I’ve actually read The Horse and His Boy three times; first when I originally read (or tried to read) The Chronicles of Narnia, second when I was in 4th or 5th grade, and finally when I was reading it to do this review and catch up on Narnia lore. While The Horse and His Boy might seen kind-of out of place in the series (since The Chronicles of Narnia for the most part follows the lives of the Pevensie siblings and their relatives), it is actually one of the most important books in the series.
#1: Bigger world
The Magician’s Nephew and The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe really only focuses on Narnia and though Narnia is relatively big, we are never given an estimate of how big. We get an idea that Narnia is just a continent and a few islands, giving the impression that Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are basically the kings and queens of an entire world. However, The Horse and His Boy expands the world of Narnia and puts an end to that assumption. While Narnia is the name of that world, the kingdom by that name is actually much smaller than the other kingdoms in the area, with Archenland and Calormen to the South being the other two major kingdoms during the Golden Age of Narnia. The inclusion of other kingdoms than just Narnia with their own cultures and peoples really helped expand the world and I liked it a lot.
#2: Horse Theft
I don’t really think that Shasta or Aravis stole the horses since Bree and Hwin went by their own admonition, but everyone else certainly thought so. Either way, the friendship between the children and their horses was quite charming and the fact that even after they parted ways at the end of the book, they still visited each other was a good ending for them to get.
#3: Aslan
Aslan is – in my opinion – a somewhat accurate portrayal of God. I say “somewhat” because C.S. Lewis still made some mistakes in his character. Should we get our theology from him? No. We should not. C.S. Lewis wasn’t inerrant and the fact that so many Christians glorify him as some absolutely perfect Christian author is honestly absurd. He made mistakes as any human does and of course his representation of Christianity through Aslan wasn’t going to be perfect.
Does that mean we should ditch the Narnia series? No. It’s still a good series, but should be read with some level of discernment, just like anything else.
Does that mean that you should hate Aslan? Also no.
I think the reason why C.S. Lewis chose Aslan to be a lion is because the lion inspires both awe and terror. If you’ve ever been to a zoo with a really good lion habitat, you’ve likely felt amazed by the size and strength of the cat and terrified from knowing what it could do to you. If you’ve ever heard it roar, you’ve probably beeen startled by it. With Aslan, he is good (like God is), but that doesn’t mean he’s a cuddly stuffed animal. He could easily wipe you out if he so chose, just like God. The characters in the Narnia series know this and live with a healthy fear of him.
This leads me to a highly controversial scene in The Horse and His Boy, where Aslan scratches the crap out of Aravis as punishment for what she forced her servant to endure. Many people have labeled this scene as being cruel of Aslan. Why couldn’t he have just served her up with justice by having her caught by someone and whipped ten times? To this, I say that Aravis needed to know what would happen by sinning. In comparison, Aslan could’ve easily killed her as punishment. To have her be caught and whipped by someone else probably wouldn’t have struck the same note for her. While it would’ve been more poetic, she probably would’ve brushed it off as a coincidence or something along those lines. For a divine lion to punish her for her sins but still let her live (especially after coming from a very cruel society where mercy wasn’t exactly an option), she learned a valuable lesson.
#4: Missing Prince Trope
Shasta being the missing prince was somewhat obvious from his meeting with Prince Corin, but I didn’t have too much of a problem with it because the kid needed a happy ending. It was also very well executed as compared to some shows and books out there where it’s even more obvious that the main character is the missing prince/princess and we don’t get much of a backstory for why.
Until next time,
M.J.
The Tanuki Corner 
“Aslan is – in my opinion – a somewhat accurate portrayal of God. I say “somewhat” because C.S. Lewis still made some mistakes in his character. Should we get our theology from him? No. We should not.”
Nice to hear someone else say it.
“With Aslan, he is good (like God is), but . . . he could easily wipe you out if he so chose, just like God. The characters in the Narnia series know this and live with a healthy fear of him.”
I disagree with that last sentence. For one, the characters never explain their fear. For another, Lewis’s background does the explaining for us. Throughout his life, he esteemed Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy, which describes the fear of God not merely as a response to danger, but as a response to being in the presence of something utterly beyond us. It seems as if that fear is more prevalent in Narnia than the mere fear of danger.
“Why couldn’t he have just served her up with justice by having her caught by someone and whipped ten times? To this, I say that Aravis needed to know what would happen by sinning. . . . To have her be caught and whipped by someone else probably wouldn’t have struck the same note for her.”
Except Aslan didn’t do it to teach Aravis what would happen if she sinned. He did it because she “needed to know what it felt like.” He’s only trying to teach her empathy, for some bizarre reason. But this only underscores Aslan’s shoddy leadership. If he truly wanted to teach Aravis what it felt like, he should have let her suffer an unjust punishment under Calormen’s societal norms, just as the slave girl did. Instead, all she did was learn how painful it is to be scratched, not how Aslan’s ways are better than Calormen’s or how deeply she sinned against him.
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