Reviews with content warning for Racism - The Horse and His Boy

Set in the country of Calormene, this book follows Chastor and a talking Horse as they journey to Narnia. Along the way they meet a Calormene girl, Aravis, and her talking horse who joins them. Between them they stumble upon the Calormene Prince Rabadash’s plans to invade Narnia. Of course, they save the day. Our favourite Pevensies make a cameo – the Prince is invading as Queen Susan refuses to marry him.

The story is pretty slow I think, but I'm just not a big fan of the long journey trope in fantasy. However, this one mixes it up a little as they come to rest in a city where both Chastor and Aravis stumble upon the nefarious plots and then continue on their journey (but with more purpose)

This book is one of my least favourites due to Lewis’ heavy biases and Orientalism. Calormene is a clear analogue of a Middle Eastern country and Chastor, a Narnian, stands out as a fair-skinned, blonde outsider, in a land of savages, slave owners and forced marriages. At first, I thought we were being introduced to a brown-skinned main character and was about to impressed at how progressive Lewis had been, to only learn the complete opposite. Chastor needs to return to Narnia, a land that is not only good in its own right, but better than Calormene in direct comparison to it. A lot of this comes from the talking Horse character (they don't have Talking Animals in Calormene. This is supposed to be a sign that Calormene isn't as great as Narnia as they have intelligent animals but if you're read The Magician's Nephew, it is Aslan who gives beasts the power to talk so really, you've chosen Narnia to be a place of Talking Animals. I digress, this is not supposed to be a question of God's omnipotence...). One of the things that put me off was how he spoke about riding into war and how that was fine in Narnia, that would be a glorious thing, but not so much in Calormene. There is also a particular scene where Chastor finally makes it to Narnia and he eats bacon, eggs and mushrooms for the first time. He says it is the best thing he has ever smelled/tasted and my eyes were rolling out of my skull. As someone who had never smelled bacon until I was 18 years old, I can assure you it is not appealing and I would rather eat an Arab meal any day.

Aslan, our Christ stand-in, acts like a literal wild animal, chasing the main characters across the desert and even attacks one of them – because they were falling behind on their quest and this is supposed to be a positive thing that the characters just don’t understand at the time. It does not read positively and only builds on a negative feeling towards Aslan.

The only silver lining is that this book features a cool, badass, brown female character in Aravis. She refuses an arranged marriage, she takes fate into her own hands and she runs away. This feels like a bit of an accident as good female characters are a rarity in this series, and we only ever meet one other good person from Calormene.

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