I am currently reading through The Chronicles of Narnia. In “Published order.” That is, I started with The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and am following it with Prince Caspian. When I decided I wanted to read these books recently I was surprised to find out that they were recently re-published in chronological order! Apparantly this has stirred some controvesy. Wikipedia has the break-down on it, if your interested.
This is such a beautiful story. Gorgeous imagery. Fantastic characters. All in all, a wonderful story. I loved it when I was a kid. However, I am annoyed but it reading it as an adult. The Christian allegory is so obvious and it annoys me to no end.
I’m very close to finishing Prince Caspian and am enjoying it much more than The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. I hadn’t read it before, for one. But the Christian allegory doesn’t seem quite as obvious to me in this one. Maybe because it’s my first time reading it and the story is sucking me in.
It has been very interesting to read this right after reading the His Dark Materials trilogy. Pullman most definately alludes to the Chronicles of Narnia in many ways. I read a little bit about this and many people believe that the His Dark Materials trilogy is Pullman’s answer to the Chronicles of Narnia. I thought that was kind of interesting.
