After all my fuss about what is the correct order to read the Chronicles of Narnia in (see previous post here.) I then went an picked up the wrong book, so have just finished The Horse and His Boy when I should have been reading The Silver Chair! Oh well!! Reading the first line, I was convinced that I really should have read the books in chronological order..that as it was now it was definitely not the right order!! We'll see how it all fits in place once I have read The Silver Chair which is now my next read!
In The Horse and His Boy, Shasta has been raised as a fisherman's son, but basically worked as a in the land of Calormen. When he overhears his father planning to sell him off to become a slave he decides to run away and look for the magical land of Narnia. Along the way he meets up with a talking horse whose abbreviated name is Bree (we humans couldn't pronounce his whole name properly if we tried!) and Aravis and her talking horse Hwin. Their journey is fraught with danger esepcially as the treacherous Calormen are about to commit an act of war on Archenland, a close ally of Narnia.
Aslan makes several appearances in this novel, and this certainly is a very meaningful book. I can however see more in this book than I have in any of the others that I have read why Lewis gets into trouble for being racist and sexist in this series. The Calormen are all dark skinned whilst our hero, Shasta is in fact Archenland royalty and he is blond and fair skinned. The division between good and evil is very clearly delineated in this way.
My post regarding the previous Chronicle of Narnia that I read is here.
Rating 4 out of 5
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