It's a good story, but one that, in the hands of a less talented or more self-glorifying writer, could easily have become an unbearable book. It's easy to imagine an endurance-racing memoir filled with nutrition-gel meals and competitive fury, capped by a bit of victorious gloating. It's equally easy to imagine an overly sanitized book, all landscape description and no saddle sores. Thanks to Prior-Palmer's excellent prose and rigorous honesty, Rough Magic is neither. Instead, it's an unusual pleasure to read ... Prior-Palmer writes with a dash and boldness few writers possess; her language seems sui generis ... Her final hope is not to win the race — though she wants that, too — but to let the race make her free. Rough Magic seems to stand as proof that she succeeded. And as I read it from the skyless comfort of my couch, I briefly felt a bit freer, too.

Prior-Palmer writes with grace, giving a measured, reflective account of the race she was unprepared for but still won ... An engaging profile of humans and horses, and a searing, soulful examination of endurance.

... a stunning debut ... In witty, open and revealing prose, Prior-Palmer details a slew of obstacles—from searing heat and pelting rain to food poisoning, uncooperative ponies and, most importantly, a lack of experience and preparation ... Her tale could be pulled from the pages of a Hollywood script, with its sweeping, scenic descriptions of the Mongolian steppe and the allies and fierce competitors who emerge among the unique cast of characters ... a true page-turner, told in gorgeous, descriptive prose that readers will tear through like the ponies racing across the plain.

Lara Prior-Palmer’s Rough Magic, a tale of seven days spent traversing the Mongolian steppe on wild ponies, courts symbolism as much as any, while also rejecting the arc of the traditional journey, such that myth melts into and is enlivened by the teeming, sometimes petty details of life itself ... Fittingly, given her misgivings about racing, Prior-Palmer resists the arc of the hero’s journey by downplaying her ultimate victory ... Which isn’t to cast Prior-Palmer as an alternative kind of hero — an icon of modern humility. Her story holds some tricky moments of cultural insensitivity ... Ultimately, the book lingers in the mind partly for its fearless prose and partly for its refusal to obey that tired old victorious arc of the journey narrative.

Coming-of-age storytellers take note: here is your model heroine. Across time, adolescents have sought to define what they are by first defining what they are not. Lara Prior-Palmer canters away from the known world and all the expectations of her it contains ... Readers will be grateful for her investment in the present, but also her choice to faithfully write down the events of each day in her Winnie the Pooh notebook. Her recorded experiences combine with the wisdom of hindsight to create the pure magic of this book. In writing it, we can feel the author, now aged 24, returning to this defining the experience in her mind's eye and retrospectively defining it for the lasting impact it has clearly had on her life. This memoir is a glance behind at trodden ground and acknowledgment of the course to come. Each pony gallops across the in-between.

First-time author Prior-Palmer transforms from hopeless 19-year-old underdog into surprising champion...in this exhilarating, visceral account of her attempt to win a 1,000-kilometer horse race across the Mongolian countryside ... Filled with soulful self-reflection and race detail, this fast-paced page-turner is a thrill ride from start to finish.

[A] gripping, self-searching, triumphant debut memoir ... Because any reader is going to know the race's outcome upon picking the book up, the interest lies not in the ending, but in how Prior-Palmer gets there. Luckily, she's an adept storyteller and a humble autobiographer, not afraid to let herself look unlikable or even obnoxious if the circumstances merit ... the dynamic she establishes with the horses who remind her that 'animals were our first teachers' make this memoir a breathtaking ride.

Prior-Palmer presents her leap-first, look-later character as impetuous, often running in unattended 'pixie mode'; she is also 'attached to my exterior of fearlessness.' It seems to be a very specific way of being until you realize, Wait a minute. That’s every teenager. ... neither is the author afraid to be seen as unlikable. This disease, considered fatal to women alone, is a badge of pride for Prior-Palmer. Her judgment, toward race officials and reporters as well as to her fellow competitors, at times shocks, but it is also a sign of a sportswoman on fire ... But then, in a single paragraph that acts as a literary landmine planted two-thirds in, Prior-Palmer reveals a stunning travail endured a few years after the race. It is one of the few cleanly rendered and emotionally laden passages in the book. It details an event that required involuntary courage, which is courage all the same, and in a few lines erases any doubt that she is inhumanly stoic. For one striking moment, she is real. She is fully open, readable, and sympathetic ... It is unlikely that the Lara Prior-Palmer we meet here will stop racing, either on turf or to some high artistic aspiration. Notwithstanding this shaky start, she has too much promise, too much drive.

In this feisty and exhilarating debut memoir, Prior-Palmer smoothly recounts what happened over her momentous week in August ... Although the narrative occasionally veers off course, horse lovers will adore this inspiring and spirited memoir.