However, when considering all things, I was quite happy to let it go. At first, this was quite off-putting to me because it wasn't realistic. It was when the children wanted to cross the stream and magically a boat came into view at that very moment. There was one section of the book which I thought a bit unbelievable. Lewis dived right into the action in the very first chapter. This book had all of the magic and excitement.
Prince Caspian is my second favorite Narnia book so far just behind The Magician's Nephew. But things aren't as they were when they left Narnia! And why are the children back in Narnia?
Peter, Edmund, Susan, and Lucy are on their way back to school in the normal world when they are suddenly pulled back into the world of Narnia. I don't know if a name has ever fit a character better than "Reepicheep" does. Wimbleweather the dim but kind giant.Īnd Reepicheep, of course. Nikabrik is a great name for a venomous black dwarf. Lastly, and mostly as a side note, Lewis really knocked it out of the park in terms of names. Perhaps the best character in all of Narnia, excepting Aslan himself. Trumpkin and Trufflehunter are great as well.īut Reepicheep is the real star here. Nikabrik is a great example of a good guy gone bad. This book had better characters that the first book of the series. Still, you can't deny that the boys go off to duel and do battle stuff, while the girls hang out with Aslan and go wake the trees. Sexism a little more present here, but not oppressive or malicious. We've been reading to him since he was six months old. (Also, keep in mind that my boy is extremely vocabulary. Maybe in a year or two, he would have been fine. (A vital plot point he couldn't get because it was only made explicit in this dialogue.)Īs a result, I had to skim, skip, or summarize big chunks of the book so he could get it. (Doubly archaic now, as Lewis wrote these 50 years ago.) My boy couldn't follow it at all, as there were 2-4 unfamiliar terms used in every sentence, and context can only stretch so far.) Because of that, Oot couldn't understand whole sections of the climax of the book, when the Telmarines were talking among themselves, and planning on betraying their king. It's not just unfamiliar language to children. (Because the siblings used to be kings and queens, and they're talking with the nobility of the Telemarines.)
Later, Lewis splits the party in a way that divides the action in the story.īut the biggest issue is that the characters lapse into archaic, courtly English when the a bunch of the people are talking at the end of the book. The first issue was the non-linear story. I think the biggest reason for this, was that it wasn't as accessible to him. It's a good book, and he enjoyed it, but didn't ring the bell in the same way Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe did. I read this aloud to my older boy, age 6.
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