Chronicles of Narnia - POLL

Very difficult for me. The Silver Chair is the least of them for me because the Emerald Witch is a pale (green?) reprise of The White Witch, but boasts Puddleglum the Marsh-Wiggle and the scene in the giants' castle.

I always wished Lewis wrote more novels about the High King Peter's reign during the so-called Golden Age.

my favorite is 'the magician's nephew,' though ppl who insist you should read that one first are insane.

isn't there some hint that the witch in 'silver chair' is the same person as the white witch?

i can never remember anything that happens in 'prince caspian,' so that's probably the worst one for me.

I agree re The Magician's Nephew. It's a beautiful little book: the Wood Between the Worlds, the desolation of barren Charn, the scary resonance that the Deplorable Word has for children reading it -- I can't ask for a better creation myth.

isn't there some hint that the witch in 'silver chair' is the same person as the white witch?

She's not! A Dwarf at the end of the novel speculates that they're of the same breed or something.

Magician's Nephew is definitely the most interesting from the perspective of narrative construction, and Horse and His Boy kind of prefigures a lot of kid-and-his-spirit-animal '70s novels. THe Last Battle is dire, dire, dire, and Dawn Treader is episodic to the point of idiocy. Dawn Treader is not uninteresting though, just kind if undramatic (except for Eustace's transformation from asshole to semi-decent guy). Prince Caspian and Silver Chair are kind of 'ehh' and I guess the whole series wouldn't exist w/o Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe. I guess this means

1. Magician's Nephew
2. Lion, Witch and Wardrobe
2. Voyage of the Dawn Treader
4. Horse and His boy
5. Silver Chair
6. Last Battle

I disagree about Voyage of the Dawn Treader: each one of the lords they find boasts an interesting back story and adventure. I'd rank them:

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Magician's Nephew
The Horse and His Boy
The Lion...
The Last Battle
The Silver Chair
Prince Caspian

huh maybe I should reread these because I have long felt that The Silver Chair was far and away the best of the series

My opinion of Dawn Treader has fallen off since I taught it to my fifth graders this past fall, and it was such a mega slog. The language is a little inflated (comically) for an adult, but it was very difficult for my students, and the irony of Eustace's speech and affectations were totally lost and distancing for them. The kids also marked the Aslan-as-deus-ex-machina schtick pretty early, and it became kind of laughable when he showed up in the ship medallion, on the Dufflepuds' island, to skin Eustace from his dragonness, at Drinkwater, etc., etc., But Reepicheep, man, what a character – he's entirely why I've got it tied for number two.

I only minded it when he appeared as Coleridge's albatross guiding them past Dark Island.

I only read the first three when a young teenager and hated them but that is because I had just before read the Lord of the Rings and was looking for more the same. Everyone knows that talking lions only exist in Oz.

haha, oddly enough tolkien was annoyed by exactly the same thing when lewis started reading them out loud at the pub -- talking lions, fauns, father christmas all co-existing in the same universe.

I'm not sure The Last Battle is actually dire, as such. I think it's possibly successful in its own terms, but crucially those terms are not predominant in the previous novels, at least not predominant in most readers' minds, and are in a form, allegory, that isn't really v popular these days, with reason imo.

I think it's just a case of the allegory cracking the narrative basically. It's also kinda absurd, as allegory often is.

Did the BBC adaptations of these not use the same actress for the witches in TLW&W and TSC?

Yes, but wikipedia says they used a lot of actors in more than one part for budget reasons. (lol BBC)

I loved The Horse and His Boy because it has Aravis and she's fleeing an arranged child-marriage on horseback, and she's stroppy. That was my kinda girl. Little bit afraid to re-read it now; Anne Faddiman did that for me, luckily, in the Re-Readings book of essays, so that's okay.

Reepicheep is ALL-TIME.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i liked the silver chair the least because i thought it was horribly sad that when our heroes showed up, eustace didn't recognize caspian in his dotage and couldn't say hi before he died.

i love them all, but the last battle does get awfully judgmental. not least with the susan thing.

reepicheep <3

need to re-read these.

