The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Aaaaaannnd it's time to downgrade an old classic.

Reading it with my girl was kinda a chore because BOTH of us thought the story dragged. And if a six-year-old can pick out the ickiness of caricature Arab cultures and find it distasteful (without any kind of reaction from her daddy), then it MIGHT be a bit bad.

Sure, sure, talking horses and missing princesses and princes and an adventure/quest OUGHT to be great fun, but the pacing is weird with lots of talking about events that just happened off-stage and with some anticlimactic lion cameos here and there, I had a distinct impression that I was being railroaded down a recently blown MORAL TUNNEL.

And then, what about the great battle at the end of this?

Yeah, let's have a daft old hermit call the highlights like a senile sportscaster who gets bored half-way through the telling to go inside to take a dump or something.

GREAT STORYTELLING, LEWIS.

And in the meantime, after the twentieth time, my daughter said, "I'm bored..." I woke her up at the end. She hugged me and said, "Daddy? Please. No more."

"No more, daughter. No more."

View all my reviews