I totally paused!

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

Tags: childrens, cs lewis, reading

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