Marshwiggle ftw

surprised by the love for magician's newphew, thats probably my pick as well, it just has a grander sense of space and time than the others.

reshpecktabiggle

ya i remember reshpeckobiggle being a str8 fire line when i was 11

It's been ages since I've read these, but I think Magician's Nephew was my favorite at the time. I remember it as being the most science-fictiony - kind of Borgesian with its different worlds, also reminds me of L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.

ppl who insist you should read that one first are insane

i recently mentioned to a friend how infuriating i found it that recent editions have the magician's nephew first -- she said that when she bought the boxed set for her nephew she used a label maker to re-number the books so that he read them in the correct order

she is a librarian lol

yeah for a long time i thought the magician's nephew was first in the series cuz thats how the boxset my parents got me when i was kid was labeled and then one time one jeopardy there was a question about what the first novel in the chronicles was * i got so mad that the show got it wrong that i looked it up and realized that the magician's nephew had been written well after the lion...

Jadis is such a grand character in TMN. There's a real sense of grandeur and weird pathos when, as she watches Narnia's creation, she says quietly, "My end is upon me."

the bolt of Tash falls from above

ya i remember reshpeckobiggle being a str8 fire line when i was 11

lol yes -- a hammered Puddleglum

my favorite is 'the magician's nephew,' though ppl who insist you should read that one first are insane.

first one I read, but only because it was the first one I came across. After that I read them in the order they were written, except that my local library did not have The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe or Dawn Treader, so I read them after all the others.

I think they are all great (apart from the Last Battle, obv.), but it is a long time since I re-read the later ones. I have a high opinion of The Silver Chair and its grimness, but maybe that is a false memory.

When I re-read A Horse And His Boy, I found its orientalism and white people good, dark-skinned people bad aspect a bit distasteful. But I still found it funny, so maybe it is still my favourite.

i can never remember anything that happens in 'prince caspian,' so that's probably the worst one for me.

no wai! Prince Caspian is great. Aside from being a metaphor for the Palestinian struggle for freedom, it also features what proved the inspiration for the video to Zodiac Mindwarp's Prime Mover.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Remember being really spooked out by Magician's Nephew as a kid.

I guess The Horse was too "orientalist" or something.

i like it a lot, prob 3rd fave, but it does suffer from colonialist narrative clumsiness at times, though i'm dem sure those caliph wallahs are all dem fine fellas in their own way wot wot

may this poll perish in the fire of perfidy, into ashes of indignity.

morelike voyage of the yawn treader

voyage of the don't read 'er

The Horse and His Goy

Blanked out on this. Dawn Treader/Silver Chair/Horse probably would hold up the best in the area I kinda realize I like the best in most of the fantasy I've read, namely the description of places, landscape, climate and so forth. It's a fleshing out of a landscape he obviously only initially considered as generic medieval Europe, and while obviously it's not what he would have seen as the point of the stories, it's more central to his work than he guessed. (See also some of the SF stiff and especially Til We Have Faces.)

SF stiff? But of course. SF stuff.

I have a hard time choosing among those books because you're right: Lewis, newly confident a narrative writer, devotes several superb paragraphs in each book to describing a Narnian sunset, the intense quiet that comes upon travelers at sea, or a mysterious bird. To me this culminates in his description of the creation of Narnia, in which several characters, some awestruck, others gobsmacked, register the sudden popping out of stars and animals, all to the accompaniment of Aslan's numinous song.

It also makes the actual ending of Narnia in The Last Battle the most spectacular part of that book; for me as a kid, more than Revelation ever did in its battles and vagueness of a new paradise, you felt the stakes were being played for keeps, and the terror of its end is just that: desperate figures running towards a door, a monstrous hand squeezing the sun into oblivion, nothing but vacuum and ice remains. Even the 'new' Narnia couldn't make that go away.

Remember when Aslan calmly orders Peter? "Peter, High King of Narnia, shut the Door."

