I was finally able to listen to all the books for the first time in the last couple of months. It was truly an amazing experience. The stories within those books were so captivating and engaging that I found myself completely immersed in them. Each book had its own unique charm and message, and they all had a profound impact on me.

Listening to these books was not only entertaining but also highly encouraging. They inspired me to think differently, to dream bigger, and to pursue my goals with more determination. The words and ideas expressed in the books gave me the motivation and strength I needed to overcome the challenges and obstacles that I had been facing.

I am so grateful for the opportunity to have listened to these wonderful books. They have enriched my life and have made me a better person. I would highly recommend them to anyone who is looking for a source of inspiration and encouragement.

Genesis and resurrection. These momentous events, as it turns out, frame the narrative arc between The Magician’s Nephew (book #1 in chronological order), which I read first, and the more renowned The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (book #1 by publication), which I perused next.

The former serves as an origin story of a fledgling Narnia, introducing its earliest visitors and subsequent inhabitants - and yes, also revealing how the lamp post came to be. The latter presents the next generation of curious children who arrived after, chronicling their adventures and encounters with the idiosyncrasies of Narnia.

Good and Evil engage in a climactic battle, but fear not, as any character not expendable lives on. The centerpiece around which all the action, statues, and wide-eyed wonder revolve is the Furry One, who resurrects itself because, obviously, it can.

At this point, having read two books, I pause. Mostly due to my disillusionment with two-dimensional characters, uninspired world-building, detachment from the occasional omnipresent narrator (TMN), and irritation at outdated attitudes. The prose was appropriate for the target audience (elementary school grade?), although an older reader might desire less simplistic writing. My attention often wandered, held only by the motivation to finish.

The idea of a biblical theme isn't inherently objectionable, given the abundance of literature with such themes, but the framing was blatantly unoriginal and overly in-your-face allegorical, leaving no pretense of enjoyment. The frequent references to the Son of Adam and daughter of Eve, the tree of temptation with the forbidden apple, the sacrifice and resurrection - really?!

Is The Chronicles of Narnia Christian propaganda? Does it also casually convey egregious _isms? It's hard to judge based on just a couple of books, but the reputation of this 1950s classic, both its merits and demerits, precedes it. I haven't read far enough into the series to assign definitive labels, but certainly, each page turned yields diminishing returns.

Father Christmas was strangely out of place, as were his dismissals. The White Witch, though extremely wicked, lacks Authority and is easily recognizable as token evil. The Furry One evokes mixed feelings due to its portrayal as a godhead, and the Sunday school vibes don't sit well with me.

However, a child might love the magical elements without reservation. How delightful it is to discover a portal (or a book!) through which the wonderful and the fantastical are revealed, where little boys and little girls become Valiant, Just, Gentle, and Magnificent, and where intelligent animals have speech and power? On the surface, the entertainment value can be appealing to imaginative kids.

There is far worse children's fantasy literature to read than The Magician’s Nephew and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I believe.

Ultimately, personal mileage varies. Passages are occasionally sanctimonious and outrageous to modern sensibilities, with the potential to worsen as the series progresses. Still, could this be an opportunity for conversations - if an adult wishes to engage their young reader(s) in discussions during or after reading, as young minds develop their common sense and proper discernment of real-world issues outside of the fantasy realm?

Some takeaways are suggested, but not limited to: don't follow strangers home even if they seem harmless and have names like Mr. Tumnus; don't eat candy from strangers even if they come from seemingly credible sources like a Beautiful Queen; don't let anyone - even a Figure of Authority - tell you that battles are ugly when women fight, or shame you for caring first about your loved ones over others.

[The Magician’s Nephew: 3 stars
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: 3 stars

The Chronicles of Narnia series: 7 books
On-screen adaptation: several; personally watched: 0
Awards & nominations: numerous over the decades
Reading order: https://www.narniaweb.com/books/readi...]

