So, Lawrence wrote a letter to the author and received this response:. The series was not planned beforehand as she thinks. Then I wrote P. But I found as I was wrong. So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone read them. This letter is cited by readers on both sides of the controversial decision to re-number the books. Proponents see this as clear proof Lewis wanted the books read in chronological order. Douglas Gresham, stepson of C.
And he said he thought they should be read in the order of Narnian chronology. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 2. Prince Caspian 3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Here is what we think…. This edition presents all seven books—unabridged—in one impressive volume.
The books are presented here in chronlogical order, each chapter graced with an illustration by the original artist, Pauline Baynes.
Deceptively simple and direct, The Chronicles of Narnia continue to captivate fans with adventures, characters, and truths that speak to readers of all ages, even fifty years after they were first published.
Get A Copy. Paperback , Reissue Edition , pages. Published by HarperCollins first published More Details Original Title. Cornelius , Trufflehunter , Shift Other Editions 3. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
To ask other readers questions about The Chronicles of Narnia , please sign up. Two questions 1: Will this be counted as 1 or 7 books in my challenge? Should I read them in that order? Bernadette Durbin I am forever a devotee of publication order, since the storytelling style and hints work better in that order.
If you read Magician's Nephew first, f …more I am forever a devotee of publication order, since the storytelling style and hints work better in that order. Shuld I try to read it even though I've watched the movies? Wouldn't it spoil the whole story? Nevermore Yes! Trust me, try it : They have a different feel to them compared to the movies and the writing is wonderful. Also, there are seven books and only t …more Yes! Also, there are seven books and only three of them have been made into movies so far.
If you are not sure about reading "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" because you've seen the first movie, maybe start with "The Magician's Nephew" which has been released later but is the first one chronologically. It serves as kind of a prequel or origins story to all the other books and shows how Narnia and all the other worlds came into existence, how the witch came to Narnia, Enjoy ; [If you count "The Magician's Nephew" as book 1, the movies are based on books 2, 4 and 5.
I can also recommend book 3, it is almost entirely based on different characters than the ones from the movies, which is why they filmed 4 and 5 first. See all 47 questions about The Chronicles of Narnia…. Lists with This Book.
Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Jul 02, AJ Griffin rated it really liked it Recommends it for: christians, people who love lions. I figured that out when I was 9. But who cares? If you can't enjoy these books at all, there is no child alive inside of you. And if you've got no child inside you, you're not very much fun at all, are you?
View all 87 comments. Sep 17, Charlotte May rated it it was amazing Shelves: epic-fantasy , childrens , page-plus , favourites. I love Narnia! Of course it's not perfect, but they are such wonderful stories, paving the way for so many other fantasy worlds that followed. Sure they've got the allegorical Christian background, and some of Lewis' wording and phrases wouldn't pass as politically correct now.
But if you can look past these small details, Narnia is a truly magical place, the stories iconic, I will never forget them. Young Polly and Diggory are swept up in the experiments of a magician attempting to find other worlds. In doing so they discover the beginning of Narnia, and so start off the tales.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. But he's good. He's the king, I tell you. Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy discover Narnia through the back of a wardrobe.
Their battles with the white witch are legendary. The Horse and his Boy "Do not by any means destroy yourself, for if you live you may yet have good fortune but all the dead are dead alike.
Having both run away - they seek a better life in Narnia, becoming involved in a battle between the Narnians and the Calormenes. Prince Caspian "But things never happen the same way twice. It has been hard for us all in Narnia before now. They aid the rightful heir to the throne in his attempts to stop his evil uncle from destroying Narnia.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader A swashbuckling tale full of adventures! Only Edmund and Lucy return this time, taking with them their dreadful cousin Eustace.
They land on the deck of a ship with Prince Caspian - on a journey to find 7 missing dukes. The Silver Chair "He was not a perfectly enormous giant; that is to say, he was rather taller than an apple tree but nothing like so tall as a telegraph pole.
