The Silver Chair

C.S. Lewis and I are never going to see eye to eye. First, because I've yet to feel any desire to participate in a seance, and second, I prefer my manipulative (religious) propaganda to be much more subtle in nature.

And yet, despite all the above, I can't help but keep coming back to these books. What can I say? The appeal of a magical world in a wardrobe is irresistible. Yes, I knooooow it's not actually inside the wardrobe, yadda yadda yadda...

I loved reading about the latest developments in Narnia. I enjoyed riding owls alongside Jill, I giggled at Puddleglum's idea of pep-talk, especially when taking into account that he was considered to be rather upbeat by his kind:

"Good morning, Guests," he said. "Though when I say good I don't

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mean it won't probably turn to rain or it might be snow, or fog, or thunder. You didn't get any sleep, I dare say.
"Yes we did, though," said Jill. "We had a lovely night."
"Ah," said the Marsh-wiggle, shaking his head. "I see you're making the best of a bad job. That's right. You've been well brought up, you have. You've learned to put a good face on things."

... and most of all, I enjoyed accompanying our three heroes on their quest, looking forward to the new lands they'd discover.

So props to the world-building and Puddleglum's (unintended) pep-talk through reverse psychology, though on the whole this was not enough to earn the book an overall "high" rating.

If there was ever a story suffering from a "show, don't tell" deficiency, this was it. I can't remember a single instance where our characters weren't explicitly told important things. Though I don't generally care about the manner a hero finds his clues, this was excessive.

Score: 2/5 stars

I took up reading this book with the lowest possible expectations, and that's exactly how its message landed. There was religious propaganda, poorly veiled Christian morality and the obligatory black and white world-view, all things I dislike being unloaded on me in fiction. While the world-view is expected in a book targeted towards children, lack of sufficiently fleshed out character development shouldn't be.

Despite all my negative criticism, I would love to watch a movie adaptation of this book, if only to get a better sense of the setting and the characters. Not the epilogue, though.

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Review of book 3: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader show less

Of the seven Narnia books, my relationship with most is clear. I adore "Nephew", "Lion" and "Horse", am indifferent about "Caspian" and "Voyage", and despise "Battle. But "The Silver Chair" and I have admired and resented each other, equally, since I first read it as a kid.

On the one hand... this is perhaps the most justifiably dark book in the series, as Jill and Eustace (replacing, thankfully, those tiresome Pevensie children) find their own belief in Aslan and themselves fading fast, and their uncertainty as to what to do is quite palpable. Lewis passionately makes us believe that the world of Narnia is falling apart, and references to the past stories actually are quite terrifying, in the same way that most series have to wait for show more their non-canonical installments (e.g. "Return to Oz") to do. It's the most literate of the seven books, also.

Opposing this, of course, is the fact that all of this passion stems from Lewis making each Narnia book more and more of an aggressively Christian allegory. For "belief in Aslan" read "belief in Jesus". For "the world of Narnia is falling apart" read "the world of white, Christian living". This doesn't inherently render the book a failure - after all, Dante was of the same passion, and the Divine Comedy is a masterwork! But it does sadden me a little that my childhood nostalgia is now tainted by the knowledge that Lewis' books are pushing a strong agenda that goes beyond mere children's literature moral fables and into religious propaganda.

Is that unfair? Perhaps. I'm literate enough to be able to enjoy this as a story, and be intrigued by the moral dilemmas of the characters, without hating it just because of the author's beliefs. But at the same time, I don't think kids should be going into this without an adult to guide them through the maze. It's great that Lewis was writing intelligent fiction that would make children ask questions. It's just a pity that he's already decided which answer they should arrive at. show less

I utterly adore Silver Chair. It’s my fave Narnia book aside from LWW, and I’ve read it boatloads of times. Prince Rilian is my fave character; I’ve written papers on him and just love him. If I could marry a Narnian it would totally be him (Caspian the Tenth only loses out because I would hate to break up him and Lilliandil).

