That was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow of the real Narnia...

Book 11: The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis

My rating: *****

OK, now that I'm done reading the entire series I'll make some comments about it as a whole.

I have to say, I was a little skeptical going into this because they weren't really catching me as much as some other fiction series's I've read before. Plus, I didn't grow up reading them, and I really think there's something to be said for having grown up reading this series. However, I'd give the series 4 stars overall, with The Last Battle being my favoritest book of them all. I decided to read these books just for the enjoyment of reading them without trying to see all the alleged allegory and whatnot. I read somewhere a few months ago that Lewis didn't really intend for these books to be allegorical, although I think the church has really staked a claim in this series - which I can understand. Obviously, since C.S. Lewis was a Christian that's going to come out in his writings, which is abundantly clear in the entirety of The Chronicles of Narnia. But there's some dark stuff, too. Which brings me to a small comparison with another series of books (which also happens to be my favorite)...

Harry Potter.

Let's all do a collective "gasp." OK. Now that that's out of the way... :-) Yes, I'm an avid Harry Potter fan, and as I was reading I couldn't help but compare Lewis's style of writing to Rowling's. I realize they're 2 different people, but in most of the Potter-bashing books written by Christians, they do a lot of comparisons with Narnia as well as LOTR. So I'm just throwing my 2 cents in. While I appreciated Lewis's imagery in the books, I had a hard time relating to the characters - and that's something that's important to me in a book. I think that's why they didn't grab me as much as the Harry Potter series - because there isn't a whole lot of character development. And Narnia doesn't necessarily follow one set of characters the whole time. I mean, you have the first book about Digory and Polly and the creation of Narnia, and then they don't show up again until The Last Battle. Then the Pevensies are introduced in book 2, and they kind of disappear (except for Edmund and Lucy) for nearly all the rest of the books. So...that just bothered me a little bit. And also - Lewis's writing was more along the lines of just telling what the characters were doing (i.e. "Lucy did this. Edmund did that." etc) rather than allowing the story to unfold. Does that make sense? Again, I feel as if Rowling does a better job with her storytelling and allowing the characters to act without making the story...choppy by always just saying what the characters are doing.

I want to say one last thing in regards to this comparison. A lot of Christians bash Harry Potter - well, ones that are more conservative anyway - because of the magic. But do you know what The Chronicles of Narnia have in them? Magic. And not just good magic - as in the good characters using magic. There's also dark magic, and that particular phrase is used to describe the magic a la the White Witch at some point in one of the books. So anyway, that's my vent about that. Don't knock something until you've read it. :-)

So now I'm starting another series - The A.D. Chronicles by Brock and Bodie Thoene. My bestie loves these authors, and after all the books I've recommended for her that she hasn't necessarily...enjoyed, I figured I'll read something of hers. Just to be fair. :-) I'm also reading The Stand by Stephen King because I've wanted to read it for a long time, and there's no way I'll finish it in a week. So it's kind of an on-the-side book. At any rate, I feel proud to have finished Narnia. Maybe now I won't get funny looks from people like I did when I would say I'd never read them....