I actually really enjoyed The Horse and His Boy. It’s the first book with a completely new main character. None of either the four original children or their cousin Eustace take up a main role. Although they do show up, it’s in a more minor capacity. A nice way to shake things up.

Timelinewise, it takes place after most of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but before the end when the children have grown and return to their own world. So Narnia is at peace, but it’s a new peace. So when we get to follow an outside threat (we hadn’t otherwise heard of) from countries that have been mentioned but only barely… that’s pretty cool.

Another pretty interesting note is how two of the main characters are Talking Horses. We’ve had Reepicheep before and all manner of minor Talking Beasts (and Aslan) as minor characters, but this is another new bit. But having actual ‘beastlike’ characterization different based on species is a neat trick. It’s one reason I was reading Redwall.

Overall and plotwise, it’s a solid adventure story with a fairly straight forward plot and a number of neat locations and characters we meet along the way. The bad guys are obviously bad and the good guys win the day, but that’s to be expected from these stories, no?

Well worth the read. Now I’m curious how The Magician's Nephew (chronologically the earliest of the stories) will fit in.