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The Silver Chair: The Lady of the Green Kirtle, Fake News, and Enchantment
Poor Prince Rilian. His mother—the still unnamed wife of King Caspian—is killed by a serpent “green as poison” and when he sets out to find the foul worm to destroy it, he finds instead the Lady of the...
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Who We Fight Against: The Silver Chair and Knowing Your Enemies
In a battle we must know our enemies. Lewis tells us unapologetically that the core idea of The Silver Chair is “war against the powers of darkness,” and since this is war, it would be interesting to...
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Saving the Lost: Quests, Signs, and Unclear Instructions in The Silver Chair
The battle against the forces of darkness is, first and foremost, a rescue operation. Or so Jill Pole is told. Aslan advises her that her quest is to seek the lost Prince Rilian, “until either you have...
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Living Water, Resurrection, and Aslan’s Golden Back: Biblical Allusions in...
People come to Narnia from many different places. Some find the religious metaphors overwhelming, others don’t notice them at all. Some people love them because of the spiritual underpinnings. When we...
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“Narnia and the North!”: The Horse and His Boy
C.S. Lewis loved horses. He once said, “I’d sooner have a nice thickset, steady-going cob that knew me and that I knew how to ride than all the cars and private planes in the world.” (He’s no Judith...
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Ethnocentrism, Heathens, and Heretics in The Horse and His Boy
“The calling and conversion of a heathen.” So many questions we have about The Horse and His Boy are answered in this short phrase. Why are the Calormene people presented as they are? If they are meant...
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Aslan the Demon: Religious Transformation in The Horse and His Boy
“I believe in no religion. There is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best.” That’s what Jack “C.S.” Lewis wrote to one of his...
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Growing Up in Narnia: The Pevensies as Young Adults in The Horse and His Boy
Last week marked the 70th anniversary of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and the first anniversary of this column! Many thanks to everyone for creating the wonderful and interesting community...
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“A Second Rabadash” — C.S. Lewis and Dangerous Leaders
C.S. Lewis had strong political opinions and in many ways they undergird his work, though he’s slow to make them overt, unless he’s talking about the way schools are run. His earliest works (the world...
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The Horse and Her Girl: C.S. Lewis and Aravis
We tend to take questions like “Was C.S. Lewis sexist?” and place it in a binary: yes or no. We could do that, certainly, and we would have a simple and rather uninteresting answer, because if we’re...
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The Only Right and Proper Way To Read The Chronicles of Narnia
As someone who has been known to start series smack in the middle—with both books and television shows—I tend to be a bit agnostic on the question of “what order should I read/watch these in?” With...
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Various Fantasy Creatures Keep Inviting Me Over for Tea
There is a certain subset of fantasy creatures that are unfailingly polite. Whenever I stumble into their worlds, they break out the honeycakes and put a kettle on. But maybe I don’t want to have to...
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Always Winter, But Never Christmas: Santa Claus in Narnia
Well, my friends, it is winter here where I live and Christmas is well on its way. The trees are up (we have two, a tradition that started because my family fought over which one we should cut down),...
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The Magician’s Nephew: The Creation of Narnia and the Coming of Evil
The last time I read The Magician’s Nephew was thirty years ago. Before I sat down to read, I tried to bring to mind all the things I could remember, and I was surprised by how many there were: Aslan...
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The Deplorable Word: Power, Magicians, and Evil in C.S. Lewis’ The Magician’s...
C.S. Lewis didn’t care for magicians. In fact, as Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man, he saw the core problem that magicians were trying to solve one that was at best distasteful, and at worst...
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“Would You Like Wings?”: An Invitation to Transformation in The Magician’s...
It was the horse who chose Narnia, that much is clear. His name was Strawberry, and he had been in the middle of a long and troubling day. First he had been out doing his daily work with his cabby on...
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Is There Such a Thing as a Necessary Prequel?
C.S. Lewis hadn’t intended to write a sequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe—but a friend wanted to know why that mysterious lamp-post had been sitting in the forest. So Lewis wrote a prequel,...
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C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, and The Magician’s Nephew
Before we dive in this week, make sure to check out last week’s article by author Ferrett Steinmetz, who asks the question, “Is there such a thing as a necessary prequel?” Some great thoughts about...
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Better Things Ahead: The Last Battle and the End of Narnia
We’ve been doing the C.S. Lewis Reread here at Tor.com for over a year, and I’ve felt mounting dread about re-reading The Last Battle. As a kid it was my favorite of the Narnia books, and one that—even...
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Calling Evil Good, and Good Evil: Spiritual Abuse in C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle
Content warning: This article discusses manipulation, emotional, and spiritual abuse. Shift was already a manipulator and an abuser when they found the lion skin. But it was the lion skin that opened...
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Stumbling Into Heaven: Emeth, Aslan, and The Last Battle
I grew up in Christian church and Christian school, and although I was still in grade school when I read the Narnia books, there was one particular piece of theology I knew very well: It’s easy to get...
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A Short Detour: C.S. Lewis’ “The Shoddy Lands” and “Ministering Angels”
Seven months before The Last Battle was published, C.S. Lewis had a short story appear in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It was called “The Shoddy Lands,” and—believe it or not—it and...
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The Problem(s) of Susan
C.S. Lewis failed. He failed to clearly say what he was trying to say. He failed his readers. He failed Susan. When I read The Last Battle as a kid, and got to the moment when Susan was “no longer a...
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Worlds Beyond: How The Chronicles of Narnia Introduced Us to Other Authors We...
I had come to Narnia as a kid after spending an entire year working my way through the Fellowship of the Ring. When I said “more!” to my dad, he took me to the living room and showed me seven books in...
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The Story King: How The Chronicles of Narnia Shapes the Worlds We Create
Our journey began with two friends—Jack and Tollers—walking together, and reflecting that if they wanted to find stories they loved—the kind of stories they wanted to read—then they themselves would...
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Worlds Beyond: How The Chronicles of Narnia Introduced Me to a Lifetime of SFF
I had come to Narnia as a kid after spending an entire year working my way through the Fellowship of the Ring. When I said “more!” to my dad, he took me to the living room and showed me seven books in...
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Our Country: C.S. Lewis, Calormen, and How Fans Are Reclaiming the...
The country of Calormen, located to the southeast of Narnia, appears twice in the seven Chronicles of Narnia books, but not once in the movies. It’s the stage for some of the most exciting parts of...
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Always Winter, But Never Christmas: Santa Claus in Narnia
Well, my friends, it is winter here where I live and Christmas is well on its way. The trees are up (we have two, a tradition that started because my family fought over which one we should cut down),...
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Greta Gerwig May Follow Barbie With an Even Bigger Fantasy: The Chronicles of...
First, a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world; then, a land of magic, Jesus allegories, and Turkish Delight. In 2018, Netflix bought the rights to C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia books, and the streamer...
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