Book review: the Magician's Nephew

This is the prequel to Narnia; its origin story. The writing style is very much in line with TLTW&TW. As I noted there, the junction isn't entirely smooth; Narnia is conjured into existence but where Jadis-aka-the-Witch goes at the end is unclear; how she ends up with say a castle, or even why she wants one just for herself ditto, other than of-course-she-has-a-castle. Although naturally the story is all from the viewpoint of those opposed to her.

In his treatment of the uncle, and the cabbie, CSL would appear to be teaching us to have faith in ordinary as opposed to educated people, at least when those people can "be themselves" out of the narrow confines of the modern world. I'm somewhat doubtful this is a good idea; but then I'm one of the educated folk so I would say that.

But did I like it? Did I enjoy reading it? Yes, even though I can remember much of the storyline.

Book review: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

I've just - perhaps unwisely - re-read my review of the Voyage of the Dawn Treader which reminds me of "pale" thoughts from there. So: it is a charming book, well suited to children, but the style of the telling lacks a little the way that the Hobbit, say, doesn't.

A good bit: Edmund getting trapped by the magic Turkish delight.

In a number of slight ways, that are not too desperately intrusive, the book doesn't quite fit together, or with the prequel, the Magician's Nephew. Most obviously Cair Paravel has no obvious reason for already existing, in this book; or when combined with tMN's, it isn't clear where the kings and queens have gone. Aslan is effectively all-powerful, and so has no real need of the childrens' help; except perhaps for the commented-upon "he is often away" so maybe he is not so much using their help as teaching them how to be kings and queens; an allegory then of free will. Neatly leaving the witch's spell as the problem of evil.

Refs

* The book was written for Lucy, the daughter of Owen Saving the Appearances Barfield.

* The White Witch as Tragic Figure.

* The Silver Chair.

Book review: the Mote in God's Eye

This is wham-bam-thankyou-ma'am classic space-opera style SciFi. Ignoring the unsparkling prose and some minor quibbles, it is one of the classics of the genre and mostly survives this my first re-reading since my youth.

The characters are all stereotypes and the social setting about as advanced as in Asimov's "Foundation" series (though there's a plausible excuse for that: society has collapsed, and rebuilt itself). The spaceships are run like WWII battleships, or possibly more like Napoleonic era ships.

But no-one who cares about that kind of thing should be reading this kind of book in the first place; space-opera SciFi is the place for ideas, not subtle characterisation, and this does have a nice setup and nice aliens.

But having said that, let's play the fun game of what's wrong with the ideas.

The first and usual, but excusable, one is that the motley crowd of characters gets rushed off to the job, instead of people sitting down carefully and working out what to do. Secondly, I think it is odd how little attempt at stealth they make, and how quick they are to engage with the aliens. Thirdly, there's their lack of caution, and the improbable competence / intelligence of the aliens, but I'm descending into trivia now; let me claw my way back into the light.

I think it unlikely that a solar-system wide civilisation would collapse all together at once; the advantage of being un-collapsed when everyone else has reverted to barbarism is too high, people would scheme to be in that position. More likely would be waves or patterns of collapse.

I think the sketched alien civilisation is too "flat": having individual Masters as the top level, and nothing beneath it, would be unlikely to work. Coalitions would be necessary, but then the alien shock at people who both look up and down would make no sense.

Refs

* The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye.