Yowch.
From Amazon
You may not have minded this as a kid, but coming back to it as an adult, it's painfully obvious that "The Magician's Nephew" is the point at which the Narnia series jumped the shark. The White Witch comes back to turn-of-the-century London and does nothing more than commandeer a carriage? Come on.
Great gift for a grandchild
From Amazon
Hoping to introduce my granddaughters to one of my very favorite series, I ordered this first of the series. I was pleased with the size and appearance, including illustrations, and hope that it will appeal to them (age 10 and 11). Of course, if they like it, I'll be looking for the rest of the series for them. They are such great stories ... and are more than just surface level... they feed our spirits as well.
Kindle version
From Amazon
Wonderful book! Wonderful Kindle version! Wonderful experience all around!
I greatly enjoyed reading this book. I first read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe wayyyy back in 6th grade. I decided that, with my new Kindle and cheap access (only [...]!) to each book in this series, it would be a great thing to read all of.
Well, I just finished The Magician's Nephew last night (after reading the last 3/4 at 1 am......) and could not be happier with my purchase! The formatting is wonderful, and I think the cover looks spectacular on the Kindle! The table of contents is great, the pictures (although they can be a little bit difficult to see on the small screen-- but still certainly good!) look nice on the Kindle, and the essence of the book was not lost in transfer from print to electronics.
Amazing book. Amazing Kindle Version. A+!
Now if only all Kindle books were this nice...
Transcendent...Timeless
From Amazon
When I review George Orwell's writings, I often describe them as time capsules of history. C.S. Lewis' writings often seem to transcend time; writings that often jump to the future and travel to the past on the spacetime of this great writer's mind...and all in one trip.
C.S. Lewis seemed to have a special relationship with thought lives of children as reflected in his letters to children and stories. The books C.S.Lewis wrote for children seem to always be better than books intended for older readers. This book is better than the space trilogy he wrote earlier.
The children here enter a parallel universe via the research of their Uncle Andrew who enables them to time travel with rings made of Atlantean dust. Uncle Andrew is the sterotypical secular scientist who appears in other C.S.Lewis novels and always disrupts the divine order of things with amoral tinkering. The two children, Digory and Polly, find themselves in a forested switching universe (a multiverse), and then in the dead city of Charn. Charn, cursed and dimly lit by a large, dying red dwarf sun. The witches mouth is also stained deep Charn-red by the forbidden fruit she stole from the Tree of Life-two images of the death afforded by sin and rejecting salvation.
We see the miracle of Creation as Aslan inhabits Narnia with talking animals in this prequel to the Narnia series.
Something is dreadfully wrong despite the beauty of the new creation. Aslan warns the children that Evil has entered the new world through the negligence of the children of Adam, Digory and Polly. The battle that will be fought years later in Naria has its seed in this first story. The Creation is flawed so sacrifice must be eventually paid by Aslan.
The characters eventually return to their respective universes and the stage is set for the series to continue. The layers of meaning with both secular and Christian symbolism are amazing. We even learn about how the lamp post near the entrance to the wardrobe was created in the first Narnia book.
What I find interesting about C.S.Lewis is the important role that parallel universes and relativity theory played in his stories as did the New Testament in the life of Einstein. Were the two parallel universes of these thinkers somehow connected? I am connected to this story and will keep it in my heart.
Pathway to the stars
Einstein's Universe
A dern fine book.
From Amazon
"The Magician's Nephew" is the Rodney Dangerfield of the Narnia books. It never gets filmed, as familiar protagonists and fickle public attention tend to run out around the time the studio gets to "The Silver Chair", and no producer really wants to poke around the thorny attitudes toward the Muslim world that pop up by "The Horse and His Boy" (but which are absent from "Nephew"). Thanks to a massive misunderstanding of narrative structure by the current copyright owners, it's recently been saddled with the onus of being the introduction to the entire Narnia series, a position for which it was never written or suited. Due to the whole "backstory" nature of the book, it tends to be hurried through and forgotten by those on their first trip through the series. Before my adult reread, nothing stuck in my mind about this volume; I remembered the Dawn Treader, and I remembered Puddleglum - but Magician's what now?
The story opens on the unfamiliar Digory, a young boy who lives a lonely life in a dingy and cramped part of London with two distant elderly relatives and a mother who's gravely ill, probably terminal. Eventually, he meets a playmate named Polly, and they together begin to explore the passageways connecting the different rowhouses in their tenement. They thereby happen upon the laboratory of Digory's eccentric Uncle Andrew, who seems oddly delighted by the intrusion. He offers Polly the fruit of his latest experiment - a glowing yellow ring. She takes it and disappears - which, as Andrew's subsequent sinister behavior clarifies, was the intended effect. He offers Digory a second ring to follow in Polly's footsteps, wherever she has gone - but only as a scout for Andrew, who plans to continue his nefarious experiments beyond this world. Digory's path eventually leads to Narnia, of course, though not as directly as you might think.
That batty old Uncle Andrew is really no match for anything he will find in Narnia is a given and leads us to the first striking difference about "The Magician's Nephew" - it's as close to a comedy episode as the Narnia series gets, right up till the ending ("she was a dern fine woman"). There are indeed threats (and a sense of wonder), but they are, until the climax, either not immediate or are easily neutralized, leaving a free breeziness that allows the story to have fun with itself and tour the scenery. I stress: this is the book that features one of the series' greatest villains going Grand Theft Horsebuggy on London. Come ON, people.
In balance, "Nephew" boasts some of the series's most awe-inspiring, poetic, and chilling sights: A ruined world living in the hell-lit shadow of a red giant nearing supernova. The hall of statues, a portrait of successive cruelty and a more effective history of a nation than any expository text. The serpent in Narnia's Eden having bitten into its apple, lips stained red with bloody juice. The horrifically elegant conclusion of the war on Charn: "Victory."/"But not for you."
Rereading as an adult, it struck me that "Nephew"'s female characters provide an antidote of sorts to the Problem of Susan issue. Though femininity freaks Lewis out (Susan, Lasraleen, the faux-motherly White Witch and seductive Lady of the Green Kirtle), that does not preclude him from writing strong females outside those roles. Digory's aunt holds her own about as well as one would expect against a sorceress, possessing an iron calm and command in ridiculous situations. Digory's mother gets hardly a word, but the effects of her absence speak volumes; she is the missing leader and moral pillar of her family. Polly proves a wise, albeit often unheeded, foil to Digory - she's still a kid, and they both get into heated arguments, but when the chips are down, she's the one with a level head. The war on Charn, deadly serious, is fought between two female commanders. Those put off by "The Last Battle"'s complications might be pleasantly surprised here.
I've noted that "The Magician's Nephew" does not serve well as an introduction to the series. Besides Aslan, its characters do not show up, at least in these forms, in any of the other Narnia books, and you have to have some familiarity with the previously-published volumes to enjoy it fully ("oh, so THAT'S how the lantern got in the middle of the forest" etc.). The original publication order offers "The Magician's Nephew" its proper place to shine. It deserves a higher pedestal than popular memory has given it; it's one of Narnia's brightest jewels.