To find the missing Prince whose disappearance has led to numerous others going missing in search of him. Their journey takes them to the land of giants and to the world underground.
Also the best character - Puddleglum the Marsh Wiggle is in this one. I love him! The Last Battle "All worlds draw to an end and that noble death is a treasure which no one is too poor to buy. An evil ape is using trickery and deceit to cause the Narnians to live in fear.
This is the battle to end all battles and none will be the same again! Narnia is a wonderful place with the most incredible cast of characters. Like I said it certainly has flaws but its achievements overcome those big time!
View all 43 comments. Jul 18, Ahmad Sharabiani rated it it was amazing Shelves: classics , 20th-century , childrens-young-readers , fantasy. Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven fantasy novels by C. It is considered a classic of children's literature and is the author's best-known work, having sold over million copies in 47 languages. Written by Lewis, illustrated by Pauline Baynes, and originally published in London between and , The Chronicles of Narnia has been adapted several times, complete or in part, for radio, television, the stage The Chronicles of Narnia Chronicles of Narnia , C.
Written by Lewis, illustrated by Pauline Baynes, and originally published in London between and , The Chronicles of Narnia has been adapted several times, complete or in part, for radio, television, the stage, and film. Set in the fictional realm of Narnia, a fantasy world of magic, mythical beasts, and talking animals, the series narrates the adventures of various children who play central roles in the unfolding history of that world.
Except in The Horse and His Boy, the protagonists are all children from the real world, magically transported to Narnia, where they are called upon by the lion Aslan to protect Narnia from evil and restore the throne to its rightful line.
The books span the entire history of Narnia, from its creation in The Magician's Nephew to its eventual destruction in The Last Battle. View all 10 comments. Feb 14, Kat Kennedy rated it it was amazing Shelves: kat-s-book-reviews , leaves-awesomeness-behind. I discovered The Chronicles of Narnia when I was six years old halfway through my first year of school.
It was the lowest shelf, the one that rested on the ground and I had to crouch down to wiggle the book out from amongst its peers. By the time I'd finished first grade I'd read them all and searched high and low for any book series that could be a I discovered The Chronicles of Narnia when I was six years old halfway through my first year of school.
By the time I'd finished first grade I'd read them all and searched high and low for any book series that could be as wonderful and magical as this one had been. Now I could dismiss my love of these books as some quaint, childhood memory that I was unwilling to let go of.
Certainly that is a factor. However, the magic has never faded. I've read them all so many times that I've memorized them. I've memorized them so thoroughly that I've told them as bed time stories to children that I've done baby sitting for.
It's not just children, either. My husband and I read a book, a proper book for half an hour for our son every night. For the past month that has been The Chronicles of Narnia. It's gotten to the point where he doesn't want to stop. Our son's bedtime comes and goes and my husband insists on reading just a little bit more. He says things like, "I wish I'd read these as a child! They're fantastic! The Last Battle is a hard and frustrating read. The Magician's Nephew is a little awkward. But they're so, so worth the read.
To me, there's a magic to these books that time and life has never managed to dim. View all 17 comments. Quick review Terrific fantasy setting and storyline spoilt by extremely unsubtle allegory and as the story progresses excessive Christian preachiness. Warning: Racial stereotypes abound and may offend. Recommended for adults who thrive in a Christian religious environment or those who can overlook these aspects totally and enjoy the story.
Not for gullible children, unless accompanied by a discerning adult. Detailed review I won't insult the intelligence of respected GoodReaders by giving Quick review Terrific fantasy setting and storyline spoilt by extremely unsubtle allegory and as the story progresses excessive Christian preachiness.
Detailed review I won't insult the intelligence of respected GoodReaders by giving a synopsis of the Narnia stories - I don't think there will be many here who do not know this story, even if you have not actually read the books. The stories of the four Pevensie children who discover the magical land of Narnia through the back of a wardrobe is the stuff of legend in literary circles - a land which they rule over as kings and queens after freeing it from the enchantment of the White Witch, under the benign yet firm supervision of Aslan the lion.
