The Horse and His Boy (1954)

A great classic. ( )

I’ve never been super crazy about this Narnia book. I think it’s the only Narnia book I’ve felt this way. Granted this time I felt distracted listening to it on audiobooks in the midst of caring for the kids so perhaps I’d feel differently if I read it by myself.

Christian - 5 stars
Julia - 3 1/2 stars
Me - 3 1/2 stars ( )

Coming back to this series, I'm surprised by how much I really like it. "The Horse and His Boy" is a little parable which doesn't really connect with the rest of the Narnia series, but there's something about the imagery of this duo and their cross-country travels that really appealed to me as a child. I think it's rather lovely, really. ( )

See my video review of the series here: https://youtu.be/g04BC4ephZc

I have somewhat mixed feelings about this book. I really like horses, so the fact that two of the four main characters in this story were talking horses was a plus, but my favorite part of the Narnia world is the whimsy of it all. In the last volume (reading in publication order), we got giants and Marsh-wiggles and enchantments; in the one before that, we got to tour a variety of mystical islands. This time, the part of the Narnian world we explored was Calormen, which feels very much like an Earth society (no magic or talking animals or anything of the sort). That made this book my least favorite of the series so far.

On the plus side, this is probably the most feminist volume so far. It depicts Lucy actually fighting in a battle without anyone saying that her doing so is "ugly" or any other such thing (!!!) and the new female main character is a very strong girl who spends at least part of the book dressed in mail and armed.

On the topic of race, however, I had some fairly mixed feelings about how the Calormene people were portrayed (as I did in their first appearance in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, as well). These are the only non-white people we've come across in the Narnian world--to be specific, they are portrayed as similar to a Middle Eastern/West Asian culture--and they are characterized as fairly violent and cruel. In their last appearance, they were portrayed as pretty much the only culture that approves of owning slaves. This time, we follow two main characters as they flee Calormen in search of a good life (with the white people of Narnia, of course) and we see firsthand the anger and violence of the leaders of Calormen. The only thing that I can really say is positive is that not everything about their culture was depicted negatively. One example of this that I can think of was their storytelling techniques, which Lewis makes a point of saying are impressive. One of the two protagonists is also a Calormene native, and she is still depicted as a good person and is even shown at the end in a biracial romance. Even so, I find it frustrating that Lewis can't seem to write non-white people without making them seem questionable as a whole. ( )

I thought the Horse and His Boy was more heavy-handed with its religious tilt than any of the previous Narnia books, but it was also a more exciting story than the Silver Chair certainly and possibly better than The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. With new characters not tied to previously introduced stories (with the exception of the late and limited cameos from Lucy, Edmund and Susan) it nearly stands on its own as a story. 3 1/2 stars. ( )