I am still working on finishing all the books for categories 12, 13, and 14 of the Book Riot Read Harder challenge, so we're skipping ahead to category 15 and we'll double back as I finish the books. It is VERY interesting to skip to this category though. For yesterday's category, you'll see that I reviewed The Last Battle, the final book of the Chronicles of Narnia. Well for today's review as you saw in the title, we're going right back to the beginning of the chronicles (according to the internal chronology) because I am reviewing The Magician's Nephew as my pick for:
Category 15: A one-sitting book
The Chronicles of Narnia : The Magician's Nephew
Author: C.S. Lewis
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: September 16 2002 (first published 1956)
Page count: 776 (whole omnibus), 100 (The Magian's Nephew specifically)
Genres: fantasy, mythology
Page count: 776 (whole omnibus), 100 (The Magian's Nephew specifically)
Genres: fantasy, mythology
Date read: January 18, 2018
Number of times read: 4
Format: paperback/audiobookSource: Chapters/Indigo/Waterloo Public Library
Summary
The secret passage to the house next door leads to a fascinating adventure
NARNIA...where the woods are thick and cold, where Talking Beasts are called to life...a new world where the adventure begins.
Digory and Polly meet and become friends one cold, wet summer in London. Their lives burst into adventure when Digory's Uncle Andrew, who thinks he is a magician, sends them hurtling to...somewhere else. They find their way to Narnia, newborn from the Lion's song, and encounter the evil sorceress Jadis before they finally return home. -- via Goodreads
The secret passage to the house next door leads to a fascinating adventure
NARNIA...where the woods are thick and cold, where Talking Beasts are called to life...a new world where the adventure begins.
Digory and Polly meet and become friends one cold, wet summer in London. Their lives burst into adventure when Digory's Uncle Andrew, who thinks he is a magician, sends them hurtling to...somewhere else. They find their way to Narnia, newborn from the Lion's song, and encounter the evil sorceress Jadis before they finally return home. -- via Goodreads
Review
It's interesting to me to be coming back to the beginning of Narnia the day after I just went on a tirade about how disappointed I was by its ending. What I find most striking between the two is that in terms of the original publication order of the books The Magician's Nephew came right before The Last Battle. I think it would have been a completely different experience reading them in that order rather than reading them in the order of the internal chronology of the books which is how they've been packaged and presented for decades now. When I first started reading them as a kid in the 90s, the boxsets had Magician's Nephew as the first book, but the set I grew up on was my mum's original first editions from the 1950s/60s when they were still published in original publishing order. So The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe was always the first book for me and I never made it past the 3rd book as a kid. It wasn't until I bought my omnibus edition in 2004/5 (as a means of wishing to preserve my mum's much loved first editions) that I'd ever thought of reading them in any other order. I tried several times to read through the omnibus (I believe I mentioned that yesterday?), but I always stopped after Voyage of the Dawn Treader mainly because I wasn't sure I wanted to read a Narnia book where Eustace was the star and Lucy and Edmund (my two favourite Pevensies) weren't going to be around at all. As you might remember from yesterday I set out to change that this year. A project I started in January by re-reading The Magician's Nephew.
It's not a perfect book, and I'm glad because it's actually much more interesting when a book is flawed. I always try and think critically about whatever I am reading, that doesn't keep me from falling in love with books, it just makes sure that I question even the books I love. (Thanks $35k English degree!) I can admit that this book has flaws, both as an individual book and as part of a larger series. I think Lewis made a mistake by publishing this one so late in the series. Being about the creation of Narnia, and including the backstory for one of the biggest bads in the series, I think it really only does make sense to have this book appear first in box sets and omnibuses. The only issue I have is with how they really didn't handle the villain at all, which is why she's still around hundreds if not thousands of years later for the Pevensies to vanquish. But this is also probably a result of writing the book after writing the events of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.
The good things though are plentiful. First and foremost there is the world building. Narnia is literally brought into existence from scratch by Aslan, and he does a damn fine job of setting up the parameters that govern this world and the way it connects with other worlds. The characters are another fantastic element Diggory and Polly are among my favourite characters in the series and I wish we got to see more of them. Uncle Andrew was the weakest character but I suspect that that was an intentional choice.
I also loved Lewis's set up and reveal for the villain. You could really see how she was manipulating Andrew and Diggory, but Polly saw right through her which feels very feminist. Overall though I loved this book and out of all seven Narnia books I gave it a seven and on a scale of one to seven I would rank it at a three3 in terms of ranking, with LWW taking number one and the Horse and His Boy at number two.
As the first book of the series, it sets an interesting tone with its mix of Christian allegory and high fantasy elements. What are your thoughts on changing the order of The Chronicles of Narnia to present them in terms of the series's internal chronology vs. the original publication order in which this book is book 6?
It's not a perfect book, and I'm glad because it's actually much more interesting when a book is flawed. I always try and think critically about whatever I am reading, that doesn't keep me from falling in love with books, it just makes sure that I question even the books I love. (Thanks $35k English degree!) I can admit that this book has flaws, both as an individual book and as part of a larger series. I think Lewis made a mistake by publishing this one so late in the series. Being about the creation of Narnia, and including the backstory for one of the biggest bads in the series, I think it really only does make sense to have this book appear first in box sets and omnibuses. The only issue I have is with how they really didn't handle the villain at all, which is why she's still around hundreds if not thousands of years later for the Pevensies to vanquish. But this is also probably a result of writing the book after writing the events of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.
The good things though are plentiful. First and foremost there is the world building. Narnia is literally brought into existence from scratch by Aslan, and he does a damn fine job of setting up the parameters that govern this world and the way it connects with other worlds. The characters are another fantastic element Diggory and Polly are among my favourite characters in the series and I wish we got to see more of them. Uncle Andrew was the weakest character but I suspect that that was an intentional choice.
I also loved Lewis's set up and reveal for the villain. You could really see how she was manipulating Andrew and Diggory, but Polly saw right through her which feels very feminist. Overall though I loved this book and out of all seven Narnia books I gave it a seven and on a scale of one to seven I would rank it at a three3 in terms of ranking, with LWW taking number one and the Horse and His Boy at number two.
As the first book of the series, it sets an interesting tone with its mix of Christian allegory and high fantasy elements. What are your thoughts on changing the order of The Chronicles of Narnia to present them in terms of the series's internal chronology vs. the original publication order in which this book is book 6?
Overall Rating
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| 5 bolts |
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