Now that we’ve examined and dissected both Charn and Jadis, I’d like to backtrack a bit. [ You can read previous parts of this essay here: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV ] In this post, I speculated, as some Lewis scholars did, that Charn’s name is derived from the word …
Jadis’s sister and her rival for the throne of Charn was never given a name by Lewis. Some fanfic writers have given her one: Jerza, Jade, Cynara, Emeralas, Katilu. In the same spirit, here are are some randomgenned ones, sticking mostly to the Js, and those reminiscent of gems like Emeralas and Jade are. …
Now we get to what is, for me, one of the most compelling features about Jadis and Charn: The war with her sister. [ You can read previous parts of this essay here: Part I, Part II, Part III ] Lewis doesn’t say if the sister is older or younger, a twin, a half-sister …
In this post I am taking a detour from Charn to talk about fanfic of Charn. Narnian fanfic has been on the internet for at least two and a half decades, though not in the massive amounts inspired by the Disney live-action movies. The pre-Disney fanfics were based on the books, and far more …
Charn vies with Tashbaan as my favorite Narnian fantasy setting. Not that I’d want to live there, of course. It’s dead, dry, and spooky. But Charn in its prime… well! It must have been something to see. One of the reasons it’s so evocative is the name. It’s short and blunt, like a location of …
The Magician’s Nephew ranks third (tied with The Horse and His Boy) as my Chronicles favorite for the Weird Tales awesomeness that is Charn. As I wrote in The Wild Lands of the North, Lewis was more than a little influenced by the pulps (and the pulps influenced by Lord Dunsany and E. R. Eddison, …
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