in one day, randomly picked from whatever the herders have available. Some are co-operative; some are slugs; some are mad. All are magnificently themselves, creatures of the moment, full of physicality and instinct, a brief contact with Other.

The story, of course, follows familiar patterns. Lara is an experienced and competitive rider, as you might guess from her surname, but in this race she is the outsider. She entered on a whim, is impulsive and badly prepared, and her rivals have considerable endurance experience. It's no secret that she wins the race and sets world records as well, so the story follows the classic underdog arc. But that's hardly what matters. The nature of the journey - and its delight - is about this strange inner time, living moment by moment in wildness, on semi-wild horses, and the way this author can insert us so perfectly into every heartbeat of the experience, in language that is as direct and strong as her spirit. ‘He’s in tearaway mode. The wind blows hard and blocks our ears. His legs throttle as if dying to catch up with themselves, hooves flattening thousands of grass stems a second. He is a madman awakened. I love it, him, his intention.’

Her humour is incredibly likable too. Here’s just one example: she describes mutton pastries that are ‘so hardy you could send them round the world in the post’. When I finished, I went immediately on line to see if she'd written more books. She hasn't, yet. But I hope she can be persuaded to.

Catching up with a very belated ARC, and this was an unexpected joy to read!

19-year-old Lara applies to enter a 1000 mile horse race, across Mongolia on a whim, at the very last minute. Her energy & enthusiasm shine through, and her appreciation for how ridiculous the whole thing was made me laugh.

It’s a quick, light read, sometimes overwritten, but I enjoyed her musings & admired her scatty determination. Plus, I’ve come away with some Mongolian authors to investigate. Thoroughly enjoyable.

An interesting and beautifully-written book. Just the thing to transport the reader far away from the stresses and anxieties of lockdown.

A lovely read. I have grown up around horses and it was so lovely to read about something that is close to my families heart. I loved Lara's drive and determination. Well worth a read.

Horses, Mongolia, longest race won by the youngest British women? Brilliant. A great read. Bonkers, crazy, erratic and gripping? Yep you have to read this.

I initially requested this title for my daughter who is a bit of an adventurer (cross-country skiing and camping in Svalvard, the trans-Siberian express with detours in Mongolia etc.) She found it a fascinating and inspiring read, well written and thought it painted a picture of the experiences, good and bad, she had along the way.

Well written, but not that exciting unless you are horse mad (preferably National Hunt), or have an interest in Genghis Khan's history.

Worth looking at snippets of the Mongol Derby on YouTube as well. You can see the author occasionally!

Rough Magic has been described as a mix between Educated and Wild, and while I haven’t read Wild, this book definitely reminded me of Educated, and gripped me just as much.

Lara’s almost spontaneous decision to enter the Mongol Derby leads to a 10 day experience which is part thrilling adventure, part travelogue, part personal diary. The book reveals her to be both disarmingly unselfconscious and acutely aware of feeling like an outsider; at home, in her family, in the race, in Mongolia.

We know from the outset that she wins, so the tension and pull of the narrative don’t come from edge of your seat competition, but rather from her engrossing and well paced narrative. She switches between vivid descriptions of the physicality of race, reflections on her surroundings, her life at home, her ongoing yet vague health problems, memories of school and encounters with local people, other riders and race officials.

This may sound a little confusing, but it isn’t; Prior-Palmer’s distinctive voice and tightly controlled prose made this a fantastic read.

This is a book that will split opinion, it’s rather boring and at times I wondered why I persisted with it to the end.. But I did, well it’s about a very very long horse race across the steppes in Mongolia. There is only one character Lara the rider. And her different horses. I wouldn’t recommend this book.

I never think memoirs that interesting but this held real promise in its synopsis which held well at the beginning. A very unique setting and a challenge I have never heard of. I thought the author set the scene really well - I can just imagine my father (like hers) walking round telling my mum I wasn't going to do something for my mum just to go on doing whatever she was doing. In fact I think she lost her way after the race started. At that point it simply became a series of repeating events sleep / ride/ eat the odd getting lost into the bargain. The ending felt like a real anti-climax . In the end I cam away just a little disappointed.

If this wasnt a true story I would say it was unrealistic.
A bored and lost teenager takes a last minute chance and rushes into the worlds toughest horse race with no training or thought.
Her descriptions of the surroundings were incredible , I could picture every tiny detail.
Some of the writing and the quotes she used could be some what convoluted and pulled me out of the story but ultimately it was a thrilling journey with such a determined young lady.