Reflection on The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis

               This is the Narnia book I feel most conflicted about. I feel like with each book they get more creative (I’m reading in the order they were released, so Lion, Prince Caspian, Dawn Treader, and now Silver Chair). This book takes us into marshes and mountains, to the halls of giants and to underground cities, and I would say that the settings explored here are the second-best in the series after Prince Caspian. It is strange to move on to different characters with none of the original four. I think Lucy is especially missed in this book, though Jill Post takes her place. These are definitely conservative books and I thought they were excellently done and conveyed messages about Christianity and tradition and honor really well in the original three but this one had a really annoying motif about “Experiment House.” It always took me out of the story so much when Lewis felt the need to mention it, being the school that Eustace and Jill go to. It is some kind of progressive school that does not teach girls to curtsey, does not use the students’ “Christian names,” and does not teach students who Adam and Eve are (the students have never heard of them). I was laughing each time it was brought up because it was so edgy and it was honestly fine until the very end, when (*SPOILER ALERT*) Aslan literally brings King Caspian back to life so that he can spend five minutes in Eustace and Jill’s world… hitting all the students and teachers they don’t like at Experiment House. Like that is really how you wanted to finish this book? Clearly something had been pissing Lewis off when he was writing this one. Besides that, I would say this was a great book and if it hadn’t ended with the Experiment House stuff I would have said it was the next best after Dawn Treader.