Sep 06
In addition to the Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis wrote the philosophical Planet trilogy (also known as the Cosmic Trilogy): Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. These were for adult readers and in the science fiction genre (well, science fantasy, with more than a touch of the Victorian adventure novel) …
Jul 01
The Lady of the Green Kirtle, sometimes known simply as the Lady, is the second major villain of the Chronicles of Narnia. She plays a star role in The Silver Chair, where she is responsible for killing Caspian’s wife and abducting his teenage son Rilian, using him in her plans for conquest. As I …
Jun 20
Other posts in this series: The Odd Geography of the Utter East The Wild Lands of the North Calormen and the South So we come to the last unexplored region of Narnia – The Western Wild. It’s an area of rugged wilderness, without law or human rulers, as opposed to the south, which is dominated …
Jun 02
x Yes, it’s going to be another Summer of Narnia here on my blog! I’ll be tying up some loose ends from last year’s Summer of Narnia, as well as introducing new topics and insights I’ve found since then. Keep visiting!
Oct 17
Previous parts of this essay: Part I Part II Since it’s pretty certain that Charn had biblical origins, can we say the same of Jadis? Is she the same as the infamous Whore of Babylon, or is she something more? One thing Jadis is not, is European. In her own element she wore no tight …
Sep 30
Tash is the antithesis of Aslan the lion. In The Last Battle he’s the principal god of Calormen, a horrid epitome of an ancient Middle Eastern deity who receives sacrificial victims in bizarre and novel ways, like being tied up inside a brass bull which is heated by a wood-burning fire from below. He’s cut …
Sep 30
In The Last Battle, Lewis introduces the reader to Narnia’s equivalent of Satan: Tash. Tash is the foremost deity of the desert nation of Calormen, mentioned first in The Horse and His Boy. However, in that book we are not told what he looked like, only his temple: it has a silver-plated roof and sits …
Sep 28
Sep 23
Lewis ended the Narnia Chronicles after seven books. Not only that, he burned that bridge behind him: In The Last Battle, both Narnia and the child protagonists are destroyed. But what if he made a never-ending series of Narnia, or allowed other writers to carry on his work, as L. Frank Baum did with Oz? …
Sep 17
Lewis heavily drew on pulp SF and fantasy tropes to create the masterpiece that is Charn; but he also drew on the good old-fashioned fire and brimstone of The Bible. Since it was, and may still be, the most-read book in Western Civilization, it’s natural that many of its stories influenced fiction of a fantastic …