The Horse and His Boy (Novel)

By C. S. Lewis

Catholic-ometer: 5 of 5

Enjoyability: 4.5 of 5

Like the book published before it, the Horse and His Boy is a less constantly-allegorical narrative, focusing more on the personal journeys of the characters than on establishing fresh allegories throughout the story, and it's the only book of the series where the main characters are not Earth children.  It follows the story of a boy named Shasta, raised, and nearly sold by a fisherman.  Shasta goes on a journey to get away from his former master, and in the process, meets Bree and Hwin; two talking horses, as well as a young girl named Aravis, who's essentially calormene royalty.  This means that she hails from Calormen; the large, well-armed country to the south of Narnia.

Shasta and his friends are shocked and haunted by many dangers on their journey, and frequently wind up overhearing the plans of many powerful people.  In this way, they discover that an invasion of Archenland and Narnia is being planned by Rabbadash; prince of Calormen, and race to try to warn the people of the lands to the north.

As I said, the allegories in this story are not intrusive or constant, and generally recurr when they do show up.  The most obvious one is divine judgment.  The actions of lions tend to act as divine miracles in Narnia, and this is basically how it goes in book 5.  Shasta runs into lions quite a number of times in this book, always causing him fear and making him feel miserable, but in the end, he starts to realize that each time he ran into the lion, it always wound up bringing him good fortune, albeit through unpleasant and terrifying means.

Divine judgment is basically like that.  Lots of people today want to ignore its very existence, because it's not always pleasant or easy to cope with, but it's always intended to be for our benefit, even if we don't always make use of it, or even see how we could have.  Just think of how many people ask "Why would God do this to me?"  This book goes out to them.

Another thing worth mentioning is some of Bree's dialogue near the end.  Bree is perhaps the most entertaining to watch the development of, since he thinks, at first, that Aslan can't be "a real lion."  It's somewhat reminiscent of many modern and ancient heretics, who insisted again and again that Jesus couldn't have been a real man if he was really God.

With regard to the flow of the story, I admit that this book almost threw me.  Through the early parts, the story involves a lot of situations where one or more of the characters overhear a piece of backstory or plot development, to the point where, for a while, you wonder if the story is even really about Shasta at all, or if the wrong main character was chosen.  The fact that the main character has virtually no involvment in the big battle near the end is hardly encouraging, for one thing.  Still, by the end of the book, it's obvious that Shasta really was the main character all along.

As Narnia books go, I'm afraid I found this one to be rather on the slow side, since it involves very little magic, and most of the chapters focus more on the human characters than on the Narnians, and include far more human beings than Narnians anyway.  Still, where writing quality is concerned, this is certainly one of the best-written books in the series, only rarely dipping into third person omniscient narrative, which has been kind of a thorn in the side of this series since the very beginning.

Regardless of the dumbed-down fantasy elements, the relatively small-scale conflict, and the even smaller scale protagonists around which this story is based, I found it very enjoyable and even exciting, so I completely reccomend this book.

However, there's one more thing I feel I should address at the end of the review.  The bad guys in this book; the Calormene, have been accused of being too much like muslims, because they have a vast army, live near a desert, have dark skin and beards, and a lot of oils and spices.  Oh, and their money is called "crescents."  That's one most people forget.  Now, I could defend the artistic use of a bad guy race based off the muslim world in a story like this one, but honestly, I don't really think that the Calormene are that.  In spite of all the similarities with the typical muslim stereotypes, it's hard to take them seriously as real muslims when their religion is so clearly polytheistic, and they accept alcoholic drinks so eagerly.  As I see it, they're just bad guys; not muslims.