As fantasies for children go, this is a terrific universe filled with possibilities. There are talking animals, magical creatures from Greek mythology and English fairy-lore, and suitably satisfying and mysterious landscape worthy of exploration again and again. So one feels that if only the author in C. Lewis had let himself go he could have produced something similar to the The Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately, he does not do that. The author sublimates himself to the Christian, so that the story becomes allegory - and mostly allegory.
The spirit of gung-ho adventure is coated over with sickly-sweet preachiness which becomes so cloying towards the end that one almost feels like throwing up. The Magician's Nephew 2. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 3. The Horse and His Boy 4. Prince Caspian 5. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 6. The Silver Chair 7. The Last Battle However, the actual order in which the books were published is: 1. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 2. Prince Caspian 3.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 4. The Silver Chair 5. The Magician's Nephew 6. The Horse and His Boy 7. The Last Battle It seems that there is a hot dispute going on about the order in which the books should be read.
After reading them in the chronological sequence, I would advise reading them in the sequence of publication. More about that later. Aslan the Lion is Christ - this becomes evident in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe itself view spoiler [ he sacrifices himself to save Edmund Pevensie, and is immediately resurrected hide spoiler ].
I was a bit surprised that there was no sign of the gentleman with the horns and the forked tail. Evil is entirely feminine - that too, with a perverse sort of sexual attractiveness. It seems Lewis was genuinely frightened of woman's sexuality: Susan becomes a "non-friend of Narnia" the moment she becomes a nubile young woman. Lewis's protagonists, like that of Lewis Carroll, are prepubescent girls. The Christian world view is evident from the word go - for example, the animals and birds can all be killed and eaten, provided that they are not "talking animals"!
They have been specially blessed as such by Aslan, we are told, in the story of the creation of Narnia in The Magician's Nephew. This evidently comes from the Bible where Man is given dominion over every living thing on earth. In case we don't get it, Aslan continuously addresses the boys as "Sons of Adam" and the girls as "Daughters of Eve" and says that only they can rule over Narnia.
As the story progresses, it becomes more prevalent - and now racism and intolerance of the heathens also come into play. The Calormenes - dark-skinned foreigners who worship a savage god Tash, wear turbans and carry scimitar-like swords - are an Englishman's fantasy of the bloodthirsty and lecherous Turk.
In their country, young girls are routinely married off to old codgers, and they wage war on the free countries like Narnia to rape and pillage. Their God Tash, however, is a pagan deity who is loosely associated with the gentleman I mentioned earlier - the guy with horns. The unlikeable brat Eustace Scrubb is the son of liberal parents who are pacifists and vegetarians.
He studies in a school which does not have corporal punishment and which does not teach the Bible - and is therefore full of bullies who are encouraged by the Principal! However, Eustace reforms after a visit to Narnia, and returns back to the school and hammers the living daylights out of the bullies. The Principal is removed from the school and ultimately becomes a Member of Parliament, where she lives happily ever after note the point: M.
It is in the last book that Lewis outdoes himself. There is an ape who presents a donkey as Aslan. The ape is part of a conspiracy with the Caloremenes who present their God Tash and Aslan as the same, but don't believe in either. Also, the ending is patently silly view spoiler [ all the friends of Narnia being killed in a train accident so that they can inhabit Aslan's timeless paradise hide spoiler ] and for me, it was disgusting.
Then why the three stars? Well, if you can ignore the allegory and the preachiness, there are some pretty interesting adventures here. The first three books are rather well-written although a bit simplistic and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is your classic sea adventure.
The Magician's Nephew is extremely funny in parts. One advise to prospective readers though - please give the last book a miss. View all 48 comments. Mar 20, Michael Finocchiaro rated it really liked it Shelves: fantasy , classics , fiction , englishth-c , kids. Read this as a kid and re-read later on, these 7 books were a great form of escapism despite the somewhat overbearing Christian symbolism that is pervasive throughout.
