the Horse and His Boy

This book is the third of C. S. Lewis's Narnia saga, and arguably the weirdest. Though that is very arguable indeed, as all of them are arguably pretty weird. What's weird about this one though is that is has almost zero bearing on the characters or plot of the other six novels in this saga. It follows Shashta, a poor boy from Calormen, who escapes slavery with a talking horse called Bree, eventually meeting up with a girl called Aravis (who also has a talking horse) with whom he tries to escape to Narnia in the far north but along the way they get into all kinds of political scrapes and intrigue. Oh, and Jesus Aslan shows up briefly of course. I really don't know exactly what Lewis was trying to say with this book. It adds virtually nothing to the larger saga, even thematically, as everything that is communicated through subtext is replicated better in other places across this series of seven shortish novels. This one does have a handful of good moments though. Don't take my perplexity at its existence as an excuse to skip it if you're actually reading through the Narnia saga.