|
You may not have minded this as a kid, but coming back to it as an adult, it's painfully obvious that "The Magician's Nephew" is the point at which the Narnia series jumped the shark. The White Witch comes back to turn-of-the-century London and does nothing more than commandeer a carriage. Come on.
Hoping to introduce my granddaughters to one of my very favorite series, I ordered this first of the series. They are such great stories. I was pleased with the size and appearance, including illustrations, and hope that it will appeal to them (age 10 and 11). Of course, if they like it, I'll be looking for the rest of the series for them. and are more than just surface level. they feed our spirits as well.
Wonderful book. and could not be happier with my purchase. The table of contents is great, the pictures (although they can be a little bit difficult to see on the small screen-- but still certainly good). Wonderful experience all around.I greatly enjoyed reading this book. Amazing Kindle Version. I first read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe wayyyy back in 6th grade. Wonderful Kindle version. The formatting is wonderful, and I think the cover looks spectacular on the Kindle.
I decided that, with my new Kindle and cheap access (only [.].). to each book in this series, it would be a great thing to read all of.Well, I just finished The Magician's Nephew last night (after reading the last 3/4 at 1 am.). look nice on the Kindle, and the essence of the book was not lost in transfer from print to electronics.Amazing book. A+.Now if only all Kindle books were this nice.
C.S. The witches mouth is also stained deep Charn-red by the forbidden fruit she stole from the Tree of Life-two images of the death afforded by sin and rejecting salvation.We see the miracle of Creation as Aslan inhabits Narnia with talking animals in this prequel to the Narnia series.Something is dreadfully wrong despite the beauty of the new creation. This book is better than the space trilogy he wrote earlier.The children here enter a parallel universe via the research of their Uncle Andrew who enables them to time travel with rings made of Atlantean dust. The Creation is flawed so sacrifice must be eventually paid by Aslan.The characters eventually return to their respective universes and the stage is set for the series to continue. Lewis seemed to have a special relationship with thought lives of children as reflected in his letters to children and stories. The books C.S.Lewis wrote for children seem to always be better than books intended for older readers. When I review George Orwell's writings, I often describe them as time capsules of history. The battle that will be fought years later in Naria has its seed in this first story.
What I find interesting about C.S.Lewis is the important role that parallel universes and relativity theory played in his stories as did the New Testament in the life of Einstein. Aslan warns the children that Evil has entered the new world through the negligence of the children of Adam, Digory and Polly. Were the two parallel universes of these thinkers somehow connected. The two children, Digory and Polly, find themselves in a forested switching universe (a multiverse), and then in the dead city of Charn. Lewis' writings often seem to transcend time; writings that often jump to the future and travel to the past on the spacetime of this great writer's mind.and all in one trip.C.S. The layers of meaning with both secular and Christian symbolism are amazing.
Uncle Andrew is the sterotypical secular scientist who appears in other C.S.Lewis novels and always disrupts the divine order of things with amoral tinkering. Charn, cursed and dimly lit by a large, dying red dwarf sun. We even learn about how the lamp post near the entrance to the wardrobe was created in the first Narnia book. I am connected to this story and will keep it in my heart.Pathway to the starsEinstein's Universe
The war on Charn, deadly serious, is fought between two female commanders. Digory's path eventually leads to Narnia, of course, though not as directly as you might think. Due to the whole "backstory" nature of the book, it tends to be hurried through and forgotten by those on their first trip through the series. She takes it and disappears - which, as Andrew's subsequent sinister behavior clarifies, was the intended effect.
The hall of statues, a portrait of successive cruelty and a more effective history of a nation than any expository text. Eventually, he meets a playmate named Polly, and they together begin to explore the passageways connecting the different rowhouses in their tenement. The serpent in Narnia's Eden having bitten into its apple, lips stained red with bloody juice. Come ON, people. He offers Digory a second ring to follow in Polly's footsteps, wherever she has gone - but only as a scout for Andrew, who plans to continue his nefarious experiments beyond this world. They thereby happen upon the laboratory of Digory's eccentric Uncle Andrew, who seems oddly delighted by the intrusion.
The story opens on the unfamiliar Digory, a young boy who lives a lonely life in a dingy and cramped part of London with two distant elderly relatives and a mother who's gravely ill, probably terminal. Thanks to a massive misunderstanding of narrative structure by the current copyright owners, it's recently been saddled with the onus of being the introduction to the entire Narnia series, a position for which it was never written or suited. Digory's aunt holds her own about as well as one would expect against a sorceress, possessing an iron calm and command in ridiculous situations. It never gets filmed, as familiar protagonists and fickle public attention tend to run out around the time the studio gets to "The Silver Chair", and no producer really wants to poke around the thorny attitudes toward the Muslim world that pop up by "The Horse and His Boy" (but which are absent from "Nephew"). In balance, "Nephew" boasts some of the series's most awe-inspiring, poetic, and chilling sights: A ruined world living in the hell-lit shadow of a red giant nearing supernova.
He offers Polly the fruit of his latest experiment - a glowing yellow ring. I've noted that "The Magician's Nephew" does not serve well as an introduction to the series. There are indeed threats (and a sense of wonder), but they are, until the climax, either not immediate or are easily neutralized, leaving a free breeziness that allows the story to have fun with itself and tour the scenery. "The Magician's Nephew" is the Rodney Dangerfield of the Narnia books. The horrifically elegant conclusion of the war on Charn: "Victory."/"But not for you." Rereading as an adult, it struck me that "Nephew"'s female characters provide an antidote of sorts to the Problem of Susan issue. Though femininity freaks Lewis out (Susan, Lasraleen, the faux-motherly White Witch and seductive Lady of the Green Kirtle), that does not preclude him from writing strong females outside those roles. Digory's mother gets hardly a word, but the effects of her absence speak volumes; she is the missing leader and moral pillar of her family.
Polly proves a wise, albeit often unheeded, foil to Digory - she's still a kid, and they both get into heated arguments, but when the chips are down, she's the one with a level head. Besides Aslan, its characters do not show up, at least in these forms, in any of the other Narnia books, and you have to have some familiarity with the previously-published volumes to enjoy it fully ("oh, so THAT'S how the lantern got in the middle of the forest" etc). Before my adult reread, nothing stuck in my mind about this volume; I remembered the Dawn Treader, and I remembered Puddleglum - but Magician's what now. The original publication order offers "The Magician's Nephew" its proper place to shine. That batty old Uncle Andrew is really no match for anything he will find in Narnia is a given and leads us to the first striking difference about "The Magician's Nephew" - it's as close to a comedy episode as the Narnia series gets, right up till the ending ("she was a dern fine woman"). I stress: this is the book that features one of the series' greatest villains going Grand Theft Horsebuggy on London. Those put off by "The Last Battle"'s complications might be pleasantly surprised here.
It deserves a higher pedestal than popular memory has given it; it's one of Narnia's brightest jewels.
|