A must for kids. View 1 comment. Mar 30, Christian Guzman rated it liked it. Overall I would give this book 3 stars. At first I was skeptical about reading the book in chronological order as opposed to publication order. Now that I look back at it, it works well both ways. I also had some trouble at first with the way the style of writing was presented, but I got used to it pretty quickly.
The world of Narnia is well written and detailed thanks to C. S Lewis. I can safely say that I liked the introduction of e Overall I would give this book 3 stars. I can safely say that I liked the introduction of every story.
This book nonetheless will be someone else's treasure, not mine. Such an original plot! I enjoyed every minute of it. Getting to know the backstory and how Narnia was created was interesting to me. There were a few metaphors between Adam, Eve, and the tree of wisdom. Digory and Uncle Andrew were my favorite characters, even though at times the uncle seemed quite cynical. My favorite moment would have to the fight at the lamp post and how they escaped.
It also depends on what sort of person you are. My favorite character were the two youngest ones: Lucy and Edmund. They seemed to always have something going on with them. Again, there are several religious metaphors present in this story too. It was pleasurable reading and seeing all the symbolism.
We also get to see more of the magical world of Narnia in this story so that is exciting. I had fun with this story! The desert scene felt eternal to me and unexciting. It was ok. Prince Caspian: 3 stars In this story we are introduced to Prince Caspian and I must say he was a well written character.
The backstory about him and finding out how he commences his journey is interesting. I seem to enjoy the introductions of each story quite immensely, this one being one of my favorites. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: 3 stars My favorite part of this story was the involvement of the new character Eustace.
Even though he was portrayed negatively at first it was interesting viewing how he slowly changed. The dragon scene was enjoyable to me. The Silver Chair: 2 stars The beginning of the novel was fun, which is when Eustace and Jill embark on their new adventure.
They are sent on a mission and we read about their journey. I found many parts dull. View all 11 comments. Apr 20, Mansoor rated it liked it. The Magician's Nephew is easily the best story of the Chronicles. First of all, it's the least overtly religious. There is a creation-of-the-world element, but it's not our world so it seems more fantastic than religious. Not only is there a veil over the religiosity, there's so much creativity in this story: the magical rings, the in-between place, the Deplorable Word, the founding of Narnia.
And because of the talking, fighting animals, the fantasy seems aimed at children. I might have enjoyed it more at age The next story in the series, The Horse and His Boy , takes a dark, ethnocentric turn with its unfavorable depiction of the Arab-like "Calormen" shoes turned up at the toe, scimitars, suffixed phrases of praise, "son of" lineage declarations. They bowed most politely to Caspian and paid him long compliments The Voyage of the Dawn Treader demonstrates the problem with using God or Jesus in a story: there are no real conflicts.
When the Dawn Treader stops at Dragon Island, the boy passenger Eustace wanders off, encounters a magical spell, and is turned into a dragon. This raises all kinds of serious issues about how to keep Eustace the Dragon with them, but none of these problems matter because, within 24 hours, Aslan just changes Eustace back to a boy. To save Edmund's soul, Aslan sacrifices his life.
But it wasn't Aslan's only life, he had another one ready. One thing I found especially creative about The Chronicles is how a story involving talking animals justifies eating animals. I can't even begin to count how many times I've read "The Chronicles of Narnia. Sure, I followed the story, but the deeper meaning was completely lost on me. Someone later told me that it was a Christian story and when I read the I can't even begin to count how many times I've read "The Chronicles of Narnia.
Someone later told me that it was a Christian story and when I read the book again as a young teenager, I picked up on that element of it. In the many times I've read the books as an adult, I've come to find that the underlying meaning - not just of "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe," but of the other books as well - becomes gradually clearer until you can't believe you didn't see it all along.