When I first picked up the book, my initial thought was, "Oh my! There's an enormous amount to read." As it turns out, I had watched the Chronicles of Narnia movies 1 to 3 (The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; The Voyage of The Dawn Treader) before delving into the book itself, and it was incredibly thick! So, when I came across the first book, I was confused. I thought, "oh, so The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was not the first book." Which made me feel rather silly. Then I continued reading.

The Magician's Nephew was an absolute delight to read! This was the origin story of the realms of Narnia. Since I already knew the story of the wardrobe as their gateway to Narnia, it was thrilling to discover where it all began. And my curiosity was fully satisfied in this installment. It was like being a kid again and truly experiencing this adventure.

Then, the infamous The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe was exactly as the movie had presented it. So, as I was reading, it was confirming the story in my mind as I had seen it on the big screen. But it also gave me a deeper understanding of why Aslan was someone to be feared by the enemies. Thus, I admired Aslan even more as I read on.

The Horse and His Boy was something completely different. I loved every single bit of it. It was like learning moral values from your father through his stories. The way fate played its part was truly captivating. It's a very simple story, yet it had a profound impact on me, making it my favorite book among all seven. In this book, there were no sons of Adam nor daughters of Eve from our world. Just a story about a prince who became separated from his family due to a prophecy that he would unknowingly fulfill. (Of course, with Aslan's grace.)

The fourth book, Prince Caspian, was also made into a film. In the book, there was no romantic interest between Susan and Caspian. The movie seemed more grandiose than the book, but nevertheless, I still liked the book.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was my favorite movie among the Narnia films. It was the most exciting of their adventures, with so many things happening in the story. They traveled to seek the 7 Lords of Narnia and what they found was a one-of-a-kind journey to the ends of the world. I really liked the character of Eustace when he turned into a dragon (oops, that's a spoiler!) and in this book, Caspian found his wife.

Then, The Silver Chair was a different kind of story where they embarked on a quest in the underworld. But before that, there were Gentle Giants who were not so gentle. It made me recall the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. It was exciting and dangerous. Once I started reading it, I couldn't stop. It seemed that on every page, I was on the edge of my seat.

Finally, The Last Battle, the last book of the Chronicles of Narnia, was a wonderful conclusion. I was extremely dismayed with the talking ape named Shift (who was the villain), but hey, it was his job to make the reader angry. It was so effective that I wanted to transport myself to Narnia and give him a slap on his wrinkled face (because he was an old ape). So, once again, Eustace and Jill came to the rescue. I wasn't entirely sure how it would all end, I thought that maybe no one from our world would come, but they did. I was glad. Then the seven Kings and Queens came~~and I won't spoil it. You have to read the book to find out why they came, and I promise a beautiful ending awaits you.

As I was reading the last few pages, I thought of the new heaven and earth that God has promised us. Because the story felt like that, where everything is new and wonderful and indescribable.

Clive S. Lewis was a brilliant storyteller. It felt as if he was right there, telling the story directly to me. The way he put it into words was amazingly simple to understand, yet incredibly detailed and witty. I gave all the books 5 stars, they truly deserve it!

It was truly an enchanting experience. I read it very slowly, savoring every word. Lewis had the gift of captivating his readers. His writing was like a magical spell that pulled me in and made me completely immersed in the story. With each turn of the page, I felt myself being transported to another world, filled with wonder and excitement. His words seemed to dance on the paper, creating vivid images in my mind. It was as if I could see the characters and the settings right before my eyes. Lewis' talent was undeniable, and I was left in awe of his work. I couldn't wait to see what other masterpieces he had in store for me.

Reading "Narnia" again as an adult has been an even more wonderful experience than when I read it as a child. The vivid and enchanting world that C.S. Lewis has created truly comes alive in a whole new way. The complex themes, the rich characters, and the magical adventures all draw me in deeper. It's like rediscovering a hidden treasure chest filled with countless wonders. I suspect that I will revisit Narnia many times in the future. Each time, I'm sure to uncover new details and gain a deeper understanding of this captivating fictional universe. It's a literary masterpiece that continues to charm and inspire readers of all ages.

