The stories in this series are getting much better, and are much easier
to read. If I ignore Aslan’s biblical signs, this book actually had a
decent plot and rarely descended into condescension. My favorite
character by far was the marsh-wiggle Puddleglum. He sounded a lot like
Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, always assuming the worst, and that their
hopes would never materialize –and he was considered too optimistic!
Jill and Eustace were typical children from old Britain, with attitudes
about what was proper, and whining all the time. Both grow up by the end
of the book, which was a nice evolution of their characters. The time
among the giants was a little slow, but probably necessary to ensure
their task wasn’t too easy, and to show how evil the giants were. The
author still takes on way too condescending an attitude in many places,
and I personally hate when the author breaks the fourth wall to speak
directly to the audience, so those parts really turned me off.
Fortunately, the adventure kept me interested, and the pace moved nicely
after they departed Aslan’s land.
Spoiler review:
I want to finish the Chronicles of Narnia, even though I find it a
sub-par series, and I actively disliked half the stories I’ve already
read. I think I may have rated some of the earlier books too high,
simply on the fact that they were improving as the series advanced. But
the ratings I’ve given these books do not match what I would give other,
more serious books of the same calibre. These books were meant for
children, so I tend to rate them a little differently.
Eustace
was in the previous book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. He started out
as a lazy, whiny boy, and ended up a good friend of Prince Caspian and
Aslan. Here, he and a fellow student start out in our world being
bullied by their schoolmates, and Eustace tells Jill about Narnia. As
the bullies approach, they escape through an open door to the school and
are transported to Aslan’s world. It seemed that they only thought of
Narnia because Aslan wanted to prime them and bring them there to rescue
Caspian’s son from an evil witch. Aslan, like Gandalf, always works
through others, putting the young and innocent in harm’s way. It could
have been done without Aslan’s guidance, the divine intervention. Still,
it doesn’t harm this story much because while Aslan gives them some
signs to watch for, they miss them all until it’s almost too late,
following their own instincts, which often turn out wrong, ensuring they
go on an adventure of sorts.
Aside from the overt religious
tones, which bother me only because they are so overt and overbearing,
what bothers me most about this series, and why I stopped reading it for
a while, was the extreme condescension the author brings to the
narrative. He’s always talking down to the children who would be reading
this book. I also don’t like when an author breaks the fourth wall, so
to speak, such as when he’s comparing Narnia to what he expects children
might be experiencing in our world. That may hold true to Britain some
seventy years ago, but it doesn’t allow for the world to change, and his
view of the world was very narrow. He also reassures the audience at
some points, which is not necessary at all. Some of this is done in
The
Hobbit, and I suppose it was just a product of Lewis and Tolkien’s
upbringing. At least Tolkien evolved the narrative form in
The Lord of
the Rings.
The children arrive as King Caspian is leaving on
what he believes is his final voyage. If he’s such a good king, why is
he leaving the lands without naming a successor? He’s ready to die, and
everybody knows it, yet it takes Aslan’s intervention to bring back
Prince Rilian. How good can he have been as a King? I assume Aslan
doesn’t allow people to remarry, even if their spouse is murdered, which
is something we find in The Silmarillion also, and is it maybe an early
Christian tenet, too? Still, the same tenets should have had him sire a
huge number of children just in case others died. Otherwise they risked
going back to the dark ages before Prince Caspian.
We don’t
spend a lot of time in Narnia, just enough for the owls to take them
away so they could start their mission from Aslan. The owls bring them
to the home of the marsh-wiggles, of which Puddleglum was hilarious in
his dour mood. He helps them set off towards the lands of the giants,
where they are welcomed with open arms. It’s obvious that the giants
want to feast on them. Still trying to be polite, the children try to
sneak off, but have to endure a couple of meals with the giants, one of
which consists of a talking animal, which turns their appetites sour.
From her window, Jill sees writing on the old ruins at the foot
of the giants’ stronghold, which reminds her of Aslan’s signs. During a
hunt by the king of the giants, they manage to escape, but somehow the
giants are coming back by then –what a short hunt! The children are
discovered and chased to a tight cave, and we never hear of the giants
again. The trek in the dark didn’t do anything for me, and it was
obvious the man they encountered was Rilian –but he was under an
enchantment by a witch who wanted to take over the world of Narnia.
Why does everybody want to rule Narnia? Hopefully it will be
revealed in the last book, but I suspect this witch is just another
manifestation of the witch from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,
and maybe even the one from The Magician’s Nephew. They all seem to have
the same goal –to destroy all free people. The Prince is tied to the
titular Silver Chair every night, which renews his enchantment, but
Eustace and Jill don’t listen to the rules, and sneak back out to see
Rilian as he supposedly rants and raves. They recognize suddenly that
he’s Rilian, and free him, even against his own advice from earlier. He
takes a sword and destroys the chair, and when the witch comes in, he
kills her, too, in snake form. The witch was able to subdue them all
with her spells and a potion that she thrust into the fireplace, but
Puddleglum was able to put out the fire to clear their heads. Her
arguments made no sense, but her suggestions were powerful, kind of like
the Voice of Saruman.
When the witch is killed, the ground rises
up, and the earthmen, or gnomes, are also freed of her spell, and try to
escape back to their lair deep underground. It was interesting to hear
them speak of the world beneath the one they were inhabiting, which was
beneath our own. They are all agoraphobic, and can’t imagine how anybody
could live on the surface! The witch was delving a tunnel to lead the
spellbound gnomes to the surface, an army to take over Narnia. As the
last of the gnomes escape down a crevice that seals shut, Eustace, Jill,
Puddleglum and Rilian make their way up the tunnel and manage to escape
back to the surface.
Caspian turned his ship around, and is
reunited with his son at his death. When the mission is accomplished,
Aslan appears, and brings the children back to his land beyond time,
where they have a final conversation with the dead Caspian, returned to
his youth for their benefit. Then Aslan joins them in our world, and
scares the bullies, and even the administration, so that the old people
are removed and the school becomes a place of learning and happiness.
While I liked the tone this set, I’m not sure things can really be that
simple.
As the penultimate Narnia novel, this one was better
than most. It even mentions The Horse and His Boy, an old tale of the
southern lands, which I still think is probably the best of these books.
This one comes in second, as it is much better written and flows much
better –making much better sense than the previous Narnian books. On to
the finale!
