The Chronicles of Narnia - The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis

First published in 1953.

Narnia . . where owls are wise, where some of the giants like to snack on humans, where a prince is put under an evil spell . . . and where the adventure begins.

Eustace and Jill escape from the bullies at school through a strange door in the wall, which, for once, is unlocked. It leads to the open moor . . . or does it? Once again Aslan has a task for the children, and Narnia needs them. Through dangers untold and caverns deep and dark, they pursue the quest that brings them face to face with the evil Witch. She must be defeated if Prince Rillian is to be saved.

Redemption! Yeah, this one was good. Still not as good as THAHB but definitely much better than PC and VotDT combined. Aslan kept himself to a minimum and the children were thoroughly tortured by the elements, giants, another witch and a slew of other things. Fun!

My inner feminist reared her ugly head at the whole “witch is the snake that corrupts man” homage but I just kept thinking that it was of the times. Biblical references. Calm down. Still, the insinuation irked me. As is Lewis’s ability to let women stand by and let men do all the fighting. *breathe*

Anyway, this fairy tale was much more fleshed out, no deus ex machina that I can remember and I really enjoyed it. I saw the issue with the giants at the first mention of “they’d love to have you for the Autumn Harvest” but that’s really the only thing I saw in advance. I’m not one of those perceptive people that sees things like that. At least, I don’t actively look. So if I see something like that, I think I’m being beaten over the head with it. But that’s just me.

The thing with reviewing series, unless there’s a big dip in writing style or some drastic change, the reviews start to get redundant unless I focus on the story itself and even then it’s either I liked it or I didn’t. So, I’m pretty short on things to say aside from “go read nao.” Oh, I cried at the end. Very sad. I was hoping the old friends would see each other one last time. And the very end, back at the school, a little strange and a touch contrived but it was so minor I really didn’t mind. Loved the underground world. That was probably my favorite part.