Ranking the Narnia books
It's my blog and I'll write what I want to
The Horse and His Boy
Shasta, Bree, Aravis and Hwin are all great characters with really satisfying story arcs. The first time I rode a horse, I gripped with my knees because that’s what Bree told Shasta to do when he was teaching Shasta to ride.
Prince Caspian
Probably my favourite of all the books as a pure story. Reapercheap, Trumpkin and the Badger are all excellent. I love the line “That young man has death in his face” in reference to Edmund taking the challenge to Miras.
The Silver Chair
Puddleglum is really funny, as is Trumpkin but old and deaf, and the owl. My brother and I made our dad pretend to be them on walks. Also has an excellent speech about the moral realist wager (except make it Christian) that I’m sympathetic to.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Maybe ranked too low. Captures the most beautiful part of Christianity, the divine becoming man and accepting pain and humiliation for the sake of sinners out of love. Unfortunately, I like other books more as stories, and there aren’t any really banger characters, except for the white witch.
Resolves the deepest paradox of Christian theology - why does an all-loving God need to be sacrificed to give humanity an ever-lasting life - in the way I like, which is by rejecting God being all-powerful. Aslan is constrained by the “deep magic” - this is why he must be sacrificed to save Edmund from Jadis.
The Last Battle
It's too sad and too brutal. It's arguably the best book of the series, but it also offends my third-wave feminist sympathies. It's clearly the best political book of the series, and in some ways, it feels like the precinct of Trump.
The voyage of the dawn treader
Kinda mid. Reepacheep remains amazing. The story of Eustace is good, but this ends halfway through the book, and it’s a bit of a monster of a week for the second half. The ending is too hamfisted about Christianity for my taste. Amazing individual moments, like Lucy looking at the magician's book, the conflict between Ed and Caspian over Deathwater, and Caspian wish to go to it’s wish to go to the end of the world.
The magician's nephew
The worst of the 7 books, and probably the only one that I don’t deeply love and the only one that I haven’t reread more than 5 times. However. The place between worlds is amazing, and I think about it whenever I see clearings in the woods. Jadis (the white witch) is incredible. The soil is so fertile in the new world that anything can grow there (and that’s how you get the lamp, which is amazing.
Exactly correct