Chronicles of Narnia

7 book children’s fantasy series by C. S. Lewis.

Having enjoyed The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and some of the other Chronicles of Narnia books as a kid, I was recently delighted to discover a second-hand copy of the complete series at the local markets. I snapped it up and the following weekend buried myself in its pages.

As a kid the quasi-Christian theme went straight over my head but I found it pretty full on this time round. In fact with each book it seemed to get more intense, starting out as a harmless sort of fairytale in The Magician’s Nephew and culminating in the final judgement day of The Last Battle, with the representation by Aslan as Jesus.

The reunion of characters at the end (with the exception of poor Susan who ‘grew up’) seemed to me a rather trite conconction – just too neat and tidy for my liking, but it is a children’s story after all.

Lewis’ Chronicles have sometimes been compared to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. There is at least one important difference though – in Chronicles the main characters come from our world. The unfortunate effect of this is that aspects of the story become a bit dated over time (it is nearly 60 years since the stories were written) and Chronicles does not have the same timeless appeal of Rings.

An enjoyable revisitation of a fantasy classic for me nonetheless, and my first encounter of The Silver Chair, which was never available at the local library when I was a kid!

Some reviews:

• Review from Prayerfoundation.org
• By John J Miller on Nationalreview.com
• By Gina Covelli on Lakelandmirror.com