I’m going to start off this third Summer of Narnia with this Pauline Baynes illustration from The Horse and His Boy that I just found. I assume it wasn’t included in the American edition of the books, because I don’t remember it from my childhood. It shows the moment when the Narnian entourage, headed by …
The horses Bree (front, gray dapple) and Hwin (back, brown) are my favorite animal characters from the Chronicles. Not only are they featured throughout the whole of The Horse and His Boy, they play vital roles in the plot. Both were stolen as foals from Narnia and raised in Calormen, where normal non-talking horses …
A beautifully rendered view of the city of Tashbaan, top, and the God Tash, bottom. It wasn’t until The Last Battle that the reader finds out Tash is real, and evil, and received sacrifices of human beings.
Archenland is a country to the south of Narnia proper (that is, Narnia the nation-state not Narnia the world) and lies between it and Calormen, providing a buffer of sorts. Rather, its mountains provide a buffer. There’s a northern range lying between it and Narnia, and a southern range that provides a barrier to …
The Horse and His Boy ties for my third favorite of the Chronicles with The Magician’s Nephew. Perhaps Nephew has the edge, because of the awesomeness of Charn, the Wood Between the Worlds, and Aslan’s Garden. But Horse has Tashbaan and the desert. It’s a close call. The flavor is different from the rest of …
Other posts in this series: The Odd Geography of the Utter East The Wild Lands of the North When speaking of Narnia, the name can mean both the country, and the world. Narnia-the-country’s boundaries are straightforward. This is a Baynes map from Prince Caspian. North: That line of hills that has a V-shape at the …