I totally paused!

Although this book was reasonably action packed and less boring than some of the others, I think it might have been my least favorite of the whole series.  From the start it just felt overly preachy, talking about a false Aslan, as though it would be a surprise later when no good comes of that.  It had a whole “don’t worship false idols” feel to me, and knowing ahead of time that it turns out Narnia was all just fake and there was a “real” Narnia waiting, made everything feel more religious the whole way through.

The little about the author bit at the end said CS Lewis drew on all kinds of myths and fairies, but really all I saw were elements of Christianity and things borrowed from the Wizard of Oz.

*****

The premise of this one is basically that Narnia just ain’t what it used to be.  Talking beasts are lying and being deceitful, the big offender being the Ape, Shift…who finds a large lion skin and ties it to his poor Donkey friend Puzzle.  Shift manages to convince Puzzle that he must pretend to be Aslan.  Oh the wonderful things they can accomplish if they say Aslan wants it!

Pretty much Shift is a right shit from the start and is super selfish.  He doesn’t really want to do any good for Narnia and just wants to make things better for himself, like having a permanent supply of bananas.  He’s also quite awful to Puzzle.  His mischief gets him a sort of alliance with the Calormenes and they all go on their way scaring the rest of the Narnians, basically enslaving them.

The current King, Tirian, finds out and goes to stop it, but can’t and gets himself captured instead.  So he calls on the legendary “friends of Narnia” to help him, which brings Eustace and Jill back.  But unlike previous times, it doesn’t all work out happily and they ultimately wind up getting pushed into this skeery shed where some evil is supposed to be lurking.

Turns out that for them, the shed is really good and it takes them to Aslans country where all the previous friends of Narnia are waiting.  Cept for Susan cuz she grew into a big bitch and doesn’t believe in Narnia anymore.  Oh, and it turns out that they all died in our world…there was a train accident in which they all perished.  This is really just an easy way to make it so that time doesn’t stop in our world because they were in Narnia.  Also, their parents died in the same accident and they are in “the real England” because all countries are really Aslan’s countries and they all have fake versions where everyone lives and real ones you go to when you die.  If you’re good.  Blah, it’s kind of sickening to be honest.

So they live in peace and happiness with all their old friends, including Mister Tumnis and King Caspian, although they never speak to Caspian so maybe they aren’t friends anymore.

Aslan also tells everyone that if they are doing good all their lives, they are doing it for him, but if they are doing bad, they are doing it for Tash, the god of the Calormenes.  Apparently all Calormenes except for one are bad, cuz one of them ended up in Aslan’s country and the rest got eaten by Tash.  I guess it’s to show that if you’re bad, bad things happen to you at the end, but in any case I didn’t like it and thought it was silliness.

*****

Out of all the books, I think The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was ultimately my favorite.  Second would probably be Prince Caspian.  I can really see why The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is the most popular, everything felt more fresh and exciting.  Maybe it’s that I’m the most familiar with it, or the knowledge that it’s the only one I’m positive I was exposed to fully as a child, but it will likely be the only one I read again anytime soon.

Next will either be The Golden Compass which I started last week, or else a Sweet Valley Twins book.  I didn’t ever read The Golden Compass when I was a child because it wasn’t out at the time, so that will just be a blogging for the sake of it.  I definitely read all the Sweet Valley Twins books I now have in my possession, but they aren’t in full order so we’ll see.  Hopefully I will soon have a big stack of Nancy Drew’s and BSCs to read!

First off, this one was significantly less boring.  There was no seemingly endless sailing!

We start this one off at the school Eustace goes to, where this girl Jill is being bullied.  For what it’s worth, apparently the kids at this school all call each other by their last names, so she is Pole and he is Scrubb.  It’s never explained why this is the case, maybe it’s some British school thing I am unacquainted with since I never went to school there.

Anyway, Jill wants to escape the bullies cuz they’re mean and what not, and Eustace suggests why don’t they see if they can get into Narnia…so they hold hands and say Aslan like three times and magic, there’s a door in a wall that opens and they are in a new world!  Cept it’s not Narnia, I guess it’s Aslan’s world.

