The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis
Throughout my years after completing elementary school, only now am I beginning to realize and appreciate the number of books I’ve gotten for free from Dr. Howard. If you read my last post, you might remember me talking about how I found The Hobbit through my elementary school book exchange in which the school would set out books every Friday that could be bought, or exchanged for using a free book slip. Anyways, The Hobbit was a rare find as I always remembered the books being terrible with 90% of them being uninteresting or just bad. However, when I picked up my book that I’d read for this week’s post, I realized that it had come from the book exchange, but was not in fact uninteresting or necessarily bad. It was actually a great classic: The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis, the sixth (or first) book in the Chronicles of Narnia.
Before I summarize the novel, if you were reading closely just now, some of you probably thought that that last statement in the previous paragraph didn’t make sense. Is it the first or the sixth book? For those that don’t know, when Lewis originally wrote and published the Chronicles of Narnia, The Magician’s Nephew was published sixth out of the seven books. However, after his death, many British publishers published his books in a new, chronological order with The Magician’s Nephew being the first (this is the case for the copy I read). None of his writing was changed or affected, but if you want to read the series, the order can be a bit confusing at times (based on when, who, and where a copy was published).
Because this novel isn’t necessarily super long and it also isn’t difficult to follow, I recommend you read the book and, thus I will just give a brief summary. Two neighborhood children meet and become friends during a wet summer in London in the late 1800s. The two children, Digory and Polly, play together in the attic connecting the row of houses where they live. One day while attempting to enter an abandoned house through the attic, the two children take a wrong turn and surprise Digory’s mysterious and evil uncle, who spends a lot of time locked in his study. Uncle Andrew tricks Polly into touching a yellow ring which causes her to vanish, being transported to Narnia. Uncle Andrew then explains to the horrified Digory that the rings are a device to travel between worlds. Uncle Andrew believes that the yellow rings carry people to other worlds, and the green rings carry people back to this world. Fearing for Polly’s safety, Digory touches another yellow ring (while taking two green ones with him) to bring Polly home.
That was a somewhat brief and vague summary of the book. I didn’t really touch on the middle and later sections of the book because I feel that the story is short, but also interesting enough to be read relatively quickly. For many, I feel that the main strong point of the novel is its characters and world in general. As this is the first book of the series chronologically, this novel really sets up the series’ most prominent ideas like the wardrobe, the White Witch, etc. I feel that Lewis did a really good job with developing an expansive concept and world like Narnia that gives great explanation to much of the series in general. However, though the book was generally good, I found some reviews online that I agreed with that talked about the novel not really being able to grab your attention. I will admit that it did feel somewhat slow at times for such a short novel. Overall, I think The Magician’s Nephew was a pretty good book. Some say that it should be the first book of the series, while others think you should read it in the original published order. In any case, I think that this novel deserves 9.5/13 Bologna slices.
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Because this novel isn’t necessarily super long and it also isn’t difficult to follow, I recommend you read the book and, thus I will just give a brief summary. Two neighborhood children meet and become friends during a wet summer in London in the late 1800s. The two children, Digory and Polly, play together in the attic connecting the row of houses where they live. One day while attempting to enter an abandoned house through the attic, the two children take a wrong turn and surprise Digory’s mysterious and evil uncle, who spends a lot of time locked in his study. Uncle Andrew tricks Polly into touching a yellow ring which causes her to vanish, being transported to Narnia. Uncle Andrew then explains to the horrified Digory that the rings are a device to travel between worlds. Uncle Andrew believes that the yellow rings carry people to other worlds, and the green rings carry people back to this world. Fearing for Polly’s safety, Digory touches another yellow ring (while taking two green ones with him) to bring Polly home.
That was a somewhat brief and vague summary of the book. I didn’t really touch on the middle and later sections of the book because I feel that the story is short, but also interesting enough to be read relatively quickly. For many, I feel that the main strong point of the novel is its characters and world in general. As this is the first book of the series chronologically, this novel really sets up the series’ most prominent ideas like the wardrobe, the White Witch, etc. I feel that Lewis did a really good job with developing an expansive concept and world like Narnia that gives great explanation to much of the series in general. However, though the book was generally good, I found some reviews online that I agreed with that talked about the novel not really being able to grab your attention. I will admit that it did feel somewhat slow at times for such a short novel. Overall, I think The Magician’s Nephew was a pretty good book. Some say that it should be the first book of the series, while others think you should read it in the original published order. In any case, I think that this novel deserves 9.5/13 Bologna slices.
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Nice review! I liked how you talked about the "backstory" of how you first came across this book since it added depth and meaning to your blog post. I never knew that there were so many installments of the Chronicles of Narnia series and it's interesting that this sixth book is also the first book (do you think it should be the first or the sixth?). I liked your summary since it was short but also gave a good overview of the premise of the novel. I will definitely have to check this book out!
ReplyDeleteOverall, I thought this was a pretty well written review. I like how towards the beginning of your review you mentioned how you came across the book but kept your backstory short and concise so that you could also shift your focus to the book itself without wasting too much time. I also like how you gave enough details of the plot to explain the book to the reader of your blog without ruining the book. Well Done.
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