Nah-nia

I've been reading the Chronicles of Narnia books, as the movies only tell part of the stories, and these are great works of literature.

Well, maybe 'great' is too strong a word. As might be 'literature'.

These are certainly children's books, and CS writes to his audience, without talking down to his audience. Let me be clear that he gets to the level of 'buddy' very successfully, without becoming condescending.

However, there are some very badly written passages (The Horse and His Boy springs to mind), and of course they were written fifty years ago now, and times have changed. And there's the Christian imagery (and it is Christian "influenced" as opposed to retelling Christian tales). Some parts are more heavy handed than the others, with the heaviest being The Last Battle, with the ending where the kids are glad that real world events happened. Um, yeah, I'm not seeing lots of children wanting to replicate that idea. And there are other moments scattered around...

But, to be honest, most of the time these are simply adventure stories that are more fantasy than religious indoctrination. They work as the former a lot better than the latter, and in that regard these should be read (especially if you've only seen the movie). They're a nice enough read to pass the time, and contain lots of fun ideas. Ignoring the religious overtones (which is pretty easy to do), these are a decent enough set of fantasy books, if not the greatest works of all time.

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