I just had a brainwave to do a talking lion poll, then realised I probably need to do more sleeping and less boozing.

xpost -- that vs. his command to Father Time: "Now make an end."

aslan voiced by john inman

I read that as "Don Imus."

http://blogs.kansascity.com/photos/uncategorized/2009/03/16/don_imus.jpg

ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOARRRRRR!

i think reading the horse & his boy as a child was the first time i enjoyed being bored

I love how Eustace does not get less unlikeable as the series proceeds.

https://i.imgur.com/3hCAbbB.jpg

hate u miraz

reshpecktabiggle

― mookieproof, Wednesday, August 3, 201

im a few glasses of valpolicella in but i feel that 't' is extraneous and in my dim recollection (tho i quote that word in particular a lot) its obiggle

#6 The Silver Chair; bad sequence at Harfang, bad final conflict, generally not great but we must respectabiggle

#7 Nephew; awesome concept that is tedious in execution. Which in London is the only compelling sequence. Also ranked last to spite anybody who insists it should be read first.

otm

absolutely *hate* how eustace could maybe have said hi to caspian but never got a chance to in the silver chair

(not pole's fault tho!)

What works in The Magician's Nephew: Uncle Andrew's explanation of how he acquired the rings (the fairy godmother); the walk through the palace of Charn; the First Joke; Fledge, Digory, and Polly's journey to the garden; Jadis and Digory's final face-off.

I did want more of Frank and Helen as monarchs.

At a bookstore yesterday and saw TLTWATW with a big number '2' on the spine. It's enough to ruin your day...

no it's okay it's not the second book in the series that's the actual sequel to TLTWATW, TLTWATW 2, it has a mysterious child with telekinesis

The Phantom Jadis

Did George Lucas ever presume to state that he wanted SW watched in chronological sequence? Actually… never mind, I don’t care

Dawn Treader >>> Caspian, the episodic nature is pretty basic but a vast improvement on Caspian's "obvious where it's going and takes a tedious age to get there"; I enjoyed not knowing what on earth was coming up next, even if it wasn't always a success (the monopods, wtf). Eustace is good fun and he makes some good points! I half wanted him to be proved right that there were no more lands to the east and they would all starve to death. Yet his transformation does come as a relief - my own insufferable pevensian priggishness must be showing itself there.

On to The Silver Chair:

"The Head said they [the bullies] were interesting psychological cases and sent for them and talked to them for hours. And if you knew the right sort of things to say to the Head, the main result was that you became rather a favourite than otherwise."

Lewis with a classic "pics or it didn't happen" opener.

some classic Lewis ax-grinding that got past the editor

"The Head said they [the bullies] were interesting psychological cases and sent for them and talked to them for hours. And if you knew the right sort of things to say to the Head, the main result was that you became rather a favourite than otherwise."

can attest to the effectiveness of sweet-talking a dumb private school bureaucrat

Lewis throwing shade on modern education is what I expect from a guy who went to school in the era of beatings by headmaster and male rape in bedrooms.

I wonder what they do teach them at these schools.

From a link upthread re Gerwig's apparently 50s set Nephew:

It’s added onto by comments from producer Amy Pascal about the film having a “rock 'n' roll” take that goes against the book’s style.

Ergo, Aslan is in fact Elvis.

Dawn Treader remains my favorite of the seven. I still remember not being sure what the one guy meant by his baccy getting low.

Based on my rereading of the seven novels this month, I'd agree. I'll make allowances for the Dufflepuds. All that's mysterious about the Coriakin chapter (Lucy opening the book of spells; making Aslan visible; Coriakin's origins) could've worked without them.

Yeah, not perfect, but overall the most properly atmospheric -- and at the time of writing the smart move to take the story *out* of Narnia elsewhere, and to have the most familiar thing be the Lone Islands, never portrayed until then, and to have that be in the opening chapters. A real sense that we're going somewhere new and unexpected. It's the RLS gambit of Treasure Island and any sea adventure as such, and it works.

Dawn Treader was far and away my favorite as a kid, for all the reasons discussed. Even if some of the episodes are better than others, you're not stuck with any one thing too long, and some are fantastic. Eustace's arc from prat to good lad is somehow more satisfying than Edmund's escape from being tricked into evil. The Secret Garden, which I also liked a lot, hits some of the same notes.

Reepicheep's little Grail quest is also satisfying; iirc they arrive at a place where the sea essentially isn't sea anymore, or there's no wind or something, and that's when he discovers it's the prophesied place "where the waves grow sweet." Appealingly surreal and unearthly. I was probably at the exact last age where I could have accepted a dashing mouse knight as a character with real pathos - sorry, Redwall, you came too late - but I did and it was great.

