Customer Reviews

The Silver Chair (The Chronicles of Narnia Book 6)

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The Silver Chair (1953) is a children's fantasy novel, the fourth in C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. The reformed Eustace, along with his classmate Jill, are summoned to Narnia to rescue the now-aged King Caspian's only son.

The Silver Chair is a solid adventure, and, with its structure and content (giants, caverns, witches and such), is reminiscent of traditional fairy tales. On the downside, the story turns on a couple of rather predictable twists (they may be predictable even to children, at least to children who have, as Lewis might say, "read the right sort of books"), and there really isn't much of a climax.

Lewis always has moral themes going on, but here, they're particularly good. Eustace and Jill have to learn hard lessons in accountability and personal responsibility. The related theme of faithful obedience in the face of death is powerfully done: Eustace and Jill struggle the whole time, in sharp contrast to Prince Rilian, whose faith is summed up when he says, "Aslan will be our good lord, whether he means us to live or die. And all's one, for that." Lewis also continues to take shots at "modern" values by setting up his "Experiment House" school and then blasting it mercilessly; this assault is unapologetically obvious.

The characters are well done here: Eustace continues his struggle toward maturity. Jill, in contrast to the always positive but not particularly capable Lucy, is (and becomes) a competent and practical character. Puddleglum, the wettest of all blankets, is a nice supporting character (thankfully Lewis doesn't overdo it with him). And Rilian's simple but unshakeable faith is impressive.

The Silver Chair is a solid entry in the series, even if the moral themes pack more punch than the story itself.

Redemption! Yeah, this one was good. Still not as good as THAHB but definitely much better than PC and VotDT combined. Aslan kept himself to a minimum and the children were thoroughly tortured by the elements, giants, another witch and a slew of other things. Fun!

My inner feminist reared her ugly head at the whole "witch is the snake that corrupts man" homage but I just kept thinking that it was of the times. Biblical references. Calm down. Still, the insinuation irked me. As is Lewis's ability to let women stand by and let men do all the fighting. *breathe*

Anyway, this fairy tale was much more fleshed out, no deus ex machina that I can remember and I really enjoyed it. I saw the issue with the giants at the first mention of "they'd love to have you for the Autumn Harvest" but that's really the only thing I saw in advance. I'm not one of those perceptive people that sees things like that. At least, I don't actively look. So if I see something like that, I think I'm being beaten over the head with it. But that's just me.

The thing with reviewing series, unless there's a big dip in writing style or some drastic change, the reviews start to get redundant unless I focus on the story itself and even then it's either I liked it or I didn't. So, I'm pretty short on things to say aside from "go read nao." Oh, I cried at the end. Very sad. I was hoping the old friends would see each other one last time. And the very end, back at the school, a little strange and a touch contrived but it was so minor I really didn't mind. Loved the underground world. That was probably my favorite part.