Dannii Elle's Reviews > The Horse and His Boy

This is my third journey into the lands of Narnia as I have been reading the series in chronological rather than publication order. With probably the most intriguing title of the series, this was the tale I was most excited for, but it ultimately didn't live up the magic of the previous two books, for me.

This is the first book in the series not set from the perspective of someone entering Narnia from the human real. I still enjoyed it, though it is not what I thought it would be and, as such, it lost a lot of the mystical and magical qualities that pervaded the previous stories.

This tale surrounds a young boy, Sashta, and his talking horse, Bree, in a heroic type, rags-to-riches tale. Coming from bordering savage lands, the duo traverse cities and deserts to flee the slavery that would otherwise await them. Along their journey they meet a similar pair of escapees, Avaris and talking horse Hwin, who join them on their adventures.

Characters from the previous tale made a reappearance in their new roles as Kings and Queens of Narnia and it was exciting to see how the characters had progressed.

The adventurous elements of the story were high and seeing more of this magical realm was a real joy, but I lost some of my suspended belief in reading this. With no connection to the human world, this still made for pleasing but not enchanting reading.

My largest grievance with this tale was that I felt it relied on the stereotype of the savage other and incorporated some racist elements that might have been acceptable for the time it was published but jarred with me, as a modern-day reader. I could not forgive the book this sin and it dramatically lessened my enjoyment. I see few other reviews with similar statements so perhaps this was only my interpretation of the text but, nevertheless, the feeling that the stereotypes were somewhat misplaced continued to niggle at me as I read this.