I remember Caspian and Horse as the true duds, Nephew as being cool as an origin myth but without a story that stuck with me, and Last Battle as having an impressively apocalyptic end-point (but little else about it beyond chanting about "inexorable Tash").

I think I liked Silver Chair, or at least parts of it, but I also may be mixing it up with The Castle of Llyr, in the Prydain series, which in my hazy imagining shares some of the same DNA.

They are both middle books of their series.

Silver Chair has a lot of great moments that don't entirely gel, but the images can be good (and of course, Puddleglum). I always liked the description of the gems nearer the surface being the dead remains of living jewels like fruit.

I think I liked Silver Chair, or at least parts of it, but I also may be mixing it up with The Castle of Llyr, in the Prydain series, which in my hazy imagining shares some of the same DNA.

Well since you've invoked that, a reminder of another thread:

Taking Sides: Narnia vs Prydain

goddamn Lewis promised in a parenthetical to write a novel about how the Lone Islands came into Narnia's possession but never did; all we get is a one-line reference in Jewel's Narnian history lesson to Jill in TLB.

PBKR - ha, well, yes. I looked it up and they also both deal with royal heirs kidnapped by sorceresses (who hope to rule the kingdom by mind-controlling their captive), a long search-party journey by a motley crew, a stop at a place with giant-sized creatures, a descent into underground caverns, and the discovery that the captive heir's ensorcellement has led them to forget key information about who certain characters are. Admittedly some of that is kinda generic to a lot of fantasy stories, but I don't think my vague memories from 1992 were *totally* off base.

I do admire how Lewis gave The Lady of the Green Kirtle no background other than "she's one of those Northern witches" in the same way one would refer to Jessica Fletcher as "one of those Maine sleuths."

Finished it, perfectly middling, not as magical as TLTW or as intriguing as VODT but not a slog like PC. Puddleglum is great obviously. Maybe it's reading them in quick succession but Lewis' utterly artless prose did start to grate a little.

Aslan theologically accurate as usual, making me ponder on the gulf between those who see him/God as wise, benevolent, and worthy of worship, and those who see them as jerks who love to put people in horrible situations, give them impossible tasks to perform, and then criticise them when they fail.

Is this where Rowling picked up her habit of naming books after things that scarcely make an appearance in them?

I didn't know the BBC televised this, or the previous two, I don't know how I missed that. I was 15 when I watched TLTW, I doubt I'd completely aged out of that kind of thing by the next year but maybe.

I'm guessing no one else here read the ersatz-Narnia books The Tower of Geburah and The Iron Sceptre, which my parents got for fantasy-starved me at the Christian bookstore after I devoured the Narnia series. If you think Lewis is not didactic and Christian enough, you should grab these books. The good king character is killed off at the end in battling the evil witch/dragon explicitly as punishment for earlier showing the evil witch/dragon mercy and thereby disobeying the "good" Shepherd/Aslan character. Even as a kid I thought that was kind of fucked.

Reepicheep's little Grail quest is also satisfying; iirc they arrive at a place where the sea essentially isn't sea anymore, or there's no wind or something, and that's when he discovers it's the prophesied place "where the waves grow sweet."

Having not read any of these in 35 years - this little sequence is my strongest memory of the whole series.

Dunno why Horse gets so much shit, I remember thinking “this is Paul Bowles for kids”. I’ll re-read tonight, maybe it’s worse than I recall

The part where they maneuver through Tashbaan is A+.

Having not read any of these in 35 years - this little sequence is my strongest memory of the whole series.

Mine too, except that nowadays I think more and more about the Shift the ape bringing Puzzle the donkey out in a ratty lion skin and how they are both then exploited by even worse actors and the whole Tashlan things comes about. I wonder what could possibly make me think of that, hmm.

I vividly remember how the cover illustrations (the Collier editions, cover art by Roger Hane c1970) captivated me at the library even before I read them, perusing the spinner racks of mass market paperbacks in the kids' section.

