Books Tasted - Everything bookly (and a few other things)

The Last Battle is the final book in the Chronicles of Narnia, both in published date and Narnian chronological order. I was really excited to get to this book, most likely because I knew it meant I had finally finished rereading them. After only a page or two, I remembered the story and began to dread to read it. I actually raced through it, I think mostly just to be done with it.

Warning: if you haven't read the books and don't want to know the story, stop now.

I don't remember my reaction as a child to reading this book, but now I found that I did not like this story at all. It's basically the Book of Revelations for Narnia. It has the most obvious Christian message of all the books in the series. The first two-thirds is very gloom and doom and the last third is "hurray! we're in heaven!"

Everything must come to an end and so does Narnia. Unlike many series, where the end is just the point where the author decides to stop telling the story, the end of the Chronicles really is the end of Narnia. The land literally dies as Aslan calls down the stars and has enormous dragons and monsters eat the land, before they lay down and die and turn to bones that look like they've been there for thousands of years (a possible explanation of the dinosaurs and how they got on Earth?). All of the Narnians and visitors to Narnia who have been good and believed in Aslan (even if they thought they were believing in something else) are welcomed into Paradise, "Further up and further in!" The dumb animals and those who didn't believe are sent to who knows where, never to be heard from again.

I assume this is Lewis' understanding of Christianity, and from his point of view is the way things should be. For me, I found it unutterably sad and horrifying the trials and tribulations the last Narnians had to go through before being welcomed into heaven. Usually the Narnia books fill me with a sense of wonder and enjoyment, but this book mostly filled me with feelings of loathing and I truly hated the first half of the book.

I mentioned in a previous Narnia review that you can tell Lewis didn't like Susan, and that continues here. Susan is the only person to visit Narnia who doesn't make it to Paradise. I can't tell what happened here. Is it one of those cases where an author finds his character taking on a life of its own, and even though the character starts out as a hero, it can't stay in that mold? Or did Lewis decide to make an example for the sake of his Christian parable? Susan is a typical young woman in that she's more concerned with fashion and parties than she is with faith. She's managed to turn Narnia into a children's story in her own head. What's really sad to me is how her family has dismissed her. Since she no longer believes, they pretty much vow not to talk about her, and the brief discussion they do have about her is filled with scorn. Some reviewers of this book think that the line from earlier books, "Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia" will eventually hold true for Susan and she'll make it to Paradise one day. I just think, this is fiction and there will be no "one day" and I think it's pretty crummy of Lewis to leave Susan out of things this way just to make a point about faith. This is a pretty hard children's story, not the wonderous books from earlier in the series.