Gain Your Copy The Chronicles Of Narnia: Seven Wonderful Fantasies Full Of Strange And Magical Adventures Crafted By C.S. Lewis Available Through Digital Format

love Narnia! Of course it's not perfect, but they are such wonderful stories, paving the way for so many other fantasy worlds that followed, Sure they've got the allegorical Christian background, and some of Lewis' wording and phrases wouldn't pass as politically correct now, But if you can look past these small details, Narnia is a truly magical place, the stories iconic, I will never forget them,

The Magicians Nephew

"By gum," said Digory, "don't I just wish I was big enough to punch your head!"

The creation story of Narnia.
Young Polly and Diggory are swept up in the experiments of a magician attempting to find other worlds, In doing so they discover the beginning of Narnia, and so start off the tales,

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,

"Course he isn't safe, But he's good. He's the king, I tell you, "

The most well known of the Narnian chronicles, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy discover Narnia through the back of a wardrobe, Their battles with the white witch are legendary,

The Horse and his Boy

"Do not by any means destroy yourself, for if you live you may yet have good fortune but all the dead are dead alike.
"

This one though based when the Pevensie children are still in Narnia the focus is on two young Calormene children, Shasta and Aravis, Having both run away they seek a better life in Narnia, becoming involved in a battle between the Narnians and the Calormenes,

Prince Caspian

"But things never happen the same way twice, It has been hard for us all in Narnia before now, "

The Pevensie children return to Narnia after a gap of several hundred years though to the children onlyyear of our time has passed, They aid the rightful heir to the throne in his attempts to stop his evil uncle from destroying Narnia,

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

A swashbuckling tale full of adventures! Only Edmund and Lucy return this time, taking with them their dreadful cousin Eustace.
They land on the deck of a ship with Prince Caspian on a journey to findmissing dukes,

The Silver Chair

"He was not a perfectly enormous giant that is to say, he was rather taller than an apple tree but nothing like so tall as a telegraph pole.
"

Eustace returns with a school friend Jill, To find the missing Prince whose disappearance has led to numerous others going missing in search of him, Their journey takes them to the land of giants and to the world underground, Also the best character Puddleglum the Marsh Wiggle is in this one, I love him!

The Last Battle

"All worlds draw to an end and that noble death is a treasure which no one is too poor to buy.
"

A fantastic conclusion! An evil ape is using trickery and deceit to cause the Narnians to live in fear, This is the battle to end all battles and none will be the same again!

stars! Narnia is a wonderful place with the most incredible cast of characters.
Like I said it certainly has flaws but its achievements overcome those big time!

"All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on Earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
" I read the entire series, one right after another, eight times in a row when I got them for Christmas in fourth grade, Obviously I loved them then, Just finished reading them again to Eric, myyearold, and loved them maybe just as must as I did as ayearold, Eric couldn't stop giggling through the last pages of Horse and His Boy, which we had to reread when we finished the rest, since it was his favorite, We're starting Prince Caspian again, tooanother favorite, I realized this go around how much these books shaped my entire world view, and especially my perspective on religion, though I never knew it as a kid,

One odd little detail that I noticed this time reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader: awful cousin Eustace and his parents are

Mormons, Lewis never comes right out and says it, but in addition to being snooty holierthanthous that nobody can stand, the parents don't drink, don't smoke, and wear a funny kind of underwear.
A nice little underhanded slam at a faith that loves to quote him in General Conference,

I'll still keep quoting, I love his writing. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: /stars
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Prince Caspian: /stars
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The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: /stars
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The Silver Chair: /stars
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The Horse and His Boy: /stars
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The Magician's Nephew: /stars
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The Last Battle: /stars
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See my review sitelinkhere! The Magician's Nephew is easily the best story of the Chronicles.
First of all, it's the least overtly religious, There is a creationoftheworld element, but it's not our world so it seems more fantastic than religious, Not only is there a veil over the religiosity, there's so much creativity in this story: the magical rings, the inbetween place, the Deplorable Word, the founding of Narnia,

Starting with The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the religiosity becomes noticeable, with the Witch as Satan, Aslan as Jesus, and the Emperor as God.
And because of the talking, fighting animals, the fantasy seems aimed at children, I might have enjoyed it more at age,

The next story in the series, The Horse and His Boy, takes a dark, ethnocentric turn with its unfavorable depiction of the Arablike "Calormen" shoes turned up at the toe, scimitars, suffixed phrases of praise, "son of" lineage declarations.
In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we get a notquitepositive summary of the Calormen:

", . . they are a wise, wealthy, courteous, cruel and ancient people, They bowed most politely to Caspian and paid him long compliments, . . but of course what they wanted was the money they had paid, "

Given that this book was published in, it's possible to forgive the cultural insensitivity, but it's sad that children around the world still uncritically read such racist material.


The Voyage of the Dawn Treader demonstrates the problem with using God or Jesus in a story: there are no real conflicts, When the Dawn Treader stops at Dragon Island, the boy passenger Eustace wanders off, encounters a magical spell, and is turned into a dragon, This raises all kinds of serious issues about how to keep Eustace the Dragon with them, but none of these problems matter because, withinhours, Aslan just changes Eustace back to a boy.


There was a similar deus ex machina the term being used most appropriately in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, To save Edmund's soul, Aslan sacrifices his life, But it wasn't Aslan's only life, he had another one ready,

One thing I found especially creative about The Chronicles is how a story involving talking animals justifies eating animals, .