The Chronicles of Narnia - Book Review

Book 3 - The Horse and his Boy

Written by: Clive Staples Lewis
Illustrated by: Pauline Baynes
First published: 1955
Genre: Fantasy

Time Location, Our World: 1940
Time Location, Narnia: 1014
Area: Calormen, Archenland
Central Characters: Shasta (Cor), Aravis, Bree, Hwin

Plot:
In this book we follow the journey of two young people and their horses - or two horses and their people as the horses likes it. We start of far south, in the southern parts of Calormen, where a young boy named Shasta lives in a fishers cabin. He's lived with the fisher as long as he can remember, but when a rich man visits, Shasta realizes his roots are from anyone but his "father", most likely not even Calormen. When he accidentally picks up that the fisher plans to sell him as a slave to the rich man, he sits outside and talks to the mans horse in despair - and to his big surprise it answers him. The horse is called Bree, and turns out to be a Narnian talking horse, captured by humans when he was young, and has lived in slavery ever since. Shasta and Bree decides to run away together, to Narnia and the North. On their journey they meet a young girl riding a horse - and it turns out they're in pretty much the same situation. The horse, Hwin is a talking Narnian mare, who just like Bree has been held in slavery for years. Her rider, Aravis, is the daughter in a rich, affluent Calormen family, and ran away in despair when she was forced to marry a much older, rich man.
The two pairs decides to cooperate on their journey towards Narnia, but when they reach Tashbaan, Calormens capital, the problems worsens. Shasta comes away from the others, when he's mistaken for being the prince of Archenland, by the visiting Narnian king-family who's supposed to look after him. As Aravis tries to figure out what to do, she gets lost as well. They both get away and finds each other and the horses again - but they've both picked up important information - the prince of Calormen, Rabadash, is madly in love with queen Susan of Narnia, and is willing to do anything to get her - and his plans threatens Narnia and Archenland. Will Shasta, Aravis and the horses get there in time to warn them? And who is really Shasta?

My thoughts:
This is one of my favourites out of all the books. I grew up being a lot around horses, and the story of two children running away with their talking horses definitly appealed to me. This book is also really different from the others, as it doesnt include stories of people from our world - and in fact the readers dont even visit Narnia in this book. We get to hear a lot about Calormen and the southern parts of the world, and the people and culture here, wich is very different from Narnia. This book contains a lot of stories - we follow Shastas journey through parts of the world he has never seen before, but we also follow his personal journey in trying to figure out who he really is and where he comes from. Aravis is a rather different girl that I think many of us can relate to. While other girls at her age, and in her culture would gladly accept marriage to a rich man, to have a big house, nice dresses and high status, Aravis would like to be her own boss, doing with her life what she wants. She's definitly one of the strongest female character in the Narnia series. Allthough she's desribed as rather cold and angry, I really like her. The horses are also having a lot of personal struggles during their journey back home, especially Bree.
In the middle of all of this we're thrown into someone elses battle, and a race between different characters that could be the end of Narnia and Archenland, and the book takes a pretty exciting turn.
Compared to some of the other books, where I feel like Aslan is being a bit mean and strict, I love his role in this one. He's just a supporter, protecter, someone you wish you would have in your life.
I dont really think I have any negative to say about this book - It was one of the last to be written, and I feel like Lewis has grown a lot as a writer. This is the side of him that I love.
Rate: 6/6