So I read the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

[hongi]

...because I've heard so much about it. And for the life of me, I can't understand why it's such a loved book. The characters are boring. I don't know whether that's due to Lewis' prose or because he's writing for children or because it's not very long. The only person who I thought was interesting was Edmund, and that's only because he's a miserable snot whom you could actually get angry at.

I know it's supposed to be a kid's book but even if I was a kid, I'd have thought it a totally average fantasy book and move onto something else, like His Dark Materials.

[DataPacRat]

Perhaps it seems average because it /defined/ many of the tropes now used by average youth fantasy fiction...

[hongi]

Perhaps it seems average because it /defined/ many of the tropes now used by average youth fantasy fiction...

I don't think it was the tropes - otherwise I wouldn't enjoy Tolkein's works at all.

I really do have a problem with the characterisation...Lewis describes Peter (sorely neglected overall) after the battle to save Narnia with just one line: 'his face was so pale and stern and he seemed so much older'. That's it? How could any reader get into the story with such cardboard protagonists?

What's so interesting about TLWW that they decided to make a movie out of it?

[DataPacRat]

Perhaps it seems average because it /defined/ many of the tropes now used by average youth fantasy fiction...

I don't think it was the tropes - otherwise I wouldn't enjoy Tolkein's works at all.

I really do have a problem with the characterisation...Lewis describes Peter (sorely neglected overall) after the battle to save Narnia with just one line: 'his face was so pale and stern and he seemed so much older'. That's it? How could any reader get into the story with such cardboard protagonists?

... youthful imagination and enthusiasm, combined with not knowing any better at the time/age?

[Ghost Rider]

Perhaps it seems average because it /defined/ many of the tropes now used by average youth fantasy fiction...

I don't think it was the tropes - otherwise I wouldn't enjoy Tolkein's works at all.

I really do have a problem with the characterisation...Lewis describes Peter (sorely neglected overall) after the battle to save Narnia with just one line: 'his face was so pale and stern and he seemed so much older'. That's it? How could any reader get into the story with such cardboard protagonists?

What's so interesting about TLWW that they decided to make a movie out of it?

Nostalgia and Lord of the Rings made a fuckton of money. Thus taking a beloved book from a similar era and viola!

Nothing more really.

[Superboy]

I know that when I was in school, the book was pushed on all of the students because of the religious aspects. It's viewed as a great christian book for kids, so a lot of parents buy it for their children.

[Simon_Jester]

Hell, I liked it when I first read it. Of course, I was four at the time. I still liked it when I was eight to ten or so; I can't remember reading it since.

It's actually not bad for its target audience; fairy-tale characters are rarely as deep and multidimensional as characters in other types of fiction. Adults don't read that type of fairy tale very often for a reason- it's not aimed at them.

[Big Orange]

It's a product of its time, much like Tolkien, but I enjoyed reading through them as a primary school kid. Supposedly there is a deeper meaning to the seven Narnian books and they're based on the seven planets known to Medieval astrologists and there has been a book published on the subject, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis (Dr. Michael Ward).

[hongi]

lol at the sexism:

'Why, sir?" said Lucy. "I think - I don't know - but I think I could be brave enough."
"That is not the point," he said. "But battles are ugly when women fight."

As opposed to battles being bright and cheerful when men fight? 50s mentality pff.

[LadyTevar]

It's a product of its time, much like Tolkien, but I enjoyed reading through them as a primary school kid. Supposedly there is a deeper meaning to the seven Narnian books and they're based on the seven planets known to Medieval astrologists and there has been a book published on the subject, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis (Dr. Michael Ward).

There was a deeper meaning to the Narnia books: Aslan = Jesus. All the books of Narnia are metaphorical battles against evil, and it's why "The Last Battle" is such a mind-bending read. If you want the TRULY metaphysical doctorine, the Perelanda series is the one to read.
Personally I enjoyed Narnia better, as the metaphors were better hidden and not being smacked over your head repeatedly.

lol at the sexism

The Perelanda series had this even worse. The final novel has the female protagonist hating her life and her marriage, until she 'accepts her place' as per the Bible's idea of a good, submissive help-meet for her husband. I was in college when I read that, as it was part of a English Lit class assignment. The ladies got into a long discussion with the teacher over that particular character, which got fobbed off as 'mentality of the time of writing'.

