Rating: 
Summary: Fast-Paced and Fun
Review: Horse Heaven was the first book I'd ever read with more characters than a phone book, but I quickly fell into the rhythm of Smiley's storytelling and found the frequent character-changing engaging and smoothly done. The overall impression is one of thoroughness rather than complexity. Being a horseperson, the technical talk was all familiar to me; however, I think it is absolutely necessary to the flavor of the stories that the language used be genuine, and I am confident that even laypeople won't be much distracted by the horse terminology, because it's not overwhelming. All in all, this is one of few books I can't wait to read again.
Rating: 
Summary: "Horse Heaven" has a cast list the size of "War and Peace."
Review: I, too, loved "Moo," but only after several readings in order to fully "get" it. The same can be said of "Horse Heaven," as it may take a time or two around the racetrack to get a grasp on Smiley's reins. For starters, there are way too many characters, which accounts for the sheer mass of the book. The first twenty or so chapters are dedicated to introduction after introduction of new character after new character, some of whom never make an impression at all; others blend in with similar characters and become lost. Then there are the characters who work: Al and Rosalind Maybrick, and an exploration of the marriage as Rosalind embarks on an affair with Dick Winterson, Al's horse trainer; the horse psychic Elizabeth Zada, whom I simply adored as she read the mind of Mr. T (the horse), and her boyfriend Plato; the horse Epic Steam (if horses can be villains, he fits the feedbag) and little Jesse, son of a highly superstitious bettor. If Smiley had focused on only these, and a few of the others, the book would be a much easier read. But the fascinating tales of those above are lost amidst the shuffle, and makes it hard to slog through the less interesting characters, like Buddy Crawford. Still, those listed above are well worth a first, and most definitely a second glance. It's just to bad you have to make your way through Smiley's cast of thousands in order to find the diamonds in the rough.
Rating:
Summary: Not just for horse lovers
Review: I loved this book, as I love all of Jane Smilely's books. The narration on the cassette tape version is done beautifully. Jane writes in a style that really lends itself to oral narration. I came to care about the people and the horses in the story. The only problem with the tape version is that it left me unsatisfied, since it didn't reveal the fates of all of the horses. So I had to read the book as well. The last two chapters first, just to see what happened, the from the beginnning to experience the full effect. A great book that you don't have to be a horse person to love.
Rating:
Summary: Heavenly Book
Review: I loved this book so much, I started right back at the beginning when I finished it. It is so beautifully written and so lyrical that every page was a delight. I found the horses and the horse people a compelling metaphor for the spiritual values that permeate the book. And the interwoven stories were so gripping they filled my dreams when I slept. If you love horses, romance, and a wonderful uplifting illumination don't miss this one!!!
Rating:
Summary: A pleasant way to pass the time and a bit more
Review: This book weaves together a host of characters and plotlines so thick that it often left my head spinning. But I love horses and read page-to-page absorbing what nuggets of wisdom she placed along the way - all the while waiting for the big payoff in a thrilling conclusion. It never came. However, most of the plotlines are entertaining and my interest was generally held througout this lengthy book. Call me bourgeois, but I'd rather have read several Dick Francis novels instead of this.
Rating: 
Summary: Negative Pole
Review: Having loved Lidy Newton and Thousand Acres, how is it, I wonder, that I can feel so blah towards, first Moo... and now this!
Rating:
Summary: A Lot of Winners
Review: There were a lot of winners connected to this book, not the least of them being the person reading and enjoying it. Not only were many of the horses and trainers winners, but the book was a 5 star winner for me. I loved the detailed descriptions as Smiley took me into a whole new world. She created a place and told us so much about it that, as readers, we became part of it. My daughter, a bookworm like me, read it and thought it was fantastic. We both have discovered Jane Smiley and are going backwards to get previous works of hers. At the beginning I had a quibble that it was a little hard to get into because there were so many characters and just as I thought I was getting to know one of them, it jumped over to another one, sometimes a brand new one. But as I read on, I began to know them and liked jumping around to find out what they were doing. Smiley managed very satisfactorily to tie up loose ends and get some of the characters together that deserved good things to happen to them....and when I say characters, I'm including the horses since she gave them such distinct personalities! My husband is not a great book lover but he read this one completely through and really liked it. If you like horses at all you'll love this book. But even if you've had no experience with horses and know nothing about the world of racing, you can still enjoy it tremendously because of the great character studies.
Rating: 
Summary: Finally -- a horse book for adults!
Review: This book was a great "read" and I had trouble putting it down -- I frequently found myself tempted to ride the subway past my stop, just so I could keep reading! Books with a list of characters at the beginning usually worry me -- I hate stories with so many poorly-defined characters that such a list becomes necessary. Even with Horse Heaven's impressive length, however, I think I only referred to the list of characters once or twice. It was great to be able to follow the story from the points of view of the many characters, not the least of which were the horses, whom the author imbued with a wonderful mixture of self-determination, insight and even humor. Smiley's equine characters also exercised a surprising amount of control over their own destiny in an industry in which what's best for the horse often can be overlooked. That said, I agree with another reviewer's comment that a bolder editor might have tightened Horse Heaven up. Occasionally while reading, I found myself wondering whether I would be turning the pages so quickly if the backdrop for the stories had been, say, stock car racing instead of horse racing. (I say this because I am a shameless "plot-hound," so long passages of description -- however well-written -- without a reasonable amount of plot development tend to bore me.) Without the inclusion of horses, I believe I would have been enjoyed reading the book somewhat less. For this reason, I am having a hard time recommending this book to my friends and family members who aren't as nutty about horses as I am. All in all, though, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and was sorry to reach the last page.
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Summary: Horse Heaven
Review: This was the most boring audio book I have ever hear. The story was not interesting and the voices were either too loud or too soft half of the time. If this had been my first audio book, I never would have purchased another one.
Rating:
Summary: It Could Be a Winner in the Bulwer-Lytton Contest
Review: I was shocked by how bad this book was. Horse Heaven was Reader's Hell. The writer won a Pulitzer Prize? If it was for anything like this book, the folks handing out the Pulitzers need to be slapped. There were sentences so long and straying, they needed to be broken into separate paragraphs. Characters were so sketchy, it was impossible to care about them. My impression was that the writer collected lots of information about horse racing and tried to cram every incident she heard about, and every type of person involved with horse racing, into one book. The result: a preposterous mess. If it were a movie, it would be 4 hours long, and the critics would rip it to shreds. The main thing I got out of it was the realization I had underappreciated the Dick Francis novels I read.
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