Jill is showing off how she’s not afraid of heights and Eustace tries to save her, but he falls and she feels wicked bad.  Turns out Aslan really took a big breath and blew him into Narnia, and kept her behind cuz he wants to give her a task since she was bad for showing off.  I think it’s silly that Aslan wants to punish her for showing off when really, who cares.

Her task is that she and Eustace have to go find the lost Prince Rilian, who disappeared ten years ago.  Also, it’s been like 80 years Narnian time and Caspian is super old now.  Again, I hate this time inconsistency thing, it’s just ridiculous to me.  And basically this is another task that the Narnians are apparently not up to, since Aslan assigns it to the kids.  If I were a Narnian and I found out about this stuff, I’d be kind of miffed.  They get screwed out of all the fun and seemingly can’t take care of themselves.

The kids set out on their journey and get some help from a Marsh-wiggle, which is a kind of person from Narnia, who’s name is Puddleglum.  I think anyway.  I don’t fully remember his name and it’s not really worth the effort to go look.  They travel in the wind and cold and it snows, and along the way they run into this pretty lady and her knight, who tells them to seek lodging with the good giants up at the top of the mountain.

Being that I’m not very trusting of things, I pretty well thought “those giants aren’t really good” from the start.  The giants were super nice to the travelers, but yeah, turns out they wanted to eat them in their Autumn Feast.  They manage to barely escape and climb into a little hole, which they fall down down down into the mountain.  Oh, also, Aslan gave Jill a list of signs she needed to look for to help her find the prince, which she forgets and fortunately, under the giant city and mountain is where they need to go anyway.

So down in the mountain they get captured or whatever by the people who live there, and they take the three to see their queen.  Who turns out to be out, so they get to visit with her knight instead.  Yep, the same knight and lady they met on the road!  Super helpful!

The knight seems like a jerk but it turns out he’s under a spell, and every night has to be confined in the silver chair to keep from destroying everything.  And really the spell is to keep him from being himself…and who is himself, you ask?  Well, Prince Rilian of course!  The queen is really a witch and the silver chair he gets confined to is magicked so he stays as not the prince all the time.  She also wants to rule Narnia and is digging a tunnel up to the middle of it, because who doesn’t want to rule Narnia!

The adventurers free the knight when they believe him, and he destroys the chair, just in time for the witch to come in!  She *almost* puts them under a spell, cept Puddleglum has the sense to stamp out her fire before she tricks them all, then the prince and Puddleglum kill her.  It turns out the whole under world was under her spell also, and once she is killed the spells start breaking so the world is tumbling down.  The dudes who previously captured the travelers are happy the witch is dead and they show everyone the way out, so yaaaaaaaaaaay they get back to Narnia.

Also, at the beginning Caspian had set sail for the end of the world cuz he lost his son and his queen those 10 years before so he’s kind of done.  And old.  And dying.  But, Aslan tells him that the prince is coming back so they turn the ship around, and it arrives just as Prince Rilian is coming back!  King Caspian has to be carried out of the ship on a bed and shortly dies.  It’s all sad and stuff.

Aslan takes Eustace and Jill back to his country, and also Caspians spirit or something along those lines.  He has Eustace stab his paw with a thorn, so he bleeds on Caspian who comes back to life.  Cept not in Narnia, just in Aslan’s world, which I suppose is supposed to be like heaven.  Aslan also tells Eustace and Jill that the next time they meet him in his world, they will get to stay there for good.  How fair is that?  He didn’t tell any nice things like that to Peter, Susan, Edmund, or Lucy!

Anyway, now that I’m almost done with this series I’m kind of glad I didn’t read the whole thing when I was a kid.  It’s almost not enough of an adventure in some ways, and I guess I feel like I would have wasted my time.  It’s not necessarily bad, just also not exactly the thing I was into as a child.  And I am still disappointed at the religious themes

Next book: The Last Battle

So this book bored me so much I forgot to read it for awhile.  And then forgot to blog about it too.

I remember starting this one when I was younger, and got to the part where they get into Narnia by being sucked into the painting.  And when it was set at sea I think I said “umm, no thanks” and didn’t continue.  Which is both bad and good because perhaps if I had read it, I would have remembered being bored off my ass and wouldn’t have bothered to reread.