When the Lion/Witch/Wardrobe movie was released some time ago, a certain guy approached me and said, "Dude, the goddamn right wing media is attempting to claim that the Narnia books are all about goddamn Christianity!!!"

Well, no kidding. I had already figured that out when I was just 9 years old.

But really, who gives a damn? If one is completely unable to enjoy these books, it indicates that there is no childlike spirit remaining within them. And if there is no child inside a person, they are simply not very much fun at all, are they?

These books offer a world of imagination and adventure that can touch the hearts of people of all ages. Whether one sees the religious undertones or not, the magic and wonder of Narnia should be enough to bring joy and excitement.

We should focus on the beauty and value that these books hold, rather than getting caught up in the争论 over their supposed religious significance.

After all, the true essence of the Narnia books lies in their ability to transport us to a different world and让 us experience the power of love, courage, and friendship.

So, let's just sit back, relax, and enjoy the journey into Narnia, regardless of what the media or anyone else has to say about it.

What can be said about this series that hasn't already been said?

What review can truly do it justice? Do I have enough words in my vocabulary to adequately express all my feelings about this series?

These are all questions I was asking myself as I started pondering on how I'm going to review arguably the greatest and most iconic fantasy series of all time, The Chronicles of Narnia

I don't think I need to repeat it. But I have enjoyed, really enjoyed, The Chronicles of Narnia. I don't know if it was smart to want to read all seven books in a single month, but it was definitely enjoyable.

C.S. Lewis drew inspiration from mythology, legends, his faith, and so much more, creating an incredibly atmospheric and vivid world in which the reader can go on an adventure. In terms of its moral and certain values, it is a product of its time, but still, I understand why these chronicles truly deserve the title of a classic.

By the way, I really laughed out loud at the end, because of course that is the end hahahaha.

The Chronicles of Narnia is a captivating series that takes readers on a journey through a magical land. The stories are filled with interesting characters, exciting adventures, and valuable lessons. Each book builds on the previous ones, creating a rich and detailed world that is easy to get lost in. Whether you are a child or an adult, these chronicles are sure to delight and inspire you. So if you haven't read them yet, I highly recommend giving them a try. You won't be disappointed!

I've been postponing the review of this series as there's an abundance that could be said, yet perhaps very little that truly needs to be. Even a month after finishing it, I haven't been able to shape my thoughts into a coherent review. Instead of that - a cohesive review - I'll settle for some fragmented notes and observations; I'll deal with some of its aspects to understand the whole.

First, a bit about myself. As a child, exploring the antique-filled and somewhat Narnian house where my grandparents lived for most of my youth, I would always stop at their bookshelf. (Nothing unusual there - my eyes have always been drawn to the books in a room before anything else.) Of particular interest was a very old-looking set of Narnia books, each with a strange and mysterious, seemingly ancient illustration by Pauline Baines on the tattered spine of its dust jacket. These books and their odd titles - The Magician's Nephew, The Horse and His Boy - seemed otherworldly, the kind of things you might find in a wizard's library. (Little did I know that there were at least a couple of wizards' libraries within, as well.)

One summer, during my annual week-long stay with the aforementioned grandparents, I took the first of those strange books off the shelf and started reading. I got through four of them - The Magician's Nephew, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - before the week was over, and was so captivated by the world they presented (no less strange than I had imagined) that I picked up a sort of guidebook to the series from the church library and devoured that as well. But then I went home, leaving the books behind, and I began to focus on Rowling and Tolkien instead; it would be about a decade before I finished what I had started that summer.

