Thriveth reviewed The Magician's Nephew by C. S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia (6))
Review of "The Magician's Nephew" on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I loved this book as a kid, I found it better written, more mysterious and meaningful than The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. So I was really looking forward to share it with my 8-year-old for our goodnight story.
Well... We had to put it down halfway through because he hated it so much. He liked the first parts of it well enough, was caught by the mystery of the terrible uncle, the magic rings, the Wood Between The Worlds, and the ruin world of Charn. But he could not abide the smugness of Aslan, the revering and worshiping descriptions of him (this is too cringe, dad!), and he found the one-dimensional description of the witch as irrationally evil to be so insulting to his intelligence that between that and Aslans smugness, he found himself siding with her. He was not taken by the creation myth of Narnia, found …
I loved this book as a kid, I found it better written, more mysterious and meaningful than The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. So I was really looking forward to share it with my 8-year-old for our goodnight story.
Well... We had to put it down halfway through because he hated it so much. He liked the first parts of it well enough, was caught by the mystery of the terrible uncle, the magic rings, the Wood Between The Worlds, and the ruin world of Charn. But he could not abide the smugness of Aslan, the revering and worshiping descriptions of him (this is too cringe, dad!), and he found the one-dimensional description of the witch as irrationally evil to be so insulting to his intelligence that between that and Aslans smugness, he found himself siding with her. He was not taken by the creation myth of Narnia, found it "cringe" in its (my interpretation) postulated rather than demonstrated wonder. And believe me when I say this is not a kid who has lost the sense of wonder, let alone the ability to think about morality. Quite the opposite, he found the characters and their morals insultingly simplistic and lacking in empathy. Harsh truths from an 8-year-old.
It was a bit of a blow to me but I am also immensely proud of Junior, because I totally can see his points, my childish sense of wonder had just lingered with me since my own childhood and led me to never question these things. I still think there is a lot of good storytelling in this book, as in the rest of the series, but... Just got to realize, I guess, that it isn't aging as well as I'd have liked it to.