Anyway, Edmund, Lucy, and their rotten cousin Eustace get thrust into Narnia through the painting.  I don’t think the how of it was ever explained.  I don’t know about anyone else, but if I was called into a magic land and I started out in the middle of the sea, I’d be pissed.  No dunkings for me, thanks.

The ship, The Dawn Treader, is King Caspians and the kids meet up with him three Narnian years later.  Maybe I’m just overreacting, but I think it’s kind of bullshit that Narnia time just runs at whatever speed suits CS Lewis for the adventure to be set appropriately.  First time they’re gone for years, IRL time it’s just like a second.  K, I can deal with time in our world running at no pace when it’s running in Narnia.  But then in Prince Caspian, it’s been like hundreds of years, but IRL just a couple if even that.  This time, a year has gone by and in Narnia, three.  Pick some pacing!  This gets even worse in the next book, btw.

So Caspian and his crew are searching for seven lost dudes from when his dad was king.  It’s this great adventure.  And Reepicheep (the mouse) wants to find Aslan’s country and live there forever.  They are at sea a lot, land on islands of great peril and whatnot – the first one they get sold into slavery!  Eep!  Another has water that turns everything into gold!  Invisible people on another one, skeeeeery.

They find all the lords in one way or another, Reepicheep finds Aslan’s land, the kids make it back to earth.  Oh, and Lucy and Edmund are told they are now too old and can’t come back to Narnia.  I don’t think this inspires much faith in adults.  And they’re like 10 or whatever, how is that too old?  I don’t remember how old Eustace is, but I’m pretty sure he isn’t younger than Lucy anyway, and his ass gets to come back.

Oh, and at one point Eustace turns into a dragon for awhile, but Aslan saves him.  And then he isn’t a rotten boy anymore.  Caspian also meets the daughter of a Star (yeah, the things in the sky), and later on marries her.  Natch!

So….boring.  Hopefully the next one is better.

*****

And as for that Baby-sitters Club stuff, that’s on hold for now.  The method I was going to use for reading got taken down, damn copywrites anyway.  No clue where my old books are, that is being looked into, so in the meantime I will eventually finish Narnia and move onto something else, hopefully less snore worthy.

Next time: The Silver Chair

This book was significantly better than the previous one.  Much more interesting, stuff that was easier to care about.  It’s easy to see why Disney chose this as the next movie in the series, cuz it’s the next one that happens to really have anything of note.

*****

We start this one off with the four kids, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, being all depressed that they have to go back to school.  They’re in the train station, when suddenly some magic takes them away to an island where they are kind of stranded and have no food.  Right away I thought “oh, Narnia way later” and turned out to be right.

So they wander the island and figure out they are in the ruins of their old castle at Cair Paravel, probably thousands of years later, so they eat apples and go take their treasures out of the secret room in the basement.  Along comes a dwarf (who’s name I can’t remember at the moment), who is going to be drowned by the evil soldiers of the King Miraz.  The kids save the dwarf by shooting the soldiers with arrows, hooraaaaaaay!

The dwarf tells them the story of Prince Caspian, who is the rightful King of Narnia and didn’t know it until recently.  He’s been living with his uncle, King Miraz, but has to flee one night on account of the Queen has a baby boy and Caspian is gonna get killed.  Turns out his uncle killed his dad, King Caspian (the ninth I think) cuz he wanted to be King, and wants to keep his own line in tact.

Caspian runs off, knocks his head, is saved by some dwarves and a Badger, so they all start this plan to overthrow King Miraz and restore Caspian to his rightful seat.  The four kids came to Narnia by Caspian blowing Susan’s old magic horn, it called them back!

So the kids make their way to Caspian with the dwarf, they marvel at how some things have changed so much, get lost and Aslan comes to help them (cuz of course he does, Aslan is always there when the four kids need him), make their way to Caspian, and save the day.

*****

At the end it’s revealed that Caspian and his people, the Telmarines, are really humans that came from our world long ago.  That’s the only way he could be a “true King of Narnia”, is that he’s a Son of Adam!  As a side note, I hate that term in these books.  Just call them humans, blah.  So some of the Telmarines are wicked afraid of the real Narnia and come back to our world, cept not the youngsters cuz they like Narnia.

