While I read this book several years ago (the 2006 date is a "best guess"), I'd actually started it back in 1990 and didn't finish it at that time. It gets off to kind of a slow start, and one element in the storyline was initially off-putting to me (but no spoilers here!). However, I'm glad I decided to give it a second and fairer chance; it proved to be a solid three-star fantasy that I enjoyed. Basically, it's a coming-of-age tale in a fantasy setting; and it's perhaps the first example in the modern tradition of a child/youth from the real world finding his way into a fantasy world. (Knowing that MacDonald was a favorite author of C. S. Lewis, it isn't hard to see the influence of this work on the idea behind the latter's Narnia series.) There are actually no explicit Christian references in the book, but the author's Christian worldview underlies the strongly moral tone and messages here. Of course, this is a 19th-century work, with Victorian diction throughout; readers who find that problematic will probably enjoy the book less than those of us who don't mind that!