Sonderbooks Book Review of The Horse and His Boy

Reviewed April 5, 2004.
Scholastic, New York, 1995. First published in 1954. 224 pages.
Available at Sembach Library (JF LEW).
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2004, #2, Young Adult and Children's Fantasy Old Favorites

Here is the fifth book of The Chronicles of Narnia, although it is Book Three if you read them in the order in which they happened in Narnia. (I find I can’t bear to read them in any order different from the one I grew up on.)

When I was a kid, this was one of my least favorite books, since it doesn’t have anyone from our world in it. However, as an adult, I find it’s one of my favorites. Perhaps I like the way it’s a self-contained story in itself. I do like all the insights C. S. Lewis works in about the way God deals with people.

This story is set in the world of Narnia during the time that King Peter, Queen Susan, King Edmund and Queen Lucy reigned.

Shasta lives in Calormen, but he doesn’t look like the other Calormenes around him. One night, he learns that the fisherman he lives with is not his father and found him in a boat as a baby. He hears the fisherman haggling with a Calormene lord, a Tarkaan, to sell Shasta into slavery. The Tarkaan’s horse surprises Shasta by talking to him and suggesting that they run away to Narnia together. The horse, Bree, is a talking horse from Narnia who was taken captive as a foal.

Along the way, Shasta and Bree fall in with other travelers and don’t find their escape so simple. This is an exciting adventure story. I suppose it doesn’t really have any magic in it, since we don’t have the magic of anyone being transported to Narnia. However, Aslan himself appears and we see his hand (his paw?) shaping events and leading Shasta to his destiny.

Reviews of other books by C. S. Lewis:
Book 1 of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Book 2 of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Book 3 of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Book 4 of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair
Book 6 of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew
Book 7 of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle
The Last Battle performed by Patrick Stewart

Out of the Silent Planet
Of Other Worlds
Perelandra
That Hideous Strength
Till We Have Faces
The Great Divorce
A Year With C. S. Lewis

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Book Reviews by Sondra Eklund

******The Horse and His Boy*

Book 5 of The Chronicles of Narnia

by C. S. Lewis