Book Review: Prince Caspian

[osprey_archer]

I've been sitting on this review of Prince Caspian for a while, because Prince Caspian was and remains the solidly "eh, it's fine" Narnia book for me, which is the hardest thing of all to review. It's easy to go on for pages about something you hate, and somewhat more difficult (but still, usually, doable) to go on and on about something you love, but what is there to say about fine?

However, even a meh Narnia book is better than most other books, and has some wonderful bits. I love the beginning, where the Pevensies find themselves on some random island, and as they explore it slowly dawns on them that these are the ruins of Cair Paravel.

I also love the bit at the climax where Lucy and Susan go off with Aslan and the dryads and the maenads and go coursing across Narnia, setting people free from Telmarine tyranny and generally spreading joyful anarchy across the land. (Lewis's festival anarchy scenes are always fantastic.)

This scene exists to a certain extent to get Lucy and Susan away from the battle (just as Lucy and Susan are the ones to free Aslan at the Stone Table in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe partly to get them away from that battle), and in both cases it's striking that Lucy and Susan's part is so much more fun and exciting than the boys'. This is usually not the case in children's book where the girls get shunted off to the side! But of course Lucy and Susan aren't being shunted off: they're taking part in the main action, whereas the boys' battle is necessary (God helps those who help themselves!) but also kind of a side issue; God/Aslan is the one doing the real work.

Also AMAZING feast scene afterward, good work Lewis, I too want to sit around a giant bonfire feasting with all my talking animal friends until we are all so happy and tired we fall asleep where we sit.

I do sort of wonder how the Telmarines are going to adjust to their uninhabited island back on Earth (which is where Aslan sends the unreconstructed Telmarines at the end of the book), but as with the question of "what are the psychological effects of being a grown-up king or queen and then going back to England to be a schoolchild?", this is not something that Lewis is interested in.

Plus of course this is the book where we meet Reepicheep, a fearless doughty warrior who is also, inconveniently for him, a mouse. LOVE Reepicheep. Reepicheep will truly come into his own in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (I've been so dilatory about this review that littlerhymes and I have almost finished Dawn Treader!), but I love him here too. The scene where all his companion mice are willing to cut off their tails because Reepicheep has lost his tail... ah, that's the good stuff.

Comments

[silverusagi]

It's easy to go on for pages about something you hate, and somewhat more difficult (but still, usually, doable) to go on and on about something you love, but what is there to say about fine?

This is where I am with a lot of books I read lol.

[rachelmanija]

I agree with you about absolutely everything. The sequences of the Pevensies exploring the ruins of their own past, and the glorious anarchy of the maenads, are marvelous. Caspian's own story is... fine.

There is one bit I love from his story though, which is the Wer-Wolf's terrifying monologue:

"I'm hunger. I'm thirst. Where I bite, I hold till I die, and even after death they must cut out my mouthful from my enemy's body and bury it with me. I can fast a hundred years and not die. I can lie a hundred nights on the ice and not freeze. I can drink a river of blood and not burst. Show me your enemies.”

[kore]

I find this book interesting because it's so reflexive -- it was originally subtitled Return to Narnia, and it almost reminds me of the second part of Don Quixote, where Sancho and the Don read the book about themselves and it changes them. The Pevensie children are mythic figures and have to prove their actual existence to Trumpkin, Trumpkin himself is a figure in the story he's telling them, Caspian's old nurse (with her great return, healed by Aslan, near the end) raises him on old stories....We even get "it has been told in another book called The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe how they had a remarkable adventure" from the narrator at the very beginning. (“You tell us your story first," Peter says to Trumpkin, "and then we’ll tell you ours.") The children remember their old skills, and royal lives, and tell each other about their old lives too.

I wonder if the reason you're kind of meh on Caspian is that his story is, well, pretty familiar -- it's the fantasy of the child who knows his real parents are different, and he has a grand Destiny, and gets to claim his rightful place. (Y HLO THAR Harry Potter) Caspian himself is in the same position the children were in during Wardrobe, someone very young who is thrust into a position of power and responsibility. His meeting the Old Narnians is delightful (and Reepicheep is of course pure chivalry) but a lot of his journey is rather cod-Arthurian, without the trippy anachronisms and delightful sense of discovery of the first book. He doesn't have much personality yet, that's in the third book (my personal favourite).

(The real reason I can't love the book as much as the others is that it depends so much on faith -- I hate it when Lucy gets denied by the others, and we get "Susan talking like a grownup," and then Aslan MAKES her try to convince the others to come back the right way with him, and again Susan is "the worst" of them all. Lewis draws on Cupid and Psyche, and it's significant Edmund is the one who believes and supports Lucy in her faith. Susan confesses to Lucy that she feels she could have seen Aslan, and Aslan tells her she was afraid. The older two can never come back to Narnia, and this is the true beginning of Susan's exile from it. I know there was a lot of emphasis on belief in the first book, but I guess what gets me about this one is the proselytizing note gets louder? IDK. And of course I hate it when children grow up and can't return to the fantastic lands.)

[asakiyume]

I got into my feelings about this book in a digression on your post on ... I think The Magician's Nephew? Overall, I'm not very fond of it, though there are, as you say, some lovely moments.

In addition to what I said in the other entry, I think I felt mad as a kid that Narnia, which the Pevensies had rescued, had gotten all yucky again, with all the good and magical things in hiding, etc. etc. And somehow this time it was worse: last time it was an evil magic; this time it was just schools and shoes and things.

I appreciate how well you *do* talk about it, even thought it's only just fine.

[lucymonster]

Prince Caspian was always one of my favourites as a kid, but on reread I was surprised by how much the girls' and boys' stories feel like two virtually unrelated narratives. Even before the live action movie made it All About the Battles, my favourite parts were always the ones involving Caspian and Reepicheep and Trufflehunter and the Dwarves - but as you say, that subplot is really kind of peripheral to the main business of Lucy and Susan accompanying Aslan on his family-friendly Christian bacchanal to reenliven Narnia.

Looking forward to your thoughts on Dawn Treader - that one was always my favourite favourite, and yes, Reepicheep is such a highlight!