There is so much richness in this story, it’s unbelievable. Theological gems, allegory like crazy...truly one of the top books of the series. Action, suspense, mistakes, success. Scrubb and Pole are so ridiculously relatable as characters. Scrubb has grown so much from VDT. What’s not to like? (I’m sure Puddleglum could find something.)

The previous book (Dawn Treader) featured a young, optimistic Caspian, with an ending that showed his happiness. This book however deals with a old and sad Caspian who has experienced terrible losses in his life. This book is definitely darker than the previous books, but is still a very worthwhile read, and a solid installment in the series with more strange and fantastical worlds to explore (in this case, the underworld)

Crying is all right while it lasts. But sooner or later you have to stop and then you still have to decide what to do.

Appropriate. Since this one’s all about depression and mental illness. Well, obviously I don’t know that for a fact but that’s what it feels like to me. And I wouldn't use the words "all about" after all, there are other themes.

We open on someone we’ve never seen or heard of before, which is a bold move when this is the book that absolutely no Pevensies will appear in. Jill is crying behind the gym because she’s being bullied by her classmates. Oh, no wonder the miserable middle schooler I was when I picked this up, sided with her right away. The Experiment House does sound utterly awful, but my school show more probably could’ve given it a run for its money*. Although it is an interesting gap of culture, generation and social class that the author calls this a progressive school, and I’d just thought of it as routine, and in my world, maybe even kind of conservative.

http://thecosmicdance.insanejournal.com/10950.html show less

What the hell this book makes me hate C.S. Lewis and all the Narnia fans who insist that Narnia is one of the most fantastic series ever and OMG I have to read it. No no no!

I read this as a kid, when I was eleven or twelve, but I remembered very little of it when I decided to reread the series this last year. I suppose it was awfully boring for me, or something, though as I was reading The Silver Chair the second time through, my memory was jarred and I could predict plot points ahead of them occurring. But the point is that apparently, I didn't care for this book at all thirteen years ago, and if anything, I've grown to like it less.

I don't want to say that I hate this book because of the Christian themes/allegory. That's not why I show more don't like it, though the fact that it is one makes the not-liking thing worse. What I don't like about it is that Aslan is an utter jerkface bastard to the kids and yet Jill and Eustace and all the Narnia fans behave as though he's this wonderful, kind, caring lion-god-thing.

Poor Jill gets the short end of the stick all the frigging time. She's expected to be able to predict what Aslan wants of her, or something like that, even though she never knew who he was before, and she never had any reason to believe that there's an actual place like Narnia with an actual lion-god-thing-Aslan there. She gets into trouble right at the very beginning for listening to her instincts and not jumping right into potential danger. And then, later in the story, when she's acting like the fallible human that she is, she gets guilt-tripped! I wouldn't be surprised for Aslan to have shown up and been all "Jill you're a whore get the eff out of my sight" because she was sleepy and exhausted and forgot to repeat the Signs one night. Of course, those stupid Signs weren't even possible for the kids to be able to follow, yet Aslan expects them to do the impossible? They did the best they could with what they had, and they get reamed for it!

No, I hate this book because it treats Aslan like this benevolent figure while he's actually a jerkface bastard. I hate it even more because as a Christian allegory, it suggests that the reader can never do anything good enough for Jesus/God and he hates us (or else he's condescending to forgive us for not being perfect, wtf?!).

On the positive side, the Narnia described in the book is pretty neat, with cool imagery and a fun adventure story. But that can't save the awful plot and characterizations, sorry. show less

I love that Lewis introduces us to a new protagonist in nearly every book so that, in introducing Narnia to that character he is re-introducing it to us. Unlike most series of today, Lewis doesn't waste his time repeating lots of information from books past, which I love. Instead, he adds even more detail to Narnia -- introducing more characters and more layers to the strange world.

Puddleglum may be my favorite character in any of the books I've read so far of the series and Eustace and Jill make for fantastic substitutions for the Pevensies.