Customer Reviews

The Magician's Nephew

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"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.

The Magician's Nephew (1955) is a children's fantasy novel, the sixth in C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. Decades before the events of the other books in the series, two children (one of whom is Professor Digory Kirke from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) travel to magical worlds, inadvertently free the witch Jadis, and witness the creation of Narnia.

The Magician's Nephew often has a lighter feel than the other books in the series. Lewis, who draws to a great extent upon his own childhood, is involved in the narrative in a more playful way than we've seen since The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. And while Jadis is an imposing and terrible figure, her attempts to conquer London are more comical than anything; Lewis does a good job striking a balance with her and not making the character ever seem silly, in spite of what's happening.

Lewis's imagination has free rein in a number of places in the story, most notably the Wood between the Worlds, the dead city of Charn, and the birth of Narnia. And with references to fairies, Atlantis, Arthurian legend, and the like, this book has something of the feel of a traditional fairy tale. The total effect is that for the most part, The Magician's Nephew is refreshingly different from the other books in the series.

In addition to Lewis's nostalgia for the Edwardian days and bygone social mores (the good and the bad), there are other moral themes at work here. The one that Digory is faced with time and again throughout the novel is integrity. And as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe contained strong parallels to Christ's Passion, The Magician's Nephew parallels the biblical account of Creation and the Garden of Eden.

It has been the fashion recently to read The Magician's Nephew as the first in the series (since it is, after all, chronologically first). This is fine, I guess, but to my mind it works better after the reader has finished The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the "Caspian trilogy." Here, Lewis assumes that the reader already has a familiarity with Narnia, and while that isn't mandatory to enjoy the book, there are a lot of little moments that the reader will not fully appreciate if he or she hasn't read the other books first.

The Magician's Nephew is a fun, imaginative story. But don't read it first.

I enjoyed reading The Magician's Nephew, it cleared up a lot of things about the creation of Narnia and interesting information about some of the characters. Looking forward to read the rest of the books in the Chronicles of Narnia.

I first read this book as a child and just recently listened to it as a book on CD. As an adult, the wonder and magic of this story is just as present as when I was a child. In fact, it is more so as I understand more of the nuances of the story now than I did back then. I recommend this book for children of all ages (and adults, too), especially if you are just starting the series. I think that reading this book first helps you understand everything else that happens in the series much better.

Everything was going fine until I got to chapter three ("The Wood Between the Worlds") in which the author states that the planet Jupiter has a single moon: "he saw Jupiter quite close -- close enough to see its moon."

I was unable to read any further.

I mean, what an idiot. Any schoolboy that there are at least 63 Jovian satellites. Check Wikipedia if you don't believe me.