I am kind of wondering why it is that Narnia has to be ruled by a human.  Why is it that the Narnian’s are deemed incapable of ruling themselves?  Also, how come they say Aslan only comes once in awhile, but we hear about him in every book?  Shouldn’t they tell us about times when Aslan isn’t around so we believe them?

So, not as bad as it could have been.  The series is still not winning me over though.

Next up: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I took a little longer to read this one than the previous two, mostly because I felt super bored by it.  I just couldn’t bring myself to care much about the characters and the plot.  I’m hoping that the stuff in this book turns out to come up in a later book, because otherwise it really was just completely useless, in my opinion.  And even if it does come up again, I would go so far as to say that this back story could have taken one chapter in another book – it felt that unnecessary, and not even entertaining.

*****

The plot then: Shasta is a poor boy who has been adopted by a basically cruel fisherman (and as a side note, what kind of a name is Shasta anyway?  Maybe in other parts of the world this is a good name, but to me, it’s a cheap brand of soda or a dogs name).  Some wealthy dude comes along and wants to buy Shasta, who was eavesdropping and then decided to wander off (I think he wanted to run away at this point).  He meets the would be purchasers horse, who turns out to be a talking Horse named Bree that also wants to leave his master, so they decide to run off to their home country, Narnia.

Along the way they are chased by skeery lions and run into another girl with a Horse who are likewise running away to Narnia (which must be the bestest place in the whole world, cuz eveeeeeeeryone wants to go there).  The girl is Aravis and her Horse is Hwin.  Aravis doesn’t like Shasta, thinks he’s awful cuz she’s from a well off family and doesn’t like the poor slave boy.  But she does like Bree cuz he’s a strong war horse and seems to know what he’s doing, so she’s willing to put up with Shasta.

They arrive in the big city before the desert in between their land and Narnia, and in this city they end up getting separated because some Narnians are there, including King Edmund and Queen Susan, who think that Shasta is the prince of Archenland, Corin.  He looks just like the prince!  Who conveniently had run off earlier in the day so they think that this is him.  So they scoop him up and take him back to the place they’re staying, where he pretends to be the prince because they don’t listen to him.  He learns of their plans to escape so Susan doesn’t have to deal with Rabadash, the prince of the land they are in, cuz Susan doesn’t want to marry him.

The grown ups leave the room to attend to their plans, and Corin sneaks up through the window, runs right into Shasta.  It’s like looking in a mirror!  When I read this I thought “Is this Prince Caspian then?”, figuring the book has ties to another one later on.  In any case, it’s pretty obvious from the start that the boys are twins.  Shasta and Corin switch places, so Shasta goes to find his way out of the city to meet up with his friends.

In the meantime, Aravis gets seen by a friend of hers, who also scoops her up and takes her back to her house.  Aravis tells her about her plans so the friend agrees to help her get out of the city by a secret way out.  On their way to the secret place, they get trapped in a room with Rabadash, his dad the King, and this other guy that Aravis was supposed to marry.  They hear this plan of how Rabadash is going to to kill people in Archenland and take over Narnia to make Susan marry him after all.  That talk finally ends, the men leave, then the girls sneak out.

The Horses and the people finally meet up at their spot, Aravis tells about Rabadashes evil plans, Shasta tells about this other better way to get across the desert, they make a run for it to beat Rabadash and save Archenland.  They make it to this hermits house, but zomg, a lion is chasing them again!  Bree runs in to escape the lion, Shasta runs back to save Aravis and Hwin, then he has to run like the wind to the King to let him know about Rabadash.

Shasta tells the king of the plan and they all set off to get the army.  Shasta gets left behind cuz his horse is slow, and ends up meeting Aslan along the way who leads him to Narnia.  Shasta tells people about Rabadashes plan, so the Narnians go to the aid of Archenland.  They win the battle and all is well.

Oh, and Shasta is the long lost Prince Cor, who has been missing for years.  For the record, I am Jacks total lack of surprise.  Prince Corin is so happy cuz now he doesn’t have to be King, gets to be Prince forever.  Shasta Prince Cor grows up, marries Aravis, and they are just a grand King and Queen.