IIRC, C. S. Lewis was a very old-fashioned Christian scholar.

[Jim Raynor]

It's a story for children, and also a product of its time. Of course it won't seem as amazing when you read it for the first time as an adult with high expectations due to years of hype.

[Samuel]

Has there ever been an attempt to rewrite the stories similar to Draka fic?

[Simon_Jester]

lol at the sexism

The Perelanda series had this even worse. The final novel has the female protagonist hating her life and her marriage, until she 'accepts her place' as per the Bible's idea of a good, submissive help-meet for her husband. I was in college when I read that, as it was part of a English Lit class assignment. The ladies got into a long discussion with the teacher over that particular character, which got fobbed off as 'mentality of the time of writing'.

IIRC, C. S. Lewis was a very old-fashioned Christian scholar.

Yup. That Hideous Strength was written in 1945, and it wasn't just conservative; it was reactionary, literally so.

Lewis was deeply worried about the dehumanizing effect he perceived in early 20th-century social trends; about bureaucrats who were capable of doing anything, no matter how horrible, because they feared neither man nor God, stuff like that. It really shows.

In my opinion, he wasn't even wrong to be worried about half of it; some of the things that the technocratic movement of the early 20th century could have grown into, armed with even semimodern technology, scare the hell out of me. But because he was worried about what he thought "modernity" as we understand it was becoming, and because he was at heart a very old-fashioned man, his response was to react against everything modern, in the true sense of the word "reactionary."

[Elaro]

It's an easy read, it's got child-pleasing puppet characters, and mostly, it does have some interesting ideas (like the Many Worlds, the fair depiction of Dragon Edmund, and... well... okay, I'm done). But even when I first read it (I was 10-11, maybe?), I found things that irked me, for reasons that I can't quite remember.

Oh right: The characters were bloodily, death-defyingly, stupid. That, and the situations were really stilted, as though made to teach a lesson.

I much preferred The Hobbit.

[Guardsman Bass]

There was a deeper meaning to the Narnia books: Aslan = Jesus.

Quite literally - Aslan even says in one of the books that he "goes by another name" in their world. He's supposed to be like one of several different faces of God, or like that (except that he's not "God", per se - that's The Emperor-Over-The-Sea).

As for the book, I remember it being mostly like a lot of young adult fiction I've read in terms of prose, although obviously a bit old-fashioned due to the time period when he was writing it. He threw some random stuff in there, too, like Spoiler

having Father Christmas appear in the middle of the story to give them weapons.

[Eleas]

My reaction to the Narnia series when I read the Swedish translation - being seven years old and all - was lukewarm. Some of them I found okay, in the case of Voyage of the Dawn Treader I even found a lot of enjoyment. But the general feeling was that I was being condescended to by a sanctimonious, reactionary kindergarten teacher, and not a particularly bright one at that. I know he was striving for a sort of warm, cozy fables-by-the-fireplace vibe there, and it sort of works at times. Mostly, though, it just felt as if I was listening to bedtime stories by Ned Flanders.

[dworkin]

I remember it for Santa Claus handing out real weapons to children.
That's got a lot of appeal when you're 10.

[RecklessPrudence]

I never really thought of the Narnia series as top-tier books, but I could ignore most of the things I found objectionable in them when I had to read it for (what was for most of the class, not me) the first time in primary school. Coming back a few years later because I thought I might have misjudged it and decided to give it another chance, though, I found my gorge rising and literally had to put the book down and relax a few times before I could continue reading it, until I gave up in disgust.

Now admittedly, I was not in the best state of mind for reading something even mildly annoying at the time, what with all the shit that was going on in my life then, but still, some of the stuff felt like Lewis was clubbing me over the head with his chosen message while repeating 'This is for your Own Good, you'll Thank Me Later,' and playing gospel music.

It was very irritating, and when I tried to express this to a friend, he hadn't noticed any subtext at all, and told me that the Narnia series was one of his favourites. Of course, he also really liked the His Dark Materials trilogy, so it doesn't seem as if he liked Narnia because of its message... Then again, later, he decided that Eragon and the sequels were some of the finest literature ever created, when they seem like bad fanfiction to me, so...

[Mayabird]

I much preferred The Hobbit.