Of course Prince Caspian's cover is funny because one you read the book you realize it's not even Prince Caspian, it's High King Peter!

yeah lol that cover confused me too

Narnia's version of the Two Towers title confusion

I'm going to keep on with this liveblogging until I'm done, unfortunately. So, A Horse and His Boy - leaps into second place behind TLTTTW. It's yet another journey, get a new idea Lewis! But as Camaraderie says upthread, it's a glimpse into a wider world. Yes it's a racist world but I don't think that makes it irredeemable and it wouldn't take too much to fix - dial down the obvious Arabic parallels, add a sympathetic Calorman or two, don't say all the white people have nicer faces and voices than the Arab stand-ins. Just bring in Le Guin for a rewrite basically, to lift the flatter than flat prose and add nuance to the Calormen.

I found it hilarious that one of the first things the boy who has been brought up his whole life by a poor Arabian fisherman says to Aravis after he discovers his true identity is "Father's an absolute brick". Granted he does speak like that pretty much from the beginning.

Aslan being all "it was then that I carried you" is far preferable to his prickish behaviour in the other books.

I can't believe I never noticed the reversal in the title till it was spelled out in the book.

I've read most of the thread now, many people are otm.

narrator: he does not get a new idea

Would probably be difficult to name many fantasy novels that don't involve a journey/quest of some sort

Gormenghast springs to mind

Thanks to this thread, Phish's 1996 album-closer "Prince Caspian" has been stuck in my head all week. Apparently, Phish Heads are divided on it. It's a concert staple, and it seems that for a long time they played it with very little variation, so die-hards who live for the unexpected variations and jams grew weary, derisively dubbing it "Fuckerpants" back in the days of Usenet and mailing lists. You can also find various online threads where Phans demand explanation for the peculiar lyrics: who is this Prince, why is afloat upon the waves, why does he have stumps instead of feet, and why don't any of these details appear in the Wikipedia summary for the book Prince Caspian?

I come at it from having much more lifelong affection for Narnia than Phish. I love the soaring, liberating vibe and pretty guitar tone, as on the album-opener "Free" (which pricked up my ears when it got a couple weeks of alt-rock airplay back in '96). But I'm really there for the yearning refrain of "oh, to be Prince Caspian," which I think captures something quite sweet.

The Magician's Nephew, the only other one I read as a child. I still remembered the bell, and the witch in London, more came back to me as I was reading but almost nothing from the Narnia bit. The first half is all great - Uncle Andrew, the wood between the worlds, Charn, the witch in London. It could be a great lead in to a story with the witch as the antagonist, jumping around between different worlds, maybe Uncle Andrew has his Edmund/Eustace moment. Instead we get a children's Genesis, some half arsed talking animal comedy, and the lamest fetch quest. A tough one to rank but definitely not top 3.

Stoked for the final madness.

fetch Fledge quest.

fixed

so here’s my list — least favourite first, on down to favourite last — based on how-often-reread-as-a-kid (as interpreted by an adult) (me)… but not (for now anyway) reread in the here-and-now. As we know, every single book is a journey yoking strong vivid memorable scenes via far less memorable trudge (= more or less clumsy transition), via CSL’s dated plain-man authorly voice (= ledge’s bete noir) and plus (not unrelated) the bickering company of the fkn pevensies, so DULL DULL DULL as an interacting family of siblings (actually a long-solved problem in kidlit) (e. nesbit’s sibling-gangs are not dull in like way). The task Lewis set himself: “flesh out a world that can contain this vivid poetic image I glimpsed” = a bescarfed faun in a snowy wood carrying an umbrella as he trots past a modern streetlamp (all but saying “oh my ears and whiskers late late late”). The streetlamp is eventually solved (good story, bro) but never the umbrella: pray where is its factory, analogy-boy?

horse-boy: I appreciate that ppl enjoy the simple chase of this but honestly as a kid I simply reread it far less often any of the others. The katty but korrekt grown-up kulturkritik is yes of course it’s a lazy orientalist cartoon: my disdainful child-mode version was “these farcical palace scenes are just panto aladdin, panto is for babies” & for me the narrative only came alive with the tombs scene: CSL does dread. Long desert chase is long desert chase. Battle feat.rabadash (humiliation mix) is entertaining. What else tho? The revelation (twins klaxon) only has force on very first read; despite Pauline Baynes’s best efforts, King Lune’s court is unexciting. The Pevensies? Even as fancy old-time royals & grown-ups they are DULL (sito)

