Reviews - Chronicles of Narnia: The Horse and His Boy

4.48k reviews for:

Chronicles of Narnia: The Horse and His Boy

C.S. Lewis

3.7 AVERAGE

katemariec11's review against another edition

2.0

adventurous lighthearted slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

wildflowercrypt's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

dmcke013's review against another edition

3.0

Firstly, is this the third Narnia book, or is it the fifth?

The answer to that is whether you go by chronological setting (in which case it's the third), or by publication date (it's the fifth).

This is also a story that I didn't remember reading as a child; however, when I was recently re-reading it I was finding plot elements to be a little-bit-more-familiar than I was otherwise expecting: perhaps I did, and had just forgotten.

Unlike [b: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe|100915|The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1)|C.S. Lewis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1353029077s/100915.jpg|4790821], this does not follow the Pevensie children, but rather the journey of a young boy named Shasta who discovers he was adopted and is running away to Narnia when his adoptive father is about to sell him into slavery; running away alongside/with the help of the talking horse Bree. Along the way they fall in with a girl named Aravis and her talking horse Hwin, who are also making the same escape.

While I've heard arguments recently that, in this book, CS Lewis is displaying his own racist xenophobia ('fair and white ... accursed but beautiful Barbarians'), personally I think that is reading too much into what is simply intended to be a children's Arabian Nights esque fairytale