The books are like Narnia itself, unfolding like an onion, layer upon layer, Narnia upon Narnia, but each layer is bigger and better than the one above it. In order of the events that unfold in the story but not in the order that the books were published , the Chronicles of Narnia include: "The Magician's Nephew" - the Narnian creation story.
Two children living in London are magically transported to other worlds and witness the dawn of Narnia. The story incorporates such familiar elements as a Tree of Knowledge and the fall of man. With the help of Aslan, the great Lion, they seek to free Narnia.
This is the most obvious Christian parable, as Aslan represents Jesus and the story parallels the Resurrection story. Shasta, a Calormene fisherman's son, runs away when he hears his father negotiating to sell him into slavery. Together with two talking horses and a noble Calormene girl running away from an arranged marriage, he tries to get to Narnia.
The book is a meditation on faith and the concept that God helps those who help themselves. It's also my favorite of the seven books. Not the most overtly religious of the stories. It doesn't seem all that religious until the end of the book, which encourages people to seek God in their own lives. The picture of the faun had resided in his head ever since his teenage years. Before he wrote Aslan into the story, Lewis was visited for a number of nights with dreams of lions.
These haunting pictures came to him from an unknown source, but many of them all but demanded to be voiced in his stories. An interesting parallel to this phenomenon occurs in the third book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Here, a picture of a ship at sea grows and expands until it actually becomes a ship at sea, and a doorway into Narnia. It is a fine illustration of Lewis's own intention to make his inner pictures come alive and act as windows opening in on his created world of imagination. Up to this point, little has been said about the spiritual, the religious, well why not say it: the Christian element of the Narnia books. This is because that element was not present at the birth of the narrative.
Lewis has emphatically denied that he sat down to write a series of stories that were encoded depictions of Christian truth, or moral lessons sugarcoated to appeal to children. Nevertheless, the Christian element of the Narnian mythos is unmistakable. So how did this element find its way into the stories? Well, in a sub-creative fashion, Lewis saw his handiwork — the Lion Aslan, and he saw that it was good. Immediately the author recognized the potential of his character.
A lion had come "bounding" into the story, and He was obviously one of great importance. Lewis quickly noted the numinous awe in which the other characters held him. Also, it was not lost on him that the lion was a recurrent Biblical symbol for the Christ.
Here the author asked "what if the Son of God entered into a world of talking animals in the form of a lion? And he could do so without the Law, without religious duty and hypocrisy entering into the equation.
It had been Lewis's personal experience that what made it hard to feel the way one ought to feel about one's God was the sheer fact that there were feelings one ought to have. With Aslan, Lewis had a tabula rasa. He could enjoin the reader to feel love and devotion without that suffocating sense of duty. He could convey his own great gratitude and love for his God without sermonizing.
He could, as he once put it, "steal past those watchful dragons. In the first two books, Aslan is a clear-cut figure. He inspires fear in his enemies and love and devotion in his friends. He makes the four children from our world high kings and queens, and banishes all traces of evil from his kingdom. Here Lewis is speaking of the first glorious days of one's spiritual experience.
However, with the advent of the third book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lewis takes the reader into deeper theological waters. Here Aslan seems more distant; he appears in other forms, such as a lamb and an albatross. Lewis deepens the spiritual experience of his characters by making Aslan harder to find.
Faith now enters into the equation — belief without seeing. This is best embodied by the mouse Reepicheep, who is determined to find Aslan's Country, even if he has to swim to the end of the world to do so. Eustace is turned into a dragon through his own greed and ignorance. However, Aslan peels away the layers of dragon skin until the real boy underneath is revealed. By this, the reader comes to understand the process of conversion and sanctification. He is after all, "not a tame lion.
For this piece of grave mischief, Aslan comes between her and a stream. He warns Jill that he has eaten small girls before, "and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms.
The fear of the Lord should not prevent us from coming to Him. Later, Aslan gives Jill a number of signs to follow, which she promptly forgets. When she despairs about this in a dream, the Lion exhorts her to take courage. Lewis is illustrating the fact that God's correction is from love, not austerity.
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