caspian: casp discovering narnia, the revenant pevensies discovering they’re back in a v changed narnia, old narnia discovering its true self by (once again) throwing off tyranny… viz three different parties converging on the same spot, which is a lot to unroll, much too much of it dealt out as trudge (aslan even more of a manipulative prick than usual; lucy now is a tiresome twee suck-up, I hate her). Its structure is badly weighted towards transitional bickering (a lot of it’s very boring). Better is that the strong scenes manifest as contrast to this — and towards each other (old narnia good vs old narnia bad): the hag, the werewolf, the embittered dwarf and the BLUE FIRE vs the revolt of the trees, then bacchus, silenus & the maenads enticing schoolgirls to quit lessons, strip off and dance. Hurried climax piles atop a mid-battle trial-by-combat (enabled by the conspiratorial treachery of the upper telmarine officer class lol) (so hateful they wreck their own war aims) first the late-reveal backstory, then every son/daughter of adam/eve being magicked home except caspian. An allegory of xtian faith you say? OK the wooden-door portal is good business (baynes ftw), but the problems the book sets itself (not least why this adam/eve shit at all?) remain as unaddressed as the presence of satyrs, centaurs, naiads & dryads, their unleashed sexual energies hiding in plain sight. strip off yr elasticated clothes, girls, bcz NARNIA IS A PAGAN SPACE, there i said it

wardrobe: tbf the founding scenes are all p strong, this became a classic franchise for a reason: viz wardrobe itself, faun by streetlamp, turkish delight & treachery, stone knife stone table grisly execution of a lion, deeper magic from before the dawn of time — but then again the beavers are feeble and father xmas is worse. whose birth does christmas celebrate? in narnia the festival is all about presents and nothing about little baby lioncub jesus! v lumpy in shape (= worst book for trudge)

nephew: origin story klaxon, yes of narnia as this magical new land of plenty straightaway ruined, of a witch who thrillingly destroys worlds while remaining very opaque (she’s bad ppl), and of the professor from wardrobe as a child called DIGORY (the professor to me is an enormously boring character talking nonsense abt plato; which I fully blame on growing up with this name). v strong scenes include wood between the worlds, fall of charn, witch in london, absurd uncle andrew, the hippie song circle & high-speed narnian agriculture. Plus a scene where the apple in eden is actually just an apple you shouldn’t just eat (lol get a grip allegory-boy), and the moment when the victorian toffees became the delicious juicy fruit of a little bush which as a kid I associated with mackintosh’s TOFFOS, which are provably the fruit of that very tree which I enjoy to this day

treader: life aboard ship bickering is more entertaining than life trudging through a wood while bickering (is how the ocean-voyage book addresses the dreary trudge factor). my take on eustace is discussed earlier in the thread (tldr is yes he’s a twerp but his companions use him poorly: author always here for character-building corporal punishment), so instead I’ll cut to a cheat = a thing I did NOT know as a kid viz the extent to this book draws on the atlantic islands of the medieval imaginary (viz the isle of demons, the intermittently visible hy-brasil, the allegorical voyages of st brendan… ) which gives CSL plenty of meaty concrete lore to re-purpose (discussed here, as is the true source of the dufflepuds). best scene in the entire hepatology is lucy’s brave incursion into the wizard’s house (I like her much better here); as others have indicated, reepicheep’s grail side-quest as the waters grow sweet is also very vividly lovely

chair: mildly surprised this falls so low on lists because as a kid it was my runaway favourite, I reread it FAR more often than the others. Why exactly though? Well, for one thing, its solution to the trudge is “when travel, travel with puddleglum”: he’s funny two ways (he knows ppl think him absurd & fashions damp-dry jokes to play up to this). As with treader this is a quest through levels, starting high up in aslan’s land via the wiggle-marshes, giant cockshy yoot, harfang (“how to eat forty humans” 👍🏽 ) and down under the ozymandias-fragment into the underlands, a vast and intensely (to me) evocative cavern full of everything from sleeping dinosaurs to its own dark sea, a pleasing repository of unredeemed LORE (bism!) and baynes as MVP — not least for her depiction of VERY SAD GNOMES!