*****

One thing I didn’t like was that the lions that attacked them both times were really just Aslan, driving them together and then teaching Aravis a lesson.  It again felt kind of godish to me, like he’s just there watching over them to make sure things go right and they get their just desserts.  For being touted to be so busy, he sure seems to have a lot of time to meddle in everyone’s lives.

Next up: Prince Caspian

Despite there being 8 or whatever books in this series, this is the one that everyone knows.  So far, it’s also the only one I know I’ve either read myself or had read to me in the past, and with the movie that was out recently, I was again made familiar with the story.

*****

We all know how this one goes…Lucy finds herself in a strange land instead of the wardrobe she had initially gone into.  Everyone thinks she’s lying, turns out Edmund was the liar, so everyone gets bothered with him and he goes off to join forces with The White Witch.  Personally I thought Queen Jadis was a more fun name and it’s a little sad that she was given this new name.

The kids all get to Aslan with relatively no trouble.  It seemed like their journey took so long when I was a kid, but in reality I read the whole book in just a couple of hours with interruptions.  It didn’t actually really feel as though anyone but Edmund was in any real danger the whole time.  So, they get to Aslan, then the Witches skeery wolves try to eat them, it doesn’t work, and Aslan’s posse finds Edmund about to be killed.

They get Edmund back safe and sound, Aslan makes a deal with the Witch, and then he dies.  Cept not so much, he is really fine cuz of the deep magic.  I think it would have been much more interesting/entertaining if he had just taken care of the Witch then and there.  Bah to all this deep magic nonsense, he made the world, he can deal with it!  Plus what is with this reference to him having “other worlds” to manage?  Again, I don’t want to feel like my reading of the Christian themes in this book is influencing my opinion, but other worlds seems so god-ish.  And if that lion has that much energy to be managing all these places, he should really come into my life, I could use some help with the laundry!

*****

I’m also beginning to see why I didn’t seem to have much interest in reading this whole series when I was younger, it just didn’t hold my interest.  I wasn’t willing to invest that much reading time in something that I guess maybe I felt was talking down to me.  And now I still can’t help but think that the talking Animals and then regular animals bit is just so Wizard of Oz.

So all in all, I think if I had kids I would probably not read the whole series to them, though they’d be welcome to read it on their own and discuss it with me.  It’s just not captivating enough for me as a whole.

Next read: The Horse and his Boy

I had initially intended on blogging about each chapter as I went, putting down my thoughts about each one.  But as I went on, I started finding that they were really too short for that, and I didn’t exactly have a lot of thoughts about individual chapters.  So, I’ll likely just comment on a book as a whole going forward, unless it’s a larger book with longer chapters.

*****

The gist of this book is that Polly and Digory meet, they run into Uncle Andrew by accident and he sends them on a magical journey.  On their journey they meet The White Witch Queen Jadis, and unintentionally set her free, bringing her into our world and later into Narnia.  They also take Uncle Andrew and a cabby (with his horse) into Narnia, and witness its creation with Aslan and all that.  The Witch stays in Narnia, as well as the cabby and his wife, who become Narnia’s first king and queen.  Their horse also becomes the first winged horse in the land.  The children and Uncle Andrew go back to their world, Polly and Digory remain fast friends, and Digory goes on to become the professor from the next book.

*****

I felt like as a whole, this story was kind of unnecessary.  I never remember being terribly concerned as to where Narnia had come from, how the Witch got there, or really why The Professor was encouraging of the children in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  In some respects, this actually made the Witch feel kind of easily defeated, since this book made her sound all powerful and so horrible.

I had also been told and read ahead of time that these books have very strong Christian themes throughout.  Undoubtedly as a result of being told this, it was pretty prevalent in my mind while reading the book.  The creation of Narnia did feel kind of like the creation story in Christianity as well, and I really just didn’t think it was necessary to go into.  I honestly felt bad for the animals that weren’t chosen by Aslan to be talking and aware Animals, I wondered as I was reading it what caused the difference, why did Aslan choose some and not others.  Choosing two from each species felt very Noah’s Arc to me, and since that’s a story already told elsewhere, I guess I kind of yearned for a different origin of things.

And why, if the Witch was so bad, yet Aslan so powerful, couldn’t he just magic her ass out of there?  He just created the world, he could just as easily create different prophecies and do away with the evil in the land altogether.  Maybe this is all stuff that a mind like mine doesn’t work with well…I want more explanations for things, like why he had to deal with her being there at all.  I felt like I needed to have more faith in order to really “get” the story, need more ability to suspend my disbelief than I have in me.

