The Horse & His Boy - C. S. Lewis
In The Silver Chair, one of the characters tells an old story about the days of Peter the High King, entitled The Horse and His Boy, and here Lewis relates this story. Shasta is a poor boy, son (so he thinks) of a spiteful fisherman who basically treats him as a slave. But one night when a Tarkaan visits and wants to buy Shasta from the fisherman, Shasta discovers that the Tarkaan's horse can talk. Bree, the horse, tells him about Narnia to the north, and together they set off to escape.
Unlike the other stories, very little of this book takes place in Narnia at all; it's mostly in Calormene, to the south, which has been mentioned before in the previous books. The Calormenes are like the Turks to Narnia's fair-haired Brits: they're dark-skinned, carry scimitars, and refer to the "demons and sorcerers" of Narnia. So, of course, they're nasty cruel people, and need to be taught a lesson (despite using the same British slang as the Narnians, curiously enough). It's a bit unfortunate that it makes the world of Narnia seem a little racially prejudiced, but it's a fun story nonetheless and it's interesting to find out a little more about the four Pevensie children after they've been Kings and Queens for a while.
Fed to jonathan's brain | June 19, 2005
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