battle: cheating a bit in terms of kid-rereads putting this here (see chair). But it’s just the best, then and now: portray your lovely imagined fantasy land as it closes up for good! The harshness and ugliness of ppl letting you down here at the end everything swerving and then accelerating into the joy of perfect bliss. Are the heaven bits a persuasive imagining? No! They’re nutso — but I love that CSL attempted it on the page, vulnerably courageous as lucy walking thru the wizard’s lair)! We get what we most desire FOREVER is going to be one big paradox puzzle, quite silly and quite contradictory!! Including the reverse problem of susan, which is her parents (who never heard of narnia before being violently spirited into narnia -adjacent heaven) wounded puzzlement at the explanation of her absence: “no longer a friend of WHAT NOW?” I talk a bit more about all this here. Book has excellent characters (even the evil shift) (apes are evil) and very memorable scenes: like when tash turns up (twice)! And father time reaching up to squeeze out the sun, lights out and we all go home to aslan’s land (except susan)!

A new thing to explore: wikipedia sez CSL was a massive fan of david lindsay’s voyage to arcturus, which I must now also reread

adding (re the strike-the-bell rhyme) that alongside vivid scenes CSL also has a gift for apothegms: though under earth and throneless now I be yet while I lived all earth was under me

A+ post, enjoyed that.

Yes lovely stuff, you sell Chair very well. (Did not read your Last Battle one yet.) I wonder how I would have rated them as a child, it's too easy as an adult to miss the wood for the trees (of flat prose and bad allegories). Also I didn't re-read Wardrobe, in my memory it's best because of, as you say, strong setting and imagery, and a variety of settings and scenes centering on different characters - i.e. actual dramatic structure, not just one group on a single journey. I don't remember a long trudge in it!

(minor correction: when it says "CSL does dread" in horse-boy it shd be "CSL does dread well")

"Father's an absolute brick".

Cor as David Niven.

Nobody gets called a brick these days, Broken Britain Archenland

TLB, this is a toughie. From the title I was expecting a battle of great armies instead of a skirmish behind a stable. Obv it's totally unfair to criticise it for not living up to my expectations based on the title, and mark s has explained elsewhere why what we got is preferable to what I expected. Nevertheless.

Shift's Aslan gambit relies too hard on the animals being inordinately stupid and Lewis is happy to write them as such, aside from the bulgy bears I'm sure they're never so dense in the earlier books and this in itself is sad to read, regardless of Shift's trickery.

Yes there is impressive imagery in the final part but heaven is, ironically, intrinsically dull to read about. The full admission that this world doesn't really matter - well it's theologically accurate and you'd think that an infinity of joy and love would make up for the sliver of pain and suffering in this life, still seems like an unpleasant and unnecessary way to arrange things. And the prob of sue - this was posted before but it's a charitable interpretation:
https://reactormag.com/the-problems-of-susan/

Overall too much allegory for the thin story to bear (as fizzles noted up near the top). But I'm thrilled that others disagree and get more out of it than me.

Final ranking: wardrobe > horse > voyage >> chair > nephew >>> caspian > battle. Now I can finally read some proper books again.

Their stupidity makes sense when you remember how the book makes clear that Aslan hasn't visited in Narnia in years, possibly a hundred? It's one of Lewis' Christian callbacks -- to Revelations, which cautioned believers against false prophets.

Yeah but it's a donkey in a lion skin, sewed together by an ape. I know, he was just making a point, quit picking holes you doubting thomas (hey guess what my actual first name is!)

lol

Doesn't the narrator mention that if the animals got close enough they'd notice Tashlan was a donkey in a lion skin, hence why Shift and the Calormens kept him far away?

yes and i seem to be remember the animals are pretty despondent at what they're confronted with

i like the way everyone RUNS in heaven, it's like a japanese film about medieval warfare

Turns out I still think the ending of The Last Battle is so grotesque that it ruined the whole series.

how so?

i recall one thing that surprised me when reading TLB as a kid was how explicitly it wanted to spell out how everything happens. none of that "and they lived happily every after" vague BS other books got away with.

--

from Guillermo Del Toro's interview in The Guardian this week:

I’ve been offered a lot of work for hire and I’ve refused it.”
That includes entries in the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises, as well as The Chronicles of Narnia, which he declined because, as he said in 2006, “I didn’t want the fucking lion to be resurrected. What is the worth of that sacrifice if he knows he’s coming back?”