In high school, I rediscovered the Christian faith I had been gradually abandoning (and have since abandoned again), and with it the works of C.S. Lewis. In the span of two years, I read and loved The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, Surprised By Joy, The Great Divorce, Till We Have Faces, and the three books of the Ransom trilogy. In college, I crossed A Grief Observed, The Problem of Pain, and Reflections on the Psalms off my list. By this point, Lewis had influenced my intellectual development more than any other author, probably more than anyone I knew in real life, and yet I still hadn't completed the series most readers associate with him.

This story doesn't have a dramatic ending, and it's already getting a bit long. Suffice it to say that this winter break, I finally read through the Narnia series and enjoyed it immensely. (Though a part of me wishes, as it always does when I encounter a children's classic I neglected in childhood, that I had first experienced the whole thing at a younger age.) I include this backstory mainly to give you an idea of the role this series, and Lewis more generally, have played in my life as a reader. Maybe it will provide context (or even an excuse, if necessary) for some of the comments that follow.

I'm well aware of the prejudices and cringe-worthy moments inherent in the Narnia books. Lewis was a white, British, socially conservative man born in the 1890s who didn't have a healthy relationship with a woman until his sixties; all of that shows, as it must, in his books. In The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle, he portrays his white, northern characters as virtuous and pure and his dark-skinned, desert-dwelling ones as oppressive, long-winded, and cruel. In most of the installments, he says some not-exactly-progressive things about women and girls, and he seems less bothered than he probably should be by the idea of arming young children and sending them cheerfully off to war. (And all this without even mentioning the strong religious agenda, always present but never explicitly stated, which may seem a little underhanded and sneaky even to Christian readers.) In short, there are parts of most of these books that I would think twice about reading to a child, or would at least want to have a good discussion with them about afterwards.

But it seems that so much of the current discussion about the Narnia books focuses exclusively on these flaws and uncomfortable aspects, and I don't think that's fair to what is, in many other respects, a remarkable series. Part of the blame may lie in the fact that the remarkable parts are nearly impossible to discuss in concrete terms; I've found since joining Goodreads that it's much easier to talk about the bad parts of any book than the good ones. How can one describe the sheer beauty, the sense of home, the almost overwhelming desire for Narnia to be real and reachable that nearly every lover of the series feels? This certainly isn't the only fictional world to have such an effect on readers - Hogwarts or Hobbiton may have a similar impact - but as in those worlds, there's also something distinct and distinctly appealing here. What can be said about their pervasive but delicious strangeness, that otherworldly sense I felt even before opening the books and that has stayed with me into adulthood? A Romantic poet could hardly create a more weirdly powerful setting than the Wood Between the Worlds, or the subterranean realm of Underland, or the islands of the eastern seas. And finally, how does one describe the characters? The stubborn but good-hearted integrity of Lucy (it should not escape our notice that the most admirable and fully-developed human character in the series, arguably the protagonist of the whole thing, is a girl), the absurd but stirring boldness of Reepicheep, the polarizing but nonetheless endlessly alluring mystery of Aslan?

Lewis defined "joy," a concept central to much of his writing, as "an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction." The object of all joy is ultimately, he said, Heaven. The means by which it comes to us - the things and people and experiences that arouse this sensation within our individual hearts and minds - are different for each person. For me, this series is one of those means. Maybe that's all, after this long and rambling review, that needs to be said.

I have an intense love for Narnia!

Admittedly, it is not without its imperfections. However, these stories are truly remarkable, serving as a precursor to countless other fantasy worlds that followed.

Certainly, they possess an allegorical Christian background, and some of Lewis' wordings and phrases might not be considered politically correct in the present day.

Nevertheless, if one can look beyond these minor details, Narnia reveals itself to be a truly enchanting place, with stories that have become iconic. I will forever hold them dear in my heart.

Each of the Narnian chronicles has its own unique charm.

The Magicians Nephew tells the creation story of Narnia, as young Polly and Diggory are embroiled in the experiments of a magician seeking other worlds.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the most renowned of the series, with Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy's discovery of Narnia through the back of a wardrobe and their epic battles against the white witch.

