For the fifth trip to the land of Narnia, C.S. Lewis decided to look to south-of-the-border to the city and nation of the Calormens. There, in a small, provincial fishing village lives a boy named Shasta. His dad is a short-sighted jerk, no mom. One day a tarkeen, a noble lord on horseback, arrives and takes it into his mind to buy the boy. It's that kind of country. At length the tarkeen and his mount become separated and Shasta encounters him. It turns out that he is a talking horse from the North and he aims to split Calormen, where he is essentially a slave, for home. As the pair make their way North they encounter Avaris, a Tarkeen's daughter fleeing a disagreeable marriage and her mount Bree, who is also a talker. These four then proceed north for their freedom. Many "Arabian Nights-esque" adventures ensue.

This story is welcome in the Narnia canon in that it provides a look at the greater world beyond the borders of the nation of Narnia. It slowly dawns through the series that "Narnia" is a nation with neighbors rather than the whole of the world. The Pevensie kids, the original crew of Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy from Book One "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" appear at the edges of the the story, which occurs during the last chapter, in fact the last two or three pages of that book, but the story largely belongs to Shasta and Company and their disagreeable country. More installments of this sort might have given Narnia a "lived in" feeling that Tolkien's Middle Earth possesses and Narnia largely lacks. The Calormens are perhaps a little too much on the Ali Baba/Arabian Nights side for some. Example: whenever one of them refers to the Tisroc, their king, sultan, Maharajah, whatever, they say "May he live forever", this is a little stagy to me but not really bothersome.

One again we see Lewis's alegorical Christ figure, Aslan the Lion. He acts to prod the story along (vigorously chase it along in one instance). This isn't as mechanical or intrusive as it can be in some of the other stories and those not inclined to aligorical analysis can safely ignore it.

This story occurs during LWW as mentioned above. It is probably desirable (but not essential) to know the story of LWW to grasp everything going on in this story (seeing the movie will probably do), the other books aren't necessary. While were on the subject of story order, I will quickly mention that the Harper-Collins combo edition of "The Chronicles of Narnia" which I have presents the stories in a bizarre order (Narnian chronological order rather than publication order). In this stories case it doesn't matter terribly, but most of the other stories should be read in the order Lewis wrote them. (If you need the correct order, I have it here.)

This is the last Narnia story with any real sense of lighthearted-ness. The next and last story has quite a serious tone and heads strongly back into allegorical territory. So Narnia-heads enjoy while you can.

Recommended: Yes