Trotting Towards Nightmare Night: The Stormy Road to Canterlot

Hello & welcome back to Trotting Towards Nightmare Night and we continue our look at Tempest Shadow with the prequel book to My Little Pony: The Movie.  Originally, I wasn't going to review this book but the library I volunteer at had a copy and it was a quick read.





Cover

Yeah, that cover is a bit misleading as Twilight is barely in this book. This is Tempest's story through and through.


The Plot


They are not kidding, when they call this a prequel as it ends right where the movie begins but let's rewind a bit.  The main focus of the book is on Tempest and what happens after the Ursa incident in which she lost her horn.  we see that she becomes more unsure of herself. Especially after her friends decide to take the exam for Princess Celestia's School without her.  Pretty rough and the young unicorn doesn't take well to it in Canterlot.  Yeah, that was her old hometown.  It's around this point that the young Unicorn decides to go on the run after realizing that her horn will never grow back and she goes through many locations from the show and movie and eventually comes across The Storm King's guards and after impressing him,  he hires her on and she is teamed up with Grubber.   The Storm King promises that he can regrow her horn if she does something for him.  They are sent to Mount Aras, the home of the Hippogriffs to steal Queen Novo's pearl but the plans go awry as Novo is able to make her subjects disappear. Gee, I wonder where they went.  The Storm King is none too pleased about Tempest's failure but she is able to think on her hooves and offers a way for The Storm King to get the magic of the Alicorn Princesses and our book loops back to the opening of the movie as the attack is about to begin.


Simple enough premise but it's a fun read.



Character


While other characters do appear in this book, the only one that really matters is Tempest.



Tempest Shadow


I think this line from the MLP Wiki synopsis of the book helps to show what happens to Tempest throughout the course of this book.

 Little by little, her original kind personality is replaced with cold ruthlessness.

Tempest or the Young Unicorn as she is referred to before settling on that name starts the book out as a young and scared unicorn and that is a common trait for how she is in prequel material but this book really helps to show how far Tempest was willing to fall and shed her original personality just in the hopes of obtaining her horn.   And as we see throughout the movie, this personality became her default and she came to hate the idea of friendship and it was The Storm King that planted the seed of working alone in her head.



My Final Thoughts


This was a breezy read that helped to set up more of Tempest and how far, she had fallen from who she originally was.   It's a fun read if you are a Tempest fan.  Join me next time as we look at another take on how Tempest met up with The Storm King as we look at the fourth issue of IDW's My Little Pony: The Movie Prequel.