The Horse and His Boy
It tells a story. Hardcover files this book as fiction. A fact, not a factor: it plays no part in our call.
Listen to it
Audio has the easy job on this one: 10 readers call it fast and only 2% of the reviews we read called it demanding, so nothing in it needs a page you can flick back through. The recording and the book are received about equally well: Alex Jennings’ reading sits in the middle 40% of our shelf of books, on 441 ratings of the narration. So the format is doing all the work here.
Length does not decide this
4h 40m to listen, at 1×3h 44m to listen, at 1.25×3h 07m to listen, at 1.5×2h 40m to listen, at 1.75×2h 20m to listen, at 2×about 7 hours to readabout 6 hours to readabout 4½ hours to readabout 3½ hours to readabout 3 hours to read
The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 224 pages at 30 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. Treat the reading estimate as a ceiling on this one: this one runs 1.3 minutes of narration a page against a shelf median of 1.9, so its pages are lighter than the average we divide by (verse, dialogue, wide margins), and it will go quicker than we say.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 224 pages at 40 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. Treat the reading estimate as a ceiling on this one: this one runs 1.3 minutes of narration a page against a shelf median of 1.9, so its pages are lighter than the average we divide by (verse, dialogue, wide margins), and it will go quicker than we say.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 224 pages at 50 pages an hour, which is about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. Treat the reading estimate as a ceiling on this one: this one runs 1.3 minutes of narration a page against a shelf median of 1.9, so its pages are lighter than the average we divide by (verse, dialogue, wide margins), and it will go quicker than we say.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 224 pages at 65 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. Treat the reading estimate as a ceiling on this one: this one runs 1.3 minutes of narration a page against a shelf median of 1.9, so its pages are lighter than the average we divide by (verse, dialogue, wide margins), and it will go quicker than we say.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 224 pages at 80 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. Treat the reading estimate as a ceiling on this one: this one runs 1.3 minutes of narration a page against a shelf median of 1.9, so its pages are lighter than the average we divide by (verse, dialogue, wide margins), and it will go quicker than we say.
Slot → chore-safe
Harder work in audio than The Little Prince.
Easier to hear than 88% of the books we hold.
Easier to hear than 86% of the fiction we hold.
Easier to hear than 84% of the short books we hold.
- Listed under "The Chronicles of Narnia" but the sequence has no continuous narrator (14%), so it is not treated as one audio commitment.
Reading load against listening load
Where that puts this one among the books we hold: in the bottom 1% of our shelf of books for effort on the page and in the bottom 3% of our shelf of books for effort in your ears. The middle of the scale is not the middle of the shelf (most books sit below the average on both), so a book at 0.00 is already in the top 43% for effort on the page. Each of the three is measured against the whole shelf separately, so the bottom figure is not the top two subtracted. It is this book’s own distance from the middle.
What the audio disadvantage is made of. Two things and no others: how fast readers say this one moves, and how demanding the reviews we read found it. There is no third: the structural one has no data source, so it contributes nothing rather than being guessed at. Both directions are declared priors we have never fitted against a real verdict, which is the weakest-evidenced part of the whole model.
How the call was made
Where a bar carries ticks, the grey one is the middle of our shelf and a coloured one is a line we publish, cool where we start backing the page, warm where we start backing the recording. The evidence squares at the foot are a different thing: how far each of our four sources went, hatched where there was nothing to measure at all.
- The audio case
- 1.28It sits in the top 13% of our shelf of books for how far the recording outruns the page. Past the line where we start backing the recording.
- Narration payoff
- 0.14Alex Jennings’ reading and the book are received about equally well: in the middle 40% of our shelf of books, on 441 ratings of the narration. This is a difference, not a score: it sets the reading against its own book, so a much-loved book with a merely good reading sits low on this shelf even where nobody disliked either. That is measured on standardised figures rather than on the stars in the charts below, and here the two disagree: listeners mark a performance higher than a story as a rule, 4.62 against 4.54 across our shelf, so this recording’s 4.74 for the performance beside 4.69 for the story is not the level pair it looks. Against their own crowds they are +0.51 and +0.61, which is the same sum the toggle over those charts does. Asked the other way (how the reading stands against what the book’s own readers made of it, which is a different crowd rating a different thing), it comes out 1.72. We report that one and never score it: two crowds that do not overlap are held together by nothing but the standardising, which is a cost the figure above does not pay.
- What is at stake
- −1.24It sits in the bottom 8% of our shelf of books for how well the print crowds think of a book: not a book the crowds are precious about, so there is less to protect and we can be relaxed about it. Blended across 405,509 Goodreads ratings and 784 on Hardcover, each scored inside its own population first, and never added together.
