[Duraccione]

My friends,
once more I need your help: I'm about to buy the "Chronicles of Narnia" (three volumes) by C.S. Lewis - I still have a good memory of his "Screwtape letters" - but somehow I hear a voice inside my head which is constantly saying "warning" and prevents me from buying them.
I don't want to take a false step and waste my money, so here I am: what do you think about this novel/trilogy?
Thank you for whatever help you'll give me. :)

[Iskaral Pust]

I didn't like them, but a huge number of people would disagree with me. I think you either read them as a child or don't enjoy them.

[Eventine]

I enjoyed reading them when I was about 10 and have considered purchasing them many times since.
However, there are more than 3 books (6 or 7?), so I wouldn't fork out too much expecting the whole series.

[truewil]

There are 7 in the series, and last time I read them, I enjoyed them very much. It's been a few years though...

[Miriamele]

Yes, there are seven books in the series:
The Magician's Nephew
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
The Horse and His Boy
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Last Battle

I read them as a child and enjoyed them, and just last semester I had to reread them for school. Reading them as an adult, I still enjoyed them although sometimes the Christian allegory (which I didn't notice as a child) became a bit heavy-handed.

As IP noted, you really have to read these books as a child. If you do you will find that the books are crammed with delightful, imaginative places, characters and events. They're really a lot of fun. My favourite book was The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Although the books are very fanciful they do have many touching moments and profound messages if you're in the mood to look deeper.

If you're not sure if you'd like them, check out the Narnia website created by Harper Collins. (www.narnia.com) You can read a sample chapter from each book. That should give you an idea if they're something you could get into.

[Zsinj]

although sometimes the Christian allegory (which I didn't notice as a child) became a bit heavy-handed.

That's why I never cared for them and never wanted to read them and haven't read them since. I just don't care for Christian allegory. Never have, never will. If I want to be preached to, I'll go to church.

[trentdick2882]

If you don't like Narnia because of the Christian allegory...read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials! :)

[Shehzad]

Yeah, Pullman's His Dark Materials was conceived as a sort of anti-Narnia.

However, I read The Chronicles of Narnia as a child, even watched the (inferior...) TV show and loved them. Haven't been back to read them in a while, though...l

[Archren]

The "Chronicals of Narnia" were some of the first books I ever read on my own, when I was about 5 or so. So they have a very special place in my heart. I have no idea what I would think of them if I came to them as an adult first. I suspect that as many here have pointed out, the Christian leit motifs would turn me off. However, it is perfectly possible to reading them just as fantasy novels (except for The Last Battle, which is totally theologically based).

[ubersoft]

I enjoyed the Narinia books. And to be picky, they aren't Christian allegory -- the professors who teach the books that way are being a bit lazy.

Allegory is when you write a story where someone or something in it actually represents something else -- Lewis didn't do that. In the books, Narnia is a world parallel to ours, and the characters that are supposedly "allegorical representations of Christian themes and ideas" are in fact not representations at all -- they are Christian themes and ideas as they exist in that realm. Aslan is not a symbol of Jesus, for example -- he IS Jesus in that world.

Lewis writes about this in one of his letters -- he *detests* allegory, and the only one he really wrote was "The Pilgrim's Regress," which is in itself an interesting book. He told the Narnia stories the way he did because he was trying to figure out way to get children introduced to concepts that were never taught in Sunday School because Sunday School was a sterile and useless environment (I'm remembering this letter from memory, and my memory is bad, so caveat emptor).

At any rate, people who aren't all jazzed about Christian theology are less inclined to like the stories (though they still can -- the stories stand pretty well on their own, in my opinion) and that's something you should keep in mind before jumping into them. That said, I loved the books and still read them from time to time.

Oh, another interesting note is that one of the characters in the middle books created a rift in the friendship between Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. The character, Puddleglum, was in Tolkien's view very similar to Gollumn and accused Lewis of stealing the character. I don't see the similarity, but you know, authors are touchy about that kind of stuff. :)