The Horse and His Boy

My mother bought be all seven C. S. Lewis "chronicles" a little more than ten years ago. I think I had just read and sort of enjoyed one Lord of the Rings book or something, and she decided I would like any fantasy tale with magic and archers and the like. To her credit, I probably did give off the vibe of a future Dungeons and Dragons champion for at least a brief stint during my childhood. I read the first two and had very neutral feelings about them. I then put the series down for, well, ten years. Last night, I finished the third (chronologically) tale, The Horse and His Boy. Where to begin? I know it's meant for children, but this book was predictable in every sort of way from beginning to end. It reeked of fairy tale cliches, and while I try to avoid giving away spoilers on this site, I have no remorse in letting anyone who has not read this book know that the titular boy turns out to have been a long lost prince all along. But, again, this book is so predictable that you can more or less see this coming by the end of the first chapter. Now, I know that it's no secret that this series in general is infused with Christian undertones, but I was pretty shocked at how much thinly-veiled anti-Islamism this book contained. It's set in some Arab-inspired land of extremes where everybody is either a cruel-hearted sultan-type figure or a meek and humble slave. From the get-go, the protagonist is essentially told, "You're white. You don't belong here. Run away to Narnia, in the North, and be free like the rest of your people." The whole time I read it, I really couldn't ignore the blatant theme that white Narnians were pure, good freedom lovers, while the "dark" inhabitants of the other land were stereotypical Arabian Nights stock characters. I have no problem with an author depicting such a fictional land in such a semi-true way. If done correctly, it can make for brilliant satire. The thing is, Lewis decided to paint the bizarro-Muslims in this way while at the same time depicting the white Narnians as entirely virtuous, noble, and righteous. There was no satire, because the exaggerated criticisms and depictions were entirely one-sided. The ordeal wasn't so much an exploration of different culture values as much as a mantra that it's wrong to be Arabian, Turkish, or Persian. If any "moral" could be derived from the story, it was probably "It is not Christian to seek power, make war, and own slaves." The historical irony of that sentence warrants another discussion entirely, and I feel like I'm running way longer than I usually do in recapping a backlog-clearing experience. I guess the bottom line on this book is that it was unabashedly bigoted, entirely predictable, and not all that interesting. I hope (and optimistically think) that the next book in the series, Prince Caspian, will be a better read, but I'll have to wait to find out. It'll be a while before I turn to a C. S. Lewis tale again.