The Horse and his Boy focuses on two young Calormene children, Shasta and Aravis, who run away in search of a better life in Narnia and become involved in a conflict between the Narnians and the Calormenes.

Prince Caspian sees the Pevensie children return to Narnia after a long absence to assist the rightful heir in stopping his evil uncle from destroying the land.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is a thrilling adventure filled with swashbuckling action as Edmund, Lucy, and their cousin Eustace join Prince Caspian on a journey to find seven missing dukes.

The Silver Chair follows Eustace and his school friend Jill as they search for the missing Prince, leading them to the land of giants and the underground world.

The Last Battle is a spectacular conclusion, with an evil ape using trickery to cause fear among the Narnians and a battle that will change everything.

Despite its flaws, Narnia is a wonderful place with an incredible cast of characters. It has left an indelible mark on the world of fantasy and will continue to be beloved by generations to come.

As the quote says, "All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on Earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."

The Chronicles of Narnia is a story in a sort of "limbo."

It begins in a fantastical world populated by mythical creatures and talking animals, and then leads to lands dominated by men, throne usurpers, and other elements of a more Tolkienesque fantasy. In this case, these elements seem decidedly more blurred and absurd when compared to the initial fairytale terms.

Lewis is more successful in the fairytale realm (The Magician's Nephew, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) than in the one where fantasy predominates (The Horse and His Boy). In fact, it often seems like reading the same story over and over: children called to save the world (one of them being unpleasant and bad if male, like Edmund and Eustace, or a nuisance if female, like Polly and Jill), Narnia in danger, Aslan absent, a deposed prince, and a king or a villain of the turn who has taken his place or captured/imprisoned him (the least readable of these copies is Prince Caspian, which is nothing more than a pompous summary or a condensed story).

Nevertheless, they are good books and it is worth reading them. Some people think of Lewis as an unpleasant bigot because the story is intrinsic with religious values and allegories. But isn't it stupid to prejudge a children's book just because the author put a moral in it?

Voting on them one by one:

The Magician's Nephew: *****

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: ****

The Horse and His Boy: *

Prince Caspian: **

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: *****

The Silver Chair: ***

The Last Battle: ****

It seems that I had a rather deprived childhood as, for some reason, the Chronicles of Narnia never crossed my path. This was something I managed to rectify in my early 20s after a binge reading of the top 100 books by the BBC.

Perhaps my dislike of the series can be traced back to the fact that I read the brilliant and more modern children's books first, such as Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, and Artemis Fowl. Clearly, children's writing has come a long way since the tripe that Lewis was peddling. Younger readers may not notice the not-so-subtle overtly biblical aspects of the books, but adults surely do. What amuses me is that Lewis seems to have completely ignored the more palatable and acceptable teachings of Christianity, like forgiveness and tolerance, and instead gone full-on with the fire, brimstone, and end days of the Old Testament!

Now, I know that Lewis lived in a time when casual racism, misogyny, and classism were accepted without comment. However, given that the civil rights movement began in 1955, it does seem a bit unfair to allow him his evil little racist book, The Horse and His Boy, and to let him be so dismissive of women in general. Why is it that a strong female character like Susan is dismissed from the books just because she has the audacity to enter puberty, while Eustace, an arrogant little twerp, is redeemed? God forbid a woman grow up, eh? Poor Lewis, he was clearly terrified of female sexuality. Lewis lived around intelligent and educated women, so he has no excuse at all for writing about women in such a high-handed way.

There are also more technical reasons why I dislike the series. The writing is actually rather poor, and Lewis has a tendency to ramble in his prose. The characters often blend together at times, all being English, wealthy, and posh. To be entirely honest, the books are really, really boring. I'm not sure if I'll ever give these to my son to read, but it would be an interesting experiment to give him His Dark Materials first and then see what he makes of this. I don't think I'll be corrected when I say that he'll probably flip through the first one for a few minutes before going off to find something dangerous and possibly messy to do.