For the page
- The crowds’ regard did not reach the line where we protect a first read, this reason did not apply
For the recording
- The voice and the book are received about level
- An easy listen anyway
- 441 listeners behind it
So the case for the recording won it.
A bigger dot counted for more: the voice and the ear are sized by their share of the sum above, the other two by how much stands behind them. A hatched square is a reason that did not apply here, which is not the same as one that counted for little.
- Evidence
- 1.00How much of the picture we actually have, out of 1.00: four questions, each answered as far as the source could answer it, less anything taken off for reading fewer reviews than we aim to.The reading441 people have rated this reading: as good as it getsThe second sourceHardcover knows this book, with 784 readers there: as good as it getsThe matchHow sure we are that the recording we scored is this book: as good as it getsThe reviewsWe read 300 reviews to judge how demanding it is: as good as it gets
What each crowd complains about
In the reviews we read, how often readers brought it up and how often listeners did, each against what is usual for that same crowd across our whole shelf, which is the grey tick. The track stops at 4×. Listeners are only ever compared with listeners.
Neither crowd brings any of the three up more often than its own crowd usually does. Whatever this book asks of you, its listeners are not saying the format is what makes it hard.
What the two crowds said
Showing the stars as each shop prints them. The two crowds are not measured from the same place: on our shelf Audible’s listeners average 0.35 of a star above Goodreads’ readers, so a recording that is ordinary for Audible can still out-star a book that is genuinely well liked for Goodreads. Switch the toggle to take that difference off.Showing each figure as its distance from its own crowd’s middle on our shelf, in standard deviations, so 0 is a typical book for that crowd. Listeners start 0.35 of a star up, partly because anyone who finishes a twenty-five-hour recording chose it deliberately, and this takes that off. It is not a claim that audio is better, the story figure is still Audible’s own (people rating a story they heard), and none of it moves the verdict above.
overallAudible
overall, pooled by the shop, so we hold no ruler for it
548 ratings · performance and story, as the shop pools them
the performanceAudible
the performance, against Audible’s own crowd
How often this goes badly1.6% of the people who rated the performance gave it one or two stars. About typical for the shelf. The middle of our shelf is 2.0%, and half of it falls between 1.0% and 3.1%.
7 of 442 listeners gave the performance one or two stars
The shape of the room
- United, this one
- Warm
- Split
- Lukewarm
A united room: 81% of the listeners gave the performance five stars. A room that agrees this far leaves little to gamble on.
442 ratings
the story, as heardAudible
the story, as heard, against Audible’s own crowd
441 ratings
the book itselfGoodreads
the book itself, against Goodreads’ own crowd
405,509 ratings
The series
Finished · The reading changes hands
7 books numbered on Goodreads’ list. The last one came out in 1956 and Goodreads lists nothing further. Five quiet years is where we start using that word.
The reading changes hands across the 7 volumes Audible names in our records: Michael York reads book 1, Lynn Redgrave book 2, Derek Jacobi book 3, Jeremy Northam book 4, and 3 more credits after that.
From Goodreads’ own series index, checked on 14 September 2026.
We judge this run a book at a time: every book of it, and who reads each
Next in the run, and we hold it: The Magician's Nephew
Every reading we hold
One complete reading of this book, and it is the reading every audio figure above is measured on. If there is another, we have not found it. The shelf grows in reviewed batches, never because somebody searched for a book.
- Alex Jenningsour pick4h 40m3h 44m3h 07m2h 40m2h 20m · One voice · Audible UK and US
Performance 4.74 · Story 4.69 · 441 rated the reading · 1.6% of the people who rated the performance gave it one or two stars
Hear it · Audible’s clip, its length read from them on load
2 other listings we set aside, listed with the reason for eacheach one is sold as this book and is not a complete reading of it
- Sir Michael Hordern2h 11m1h 45m1h 27m1h 15m1h 06m · 82 ratingsAbridged: it runs 47% of the full reading
- Fiona Shaw, Full Cast, Stephen Thorne, Martin Jarvis, James Graves2h 21m1h 53m1h 34m1h 21m1h 11m · 55 ratingsNot a straight reading of the book
The recording we mean
- Runtime
- 4h 40m at 1×
- Read by
- Alex Jennings
- Kind
- One voice
- ASIN
- B004EEUZ80 · Audible UK
- Rated in
- Audible UK and US · 388 + 54 ratings of the performance
- Judged on
- 441 ratings of the narration
- Published
- HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks · 2005
Audible sorts a search by newest, so ours may not be the first one you are offered. The runtime is the check: if the one in front of you says 4h 40m, that is the reading these numbers describe. “Judged on” is the crowd behind every judgement we make about this reading: the smaller of the performance and story counts, which is why it is a little under the two shop counts added. We do not link out to a shop, and we take nothing if you buy there.