I've been reading this series for the past few months, with the end goal of getting to this book and finding out what all the fuss was about. You see, late last year, I ran a survey on my blog, and in that survey, That Hideous Strength was overwhelmingly voted my readers' favourite book of all time. Now that I've finally finished it, I can tell you that, although I enjoyed the series overall, this was hardly my favourite part... much less my favourite book of all time!

This is a story in which it's very difficult to figure out what's going on. And just when you think you finally know, something happens to pull the rug out from under you and leave you scratching your head all over again.

It seems to have something to do with King Arthur and Merlin, which is a mythology I know very little about, so half the references were lost on me. Also, while the Christian themes are still present, they're not nearly as obvious as they were in the first two books, and this one definitely feels the most like "fiction".

In many ways, this is a completely different book from the first two. Indeed, for a good 30% of it, it seems to have no connection whatsoever to the rest of the series, and you find yourself wondering where your favourite characters are or what's been happening since the events of [b:Perelandra|100924|Perelandra (The Space Trilogy, #2)|C.S. Lewis|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388623162l/100924.SY75.jpg|3148586]... it does become apparent, but it takes a really long time before you realise you do, in fact, have the right "That Hideous Strength".

What adds to that feeling, and what I think took me by surprise the most, is the length of this book. The first two books in this series are little more than novellas, and so I was expecting another two- or three-day read in That Hideous Strength. Not so: this one's quite the tome. It's nothing like the first two at all.

In truth, my rating is probably somewhere around 2.3 or 2.4 stars; the book was "just okay", but there were parts of it I enjoyed - just not enough for me to honestly say I liked it as a whole. I chuckled, for example, at many of the jokes about the differences between men and women, and I enjoyed revisiting the idea (touched on in Perelandra) of there being lots of different genders, and how "gender" and "sex" are two very different things. And it was nice to see that the women in this story were real, believable people, not "cookie cutters" who only do just what society expects.

Maybe I'm being a little harsh because I'm comparing this final part of a trilogy to the first two. But honestly, what should I be comparing it to?

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