I totally paused!

I know there are plenty of BSC blogs out there already, and in no way am I trying to compete with them.  I’m interested in seeing if these can spark memories of why I liked them, I was seriously addicted to them.  Couldn’t wait for the next installment to come out.  I lived the BSC, as some recounting below will detail.

I intend to read them in order, I’m a sucker for order, and write as I finish each book.  And def. throw in a Mystery or Super Special every now and then.

When I was growing up, I always had my favorite characters in a book/series, and had the ones I totally wished I was like but knew I wasn’t.  In my defense, I was a pre-teen when reading these so the 13 year olds were wicked cool at the time.  I always hated Mal and Jesse (Mallory especially), but those other girls were just the best to me.  It’s embarrassing to admit, but I so wanted to be Claudia and Stacey.  I knew, however, that I so wasn’t either of them.  At the time, I considered myself a mix of Kristy and Dawn.

I also credit these books for giving me a false sense of what I should have been.  I had an expectation for myself that I should belong to an exclusive clique (way to reinforce being an individual, Ann M. Martin!).  I also pretended to be way into babysitting, cuz I thought it was the right thing to do, when in reality I just hated babysitting.  I never understood why it was so easy for these girls.

Oh, and to add to the embarrassment, my friends and I even formed our own BSC – but not a club for babysitting, a group where we all pretended to be a girl from the BSC.  Awesome, early role-playing!  I got to be Kristy cuz I was short (and a little bossy), one girl was Stacey cuz she had the diabetes, another Dawn on account of her blonde hair, one Shannon since we didn’t hang with her much (I think her real name might have been Shannon too, not sure though).  We were wicked original! 

And in true BSC fashion, the others got pissed at me for forming new friendships.

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