false 3 15 false false Wed Jun 17 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 05 00:52:32 -0700 2008 Thu Jul 23 16:01:15 -0700 2009 2-ish
Firstly, they are so irritatingly British - not to offend any Poms out there, but I mean in a smug, posh, Blytonian way. I'm sure people actually did speak like that in those days - said things like "Oh, stop your jawing" and "Do let's!" with an entirely thoughtless lack of consideration for the people in the future who know how to talk proper-like. In small doses it's got nothing going for it, in large doses it's positively sickening. What is possibly worse, though, is that once they've lived in Narnia for a while and grown up into kings and queens and various other official entities they begin to speak in a different way, which is even more painful. They refer to "the sun that hangeth in the sky" and say "Fair consorts, let us now alight from our horses and follow this beast into the thicket; for in all my days I have never hunted a nobler quarry" (that is a direct quote, semi-colon and all; 'pon my word, didn't he realise that Barack Obama is the only person who can actually pronounce semi-colons). Is it possible, Clive Staples, to be any more pretentious?

Furthermore, the characters are rather two-dimensional. Of course, whenever a character was an utter beast (isn't calling someone a 'beast' when they're being a brat a bit derogatory considering the whole talking animal thing? Yet apparently Clive never picked it up), no matter how absolutely dreadful (/ghastly/beastly/other repetitive adjective) they were, they became a perfect dear the very day after they realised the wrongs of their ways. And of course the brown people who smell of garlic and onions are the baddies and their only chance of redemption is to convert to the ways of Narnia and Aslan, and the girls never get to do anything except weep (important as that is), and maybe fire a couple of arrows in battle if they're lucky. But of course they never get to do cool stuff like learn how to sword-fight or be kings or anything (Come on, Lucy should totally have been the High Queen. Peter didn't do much important, not even weeping. In contrast, Lucy not only wept a lot, but discovered Narnia in the first place, was continually persecuted for sticking up for its existence, and clearly had the closest connection to Aslan.) Of course, it goes without saying that Clive Staples never uses the feminine pronoun as the default.

What else is there about these books that can be fully explained by the context in which they were written for me to complain about? I'm sure there are many things, but let's skip straight to the Christianity allegory part. Seriously, there are so many things about this series that would have been completely awesome if he hadn't COPIED THEM FROM THE BIBLE!!!@#$%^&*)(*&^%$#@!!1 I shall list them.

- the creation of Narnia in The Magician's Nephew
- the sacrifice of Aslan in The Lion, the witch and the Wardrobe
- Shashta's discovery by Arsheesh in The Horse and his Boy
- the lamb bit at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
- Aslan's country at the start of The Silver Chair
- the whole judgement and heaven thing in The Last Battle

And a whole lot of more subtle things that I either missed entirely or decided were too vague to list. These are the most flagrant blatant copies of Christian iconography, and it's those bits are often the most enthralling and best-written parts of all his books. I'd say 'no fair'! Because in theory that would be the best way to indoctrinate poor innocent children into Christianity, but I don't think that what you read when you're a kid necessarily (or at all) has any impact on your religious persuasion when you grow up. But anyway, it's a real pity because just when I was trying to get into the book and be swept away by the coolness of what was going on (you've got to admit, singing a world into existence? Pretty damn great), I kept being distracted by how nothing he was writing was actually original. This is incredibly powerful stuff, and I suppose that's part of the reason why Christianity is so popular, but the whole way through I was enormously, overwhelmingly indignant that it was all freaking Christian allegory!!! BASTARD.

Something interesting that Philip Pullman (a far superior author) pointed out in this video is that these books really aren't very Christian at all. They don't mention anything about loving thy neighbour - it's more like glory and honour and protecting the ladies, not to mention that it's totally ok to treat women and black people like shit. So basically, Clive Staples took the most exciting bits of Christianity, stripped them of their most important message, and presented them to the world as a happy little tale for children!

And for god's fucking sake! Aslan. I hate him so much. Why, why, why, why did he always ruin a half-decent story by making Aslan turn up and save the day? By the end of the first book I read I was ready to join an illegal poaching party and just go shoot the damn creature, and by the end of the nauseating The Last Battle I was more likely to shoot myself. Which frankly is not really a feeling I enjoy getting from a book. And it left me forced to come to the unpalatable conclusion that dear old Clive Staples just didn't have enough imagination to carry his stories through without a) resorting to stories that already existed or b) using a pathetic excuse for a deus ex machina (or deus ex deus, whatever).

Of course, though, there were some good things about this series. It's just that when I write a review I always leave off mentioning the good stuff until the end (how nice of me, leaving you with a positive impression, I should be given a share of the royalties). Most noticeably to my inner fantasy buff was the brilliant depiction of magic at times, mostly the bit post-Ramandu's Island where they sail through lilies and stuff in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and the awakening of the trees bit in Prince Caspian. I have no idea how on earth he does it, because he never slipped out of his irritating writing style, but he completely succeeds in creating an atmosphere of wonder and awe and deep, mysterious, unknown forces. Truly marvellous.

Finally, they're actually really damn good. They are absorbing, compelling, even riveting. You want to know what happens next (with the exception of the first half of The Last Battle, which was boring as) and I didn't even notice until some time after I'd finished them that the weaker books (in my opinion The Silver Chair followed by The Horse and His Boy) were actually not that good. I know that is hardly what constitutes a good piece of literature - if it did, Dan Brown'd have a Nobel - but I would argue that it is an important component of any book, and especially so in children's literature.

In conclusion, C. S. Lewis and I do not get on, but these books are pretty good, especially if you are too young to notice their multitudinous flaws. Read them to your children before they go to bed, alternating chapters with The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and all will be well.]]>