Good horse story, though not typical. Nice illustration by the author. I appreciated Ruth's tenacity and understood the worry that came with her pony. I was surprised with the ease that some steps in training happened, but over all enjoyed the story. Glad for the friends that helped her out. ( )

In a way I'm glad I read one of Peyton's books right at the start of my pony book discovery for she's by far the best author I've read in the genre and now I can focus on her back catalogue. Then again, it does set an impossible standard for all the authors I have yet to discover.

Fly-By-Night is special - in many pony books where the heroine starts pony-less, the journey is about winning a competition or earning a place at an equestrian school. Here, 90% of the book is about Ruth wanting to have a pony, going through the long, expensive and frustrating process of acquiring and taming one and having to deal with the consequences of having her dream fulfilled.
It's an incredible story because it's so much about the huge gap that can exist sometimes between wanting something so bad you'd rather die than be without and coping with not being especially good at it in the end but carrying on valiantly partly out of shame and partly out of loyalty to your old self. Rare are those books that take a look at this uneasy side of life and I was very impressed with Peyton's handling of that particular topic. One of the characters explores the opposite dynamic in that he's good at something he doesn't want to pursue, which is another interesting situation and really allows for good descriptions of the dichotomy between inclination and ability.

The background is that of relative poverty where worrying about money is a daily occurrence - the main consequence of that is an above-average resilient heroine and a realistic time frame during which tiny things can finally happen after loads of saving up and making do.

There's lots of excellent pony content and the characters are varied - the adults all have their own personality (I was even surprised by something happening to one of them, away from family clichés), the horses have different lives and adventures and their owners sometimes deserve them and sometimes not. I really liked this element of surprise in Peyton's book - she doesn't follow specific guidelines and it gives a very free, floating atmosphere to her books where good people sometimes end up in unfair situations while unkind characters get more than they deserve.

Very engrossing book and different from anything I've read in the genre - I thoroughly recommend it. ( )

I only bought this new edition because I love the Pennington books so much that I wanted the introduction to Ruth's story, I'm not really interested in "pony books" however I was very pleasantly surprised! Although her horse, Fly, is at the centre of Ruth's life, Ruth herself is very much the centre of the book and you don't need a passion for horses to enjoy reading about her life. ( )