I don’t think it was a horrible book necessarily, just not maybe one that ever needed to be written.  It kind of takes the magic out of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe a bit, knowing where things come from and that Aslan created the world.  Some things are okay left unexplained, to me.  And the explanations just bring about more questions anyway

Next up: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Nothing terribly outrageous or noteworthy in this chapter.  Just fantasy stuff with Polly and Digory, trying to figure out the rings.  I like that the chapters are short, easy to get through.

I think if I had been the children I would have wanted to examine the woods to see if anyone else was there.  Who knows what kind of interesting creatures might be traveling between worlds.

And I found it rather amusing that Digory is referred to as, “…the sort of person who wants to know everything, and when he grew up he became the famous Professor Kirke who comes into other books.”  Huh?  Maybe I’ll find this out as I read further into the series, but uh, it seems a strange thing to say.  And since when does Digory want to know everything?  He was too skeered in the first chapter to leave the tunnel until Polly said it was safe.

“Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures.  Ours, my boy is a high and lonely destiny.”

Unless school has changed quite a bit, I recall being told very early on that we’re all individuals, blah blah.  I was also taught to be humble.  And I don’t know that I advocate an adult telling a child essentially, “I don’t have to play by the rules because I’m special.”  As if parents want their kids to have a literary quote to cite when breaking rules.

And don’t even get me started on this…

“But of course you must understand that rules of that sort, however excellent they may be for little boys – and servants - and women – and even people in general, can’t possibly be expected to apply to profound students and great thinkers and sages.”

I know this was supposed to happen in olden times or whatever, but this book was written in the early ’50s, I don’t think singling out women as people who sould always follow rules is really necessary.  It was in the June Cleaver days, before the feminist movement, but I still find it a pointless inclusion to make.  I’m sorry, I just can’t set aside my feminist ideals to suck that one down.

And what’s with the implications that women can’t be great thinkers, or students, or scholars?  Way to take away the potential of whole groups of people.  Even Digory thinks to himself “All it means is that he thinks he can do anything he likes to get anything he wants.”  I agree, Uncle Andrew is rotten!

I suppose the point is to scare children and, I dunno, make them see that all grown ups aren’t good.  That in books maybe you aren’t really kidnapped, just magically kidnapped.  Part of my whole goal with this is to expose myself to what kind of crap we’re fed as children.

It feels like a betrayal, persumably a child will have already been familiar with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and in there they get exposed to evil in the forms of witches and other such bad things.  Then they are thrust into this cruel world where an older man knowingly sends a child into danger and takes joy in it.  I wonder how many kids were suspicious of their uncles after reading this.

I’m next to positive I never read this book.  It was my introduction to prequels and I remember feeling kind of cheated by this, to know that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe had been read to me, then suddenly there was this earlier book.  I liked chronological order, early inklings of an obsessive mind.  So it’s quite possible I skipped this one purely out of protest.

Maybe I’m being nitpicky from the start, but I think it’s a wee bit pretentious to start a book out by saying “It is a very important story….”  Clearly the one presenting it finds it important, they wrote it!  So far, the ages of Polly and Digory haven’t been revealed to us, but they do talk quite grown up for children playing in the garden.

Two pages in and I feel like I’ve witnessed two events lifted from other, older sources.  Mr. and Miss Ketterly sound an awful lot like Matthew and Marilla in the Anne of Green Gables books.  Then Polly says “Perhaps he keeps a mad wife shut up there.”  Hello, Jane Eyre!

I’m not certain at this point if we’re supposed to think Uncle Andrew is evil or what exactly is his motivation, but it is rather cruel to trick a young girl into touching a ring and just up and vanishing like that.  However, it would seem as though we have met the Magician and his unsuspecting Nephew.

I already feel as though I’m being a bit unfair, treating this as though it should have more logic and be less obvious to an adult.  But I have to remind myself that I’m definitely not the target audience, and part of the magic of reading a book as a kid is that you feel smart enough to figure things out on your own.  And if you don’t, it’s still magical and a pleasant surprise.