I haven't read the Chronicles of Narnia since middle school, so I figured it was time for a revisit.

I completely forgot that The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe wasn't the first book in the series, and that The Magician's Nephew, which is a prequel of sorts and tells the story of how Narnia first came into existence. I don't often re-read things, so it was really interesting to have the experience of vaguely remembering something that started coming back to me more and more as the narrative went on. The first part, where Digory and Polly are children playing and who discover Digory's Uncle Andrew has been dabbling in magic and gives them magical rings which transport them to other worlds, where they inadvertently set a trapped witch free, who travels first to their own world (Earth) before they're all transported to Narnia as Aslan the Lion is first forming it into being.

One of my favorite parts of the book was, now that I'm older and understand it to be an allegory of the story of Jesus, the Christian references are really cool to see embedded in the narrative. C.S. Lewis was a brilliant writer and, while the actual language of the books felt very dated (to be fair, it was first published seventy years ago), the actual quality of the storytelling is fantastic and I'm excited to continue reading on in the series and gaining a newfound perspective on the series.

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Created Apr 27, 2025 at 2:38pm • Submit your own review...