This past week I have been taking care of animals a county away, and have had plenty of time to make further progress on my Chronicles of Narnia audiobook experience. I am listening to the Audible versions, not the full-cast ones narrated by Paul Schofield (!). In this collection, Alex Jennings reads The Horse and his Boy, and Lynn Redgrave reads Prince Caspian.

The Horse and his Boy is one of my favorites of the Narnian stories because of its quasi-middle eastern setting. We open on a young boy who is a slave in “”Calormen”, an area inspired by romantic ideas of the medieval-Islamic world. It’s very Arabian Nights esque, with a strong emphasis on oral storytelling and despotic kings and the like. The boy, Shasta, believes himself to be kidnapped from somewhere else, and as it happens he encounters a horse, Bree, who can talk and therefore knows he is from somewhere else. Only Narnian creatures talk; the rest of the world’s animals are mere beasts. The two decide to escape together, and strike for “Narnia and the North!”. As it happens, this story happens within the timeframe of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, wherein Queen Susan and her siblings are living out a full Narnian life and are adults. Queen Susan has visited Calormen to investigate the prospects of a marriage, but finds her intended rather ghastly. The spurned beau resolves to kidnap her, and so while Shasta is going north and picking up a sidekick in the form of a young woman (Aravis) who is also running away from an arranged marriage, the stories get tangled up and soon armies are marching. It’s read marvelously by Alex Jennings, who has a gift for vocal characterization, and Horse has some of my favorite Lewisian lines. (One particular one being that Shasta and Aramis, the young woman, got so used to arguing with one another that when they grew up, they married in order to do it more comfortably.) The only vocal quibble is that Rabadash, the evil prince intent on rapine, sounds a bit campy. (Think Prince Charming in Shrek 2.)

Prince Caspian is set after Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: the children are standing on a platform and suddenly find themselves pulled back into Narnia. Specifically, they are in the ruins of their old castle, which confuses them enormously: the castle looks like it’s been abandoned for centuries. Presently, they find out that Narnia was invaded generations ago by another race of men, the Telmarines, who drove out the talking animals and such. The heir to their throne, however, is a curious young lad who wants to know more about Old Narnia, and his wicked uncle decides to knock him off — as wicked royal uncles and stepmothers are wont to do. Caspian flies for help into the deep wood, where he meets Old Narnian creatures who still remember the days of Peter, Susan, Lucy, and Edmund — and they have a horn that can summon help. Turns out the horn summoned not Aslan this time, but the four children after they’d returned to our world. Lynn Redgrave read this one, and while I was surprised at first at a female narrator, I found she did the characters quite well. As I quickly realized when starting The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, it’s much easier for a woman to sound like a pompous young boy than a man: the man just sounds silly. (Dawn Treader’s vocal interpretation of Reepicheep is positively irritating.) I think this may have been my first ever audiobook with a female narrator. Not sure why: it’s not as if I’ve been avoiding them. Edit: No, it wasn’t. I listened to Scarlett Johannssen read Alice in Wonderland.