Perelandra (original 1943; edition 2005)

The world of Perelandra is so interesting - I want to see those floating islands. I found the parallels between Eve and the Green Lady so interesting and the spiritual battle Ransom had as he came to grips with what he needed to do. The ending got a little too philosophical for easy reading - but you get a great insight to Mr. Lewis' conceptions of God and his overall plan. ( )

This is not a novel, this is a theological argument written in the manner of the classical tradition in which characters are mouthpieces for intellectual arguments. It's Lewis revisiting the Fall. Seriously, it's worse than Narnia, both in terms of stuff happening and explicitness of allegory. ( )

This book was better than the first one in the Space Trilogy. You don't need to read Out of the Silent Planet in order to understand what is happening in this one but it helps with the background. In this book, the main character from the first book, Dr. Ransom, travels to Venus (also known as Perelandra) to help confront temptation. An interesting twist on the Fall of Man/Garden of Eden story from the Bible. If you don't like a lot of description about the various landscapes, creatures, plants and oceans of Venus, this book may get a little long winded. Overall, I liked it even though it was a little weird.

My edition Pan (X268), 1965 (same cover) ( )

I read Out of the Silent Planet, the first book in C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, last year and enjoyed it, awarding it four stars, but I found this one a lot less to my taste. While Out of the Silent Planet had theological elements they were not overpowering and I enjoyed the picture which Lewis created of Malacandra (or Mars). But in Perelandra, while the world building still caught my interest, large sections of the book are devoted to theological arguments which most definitely did not. And the absence of women from the narrative seen in Out of the Silent Planet changes in Perelandra to a portrayal of women as subservient and almost childlike. So not a hugely successful read, and disappointing given my reaction to the first book and the fact that C.S. Lewis's Narnia books were some of my favourite reads from childhood.

Elwin Ransom, the philologist and Cambridge don who is the unlikely hero from Out of the Silent Planet, is again the main character in Perelandra. Sent to Perelandra (or Venus) by the Oyassa (or ruler) of Mars to carry out an unnamed task he finds himself in a watery world, where initially the only 'land' seems to be provided by large floating islands made of vegetation. Large and beautiful floating islands with flowers and trees and woods and birds and animals, which all rush up and down the huge waves which surge around the oceans of Venus. Rather than being wholly alone as he had feared, Ransom eventually meets a green-skinned 'human', referred to throughout as the 'lady', and eventually comes to realise that she and the 'king' are the only two intelligent beings on the planet. Biblical references come thick and fast: it is soon clear that Perelandra is a picture of Paradise before the Fall, and the 'king' and the 'lady' are the Adam and Eve of another world. But temptation soon arrives, in the form of the scientist Weston, Ransom's enemy from Out of the Silent planet, whose endless conversations with the 'lady' bring the planet to the brink.

There is very little plot and most of the book deals with the temptation of the 'lady'. Theological arguments are not really my thing, but if they're well argued I'm prepared to give them a go: these just seemed flawed at times and to have noticeable holes in them. And I felt the allegories would have worked better if they had just been a little more subtle, these were just so obvious. In a similar way to his Narnia books, Lewis uses characters and creatures from various mythologies in this novel, and tries to tie them all together. I felt that in a children's book that was acceptable, but here he seems to be trying to create an allegory of an overarching theology, so why only use Western mythology? Isn't that a little Eurocentric?

So overall not a brilliant book for me. ( )