The Horse And The Boy!

The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis from 1954 was the fifth book published in The Chronicles of Narnia, but it is the third one to read in the chronological order. It is the story of Shasta, a young orphan who is raised as a slave in the kingdom of Calormen. He longs to escape his situation and when he meets Bree, a talking warhorse, he gets his chance. Bree is a talking horse from the land of Narnia and was taken while still quite young and trained for the battlefield. The two team up and head for Narnia. 

The duo soon meets Aravis and Hwin. The former is a princess longing to escape an arranged marriage. The latter is another talking horse, also longing for Narnia. The four join forces and we follow their adventures. They are forced get disguises to travel through the bustling city of Tashban where they get separated. Shasta is mistaken for a prince named Corin when he meets up with King Edmund and Queen Susan from Narnia. The latter two are the adults who we are told ruled Narnia for many years before heading back through the wardrobe in the previous novel. 

There is more adventuring when Shasta at last gets out and heads to a massive graveyard where they quartet had arranged to meet if things got out of hand. Eventually all four are reunited and they head quickly to Narnia, because Aravis has become aware that Prince Rabadash is bent on attacking the magical territory because Queen Susan rebuffed his offers of marriage and had successfully escaped by ship from Tashban. In this quest across a desert the quartet encounters a lion who proves to be quite important their individual stories. 

This volume read more like a traditional fantasy or fairy tale adventure. A young boy finds a bit of a magic who begins to take advantage to change his circumstances. There's quite a bit of violence in this story, but the bloodshed is hardly front and center, nor the point of the novel. Bree the warhorse is a dandy character, who is confronted with some true dilemmas. We do get a sense of what Narnia is, and how it is perceived in the grander universe that Lewis has concocted. Pauline Baynes illustrations are particularly effective in the volume that I read. 

Next time, which will be in December, we will get around to Prince Caspian. 

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