The Knights of Orcana
an excerpt

Living on Flint as we did, our lives were straightforward (and boring). Farming, mining, low-tech industries, tourism - these were the mainstays of the planet's economy. Which made Flint a very rural, slow, agrarian sort of world. With lots of animals. And Soza /loved/ animals.

I didn’t dislike animals myself. We had a dog and two cats by the time I was fifteen; my mother kept chickens and ducks, and I was used to being around the horses that were brought to my farrier father’s forge. But Soza was passionate about all kinds of creature, great and small, from the largest plough horse to the smallest rabbit. I didn’t really get her enthusiasm, but I put up with it without joshing her too often. After all, she put up with my interest in electronics - mostly by ignoring it, but she tolerated those times when I starting rambling on, or worse, disappeared to talk to other enthusiasts.

But anyway, it was Soza's love of animals, and of riding horses in particular, that made her - and by extension, me - write down the obscure planet of Orcana as our fifth choice for our exchange year. All we really knew about it was that it was designated as the same sort of agrarian planet as Flint; that it was run on a feudal system - split into countries, each with their own monarch, no less! - and that it had honest-to-goodness knights who took part in tournaments when they weren't waging war on their ruler's enemies... and knights meant horses, and Soza loved horses. Done deal. Actually, you’d think she would’ve noticed that wars and tournaments mean injured and dead horses… but somehow, this seemed to have escaped her.

It's easy to look back and wish we'd done just a little bit more research. But seriously: no-one /ever/ ended up with their fifth choice!