The Chronicles of Narnia - Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis

First published in 1951.

Narnia . . . the land between the lamp-post and the castle of Cair Paravel, where animals talk, where magical things happen . . . and where the adventure begins.

Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are returning to boarding school when they are summoned from the dreary train station (by Susan’s own magic horn) to return to the land of Narnia - the land where they had ruled as kings and queens and where their help is desperately needed.

Don’t get me wrong. I liked this book. I really did. But compared to the others I just found it kind of lackluster and a little unfocused. The book is called Prince Caspian but the emphasis didn’t seem to be on him; it was on the children and how they saved the day. I was expecting something a long the lines of the life and times of Prince Caspian, or something like that. The history that we do get of him is passively told for a couple of chapters (which was interesting nonetheless) and everything else was about the re-emergence of Old Narnia.

Prince Caspian was definitely more of a secondary character than the focus of the book. It almost seemed that he was just fodder for another adventure for the children which was kind of irritating. I was sad at the end, however, when we’re told that Peter and Susan were getting too old to travel back and forth between the real world and Narnia. Very Peter Pan moment right there.

Overall I guess I wasn’t as impressed with this one as I was with the others. It is a little disheartening to go into something thinking you’re getting one thing and get something else. Like I said, it wasn’t bad by any means. It’s still a fantastic story but I think the power of a title comes into play here. If the title of the book is Prince Caspian, I expect him to be the main focus of the story, not a secondary plot line.