Jellyn's Full Review: C. S. Lewis - The Magician's Nephew
The Magician's Nephew by C. S. Lewis is the penultimate of the Narnia series. Or the first, if you'd like to read them chronologically. The order they were written in would make this one a prequel.
Some of the elements of this story really rang bells with me, so either other writers I've read had stolen those elements, or I read this book long, long ago. Curiously, I didn't really remember the plot or any of the characters, just the magical objects. This vague memory might've made me like the book more than I would've otherwise. Nostalgia.
Plot
Digory and Polly are the stars of this book. Hint: Polly's the girl. Digory's new in town, as he and his dying mother have just moved in with his aunt and uncle. Digory and Polly become friends pretty quickly. While exploring a passageway between their houses, and trying to get into the empty one in the row, they miscalculate and wind up in Digory's Uncle Andrew's study.
Uncle Andrew is not a nice guy. You might even term him an evil wizard. Or a mad scientist. He wouldn't be out of place in a Lemony Snicket book. So he's actually pretty cool in a 'you're not supposed to like this guy' way. Anyway, he's made some colored rings and tricks Polly into touching one of them. She disappears. Turns out he's sent her into another world as a test subject. Like any good evil scientist-magician. And the only way for her to come back is if Digory takes her a ring with the power to bring her back.
So Digory heads off with one ring to send him there and two rings to bring them back. And one ring to-- wrong story. He winds up in a pretty little wood full of pools of water. Polly's there. So he hasn't had to go on a big, huge quest to find her. They're suffering a bit of amnesia, but eventually work out they can get back using the rings Digory's brought. But do they want to go back just yet? Not really.
It turns out each pool is a window to another world, so after prudently proving to themselves they could get back if they wanted to (by going partway back, but not all the way so Uncle Andrew will catch them), they set off to have an adventure in another pool.
They find a deserted place with a bunch of frozen people dressed up in very nice clothes. After admiring them for awhile, they find a bell with a plaque basically daring them to ring it. Well, naturally Digory does. And they wake up one of the statue people. An evil witch. Whom they accidentally transport back to their own world. Oops.
She causes havoc in the 'real world' and Uncle Andrew fawns all over her. But eventually they all wind up back in the wood, and back into a pool. And viola, now we're finally in Narnia. Only it's not Narnia quite yet, because Aslan's busy singing the world into creation.
And that's enough to go on, without giving the whole thing away.
My Thoughts
I remembered the rings and I remembered the pools. Forget silly old wardrobes. Much better to have rings to do it with! Then if you're in a bit of a spot, like imprisoned in an ice witch's castle, you can just slip the ring on and go home.
And those pools into other worlds! You could make a whole series of books based around that. Forget going to boring old Narnia all the time. Jump in and go wherever you want to.
The characters in this book are interesting and, for the most part, pretty smart. Aslan's not even as insufferable as in previous books, even though the end of the book is really heavy on retelling the first part of Genesis.
One thing that did confuse me though was the evil witch chick. She turns into the Snow Queen of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? But didn't that book say she was descended from Lilith? Yet all the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve seem to be from our world. While this woman is from another world altogether. So how does that work exactly?
Summary
Better than some of the previous books, but I probably wouldn't rate it my favorite. You'd probably be fine reading this first, or only this one, or you could read The Lion... and then this one and then not bother with the others..
Next up, the final book, The Last Battle, which I have been warned is way heavy on the Christian stuff. You can really see the progression of overtness when reading these in publication order, so I am not surprised that the final book should be the one to dread.
The secret passage to the house next door leads to a fascinating adventure.Narnia. . .where the woods are thick and cool, where Talking Beasts are cal...More at HotBookSale
Digory and Polly discover a secret passage that links their homes, and they are taken into the World of Charn, where they wake up the evil Queen Jadis...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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