Funny that you mention that since Lewis and Tolkein were good friends and both very religious, though Tolkein absolutely loathed everything fictional Lewis wrote (by the way, having read most of it in high school out of boredom, I'll sum it up for everyone: "Very thinly veiled, often to the point that it's not even veiled, Christian apologism." There. Saved you many boobless hours.) He believed in writing a good story, not allegories beating people over the head with something you want to force on them.

[Covenant]

I never liked this as a kid, or that other book series... what the hell was it... something about time... Ah! A Wrinkle in Time. They gave us these books to read but I never cared for them and could just never get into them at all. I had my grandfather's copies of the LotR trilogy and The Hobbit though, which I devoured even though half of it made no sense (and probably doesn't now either, sooo much exposition).

So yeah, I don't know. For some kids it's a fun trip into a fantasy realm that excites their youthful imaginations with talking lions and evil monsters, but I think a combination of unhappy strangeness and religious overtones made it unpalatable for me and it just made me feel uncomfortable.

[The Wench]

Coincidentally, I was just talking about this series with someone today. I was mumbling something about how I didn't enjoy Victor Gischler's change from crime fiction to fantasy/sci-fi, which I don't like or read much. Half an hour later, I'm running down the list of things I loved about the Narnia Chronicles (go figure), which I read from start to finish in about a week because 1. It's an easy read, and 2. The Magician's Nephew is an interesting take on a creationist mythology, and that really drove me to continue the entire seven books.

The prose flows easily, which doesn't make it a struggle, but the way Lewis presents his concepts of God and Heaven are easily understood, colorful concepts, unlike the traditional Bible (King James, for instance), which is not only confusing but inconsistently structured, fluxing between prose and poetry, and then babble. For example, a lion was an appropriate image for a god (King of the big cats), and embodied symbolism most could easily grasp. The struggles the children experience are those that can easily transcend across ages and cultures: the concepts of wanting to escape reality, searching for some kind of truth/acceptance through that sort of detached escapism and fantasy that we grasp onto as children but seem to lose as adults and somehow try to find in religion/faith/philosophy/theology/etc., and of course, how do you organize the realities so they then make sense? Do they make sense? I think it's interesting Lewis tried to answer these questions in a simpler way.

He also presented war in a way that wasn't so fire and brimstone. I get it's geared towards a younger mindset, but I really enjoyed the chronicles myself. I disliked that the movies skipped over the more beautiful stories that moved slowly (The Magician's Nephew, The Horse and His Boy), in order to get to the "action" like Wardrobe and Prince Caspain. I imagine if they finish the series, they'll jump straight to The Last Battle and ditch Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair.

[Drooling Iguana]

Actually [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0980970/]Voyage of the Dawn Treader[/i] is currently in production and is scheduled for release in 2010. And the reason that they started with LWW and PC is that those were the first two books in the series - The Magician's Nephew and A Horse and His Boy were prequels written years later.

[Darth Wong]

I never liked this as a kid, or that other book series... what the hell was it... something about time... Ah! A Wrinkle in Time. They gave us these books to read but I never cared for them and could just never get into them at all. I had my grandfather's copies of the LotR trilogy and The Hobbit though, which I devoured even though half of it made no sense (and probably doesn't now either, sooo much exposition).

So yeah, I don't know. For some kids it's a fun trip into a fantasy realm that excites their youthful imaginations with talking lions and evil monsters, but I think a combination of unhappy strangeness and religious overtones made it unpalatable for me and it just made me feel uncomfortable.

Was the Wrinkle in Time book the one where the girl finds that the enemy is a giant brain and she literally defeats it with love? That was such stupid vomit-inducing bullshit. Evil = pure rational thought!

As for Narnia, I saw the movie and thought it was the dumbest ending ever, when it turned out that the big villain lost because she forgot to read the fine print on her magic spell. I've heard this is faithful to the book, which makes me think that the book must also be incredibly stupid. And from the sounds of it, preachy too.

[Drooling Iguana]

In the book she never knew about the fine print as it was put there before she came on the scene and Aslan never bothered to tell her. Makes Aslan come off as a jerk but what else is new?

[Darth Wong]

In the book she never knew about the fine print as it was put there before she came on the scene and Aslan never bothered to tell her. Makes Aslan come off as a jerk but what else is new?

Either way, it's stupid writing. It's as if the movie is saying "remember to read your Bible, kids".