Review - The Silver Chair

The last two books are definitely not in line for my favourites, when it comes to Narnia. There are various factors -- one of which is simply that I don't like seeing Narnia come to an end! But the main one is that I don't find Jill, Eustace and Puddleglum that compelling as main characters. Or Rillian, for that matter, even though he's Caspian's son. They're quite realistic and human, and lack the nobility that Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy have, I think. Perhaps too realistic. I want to kick Jill a lot of the time for making excuses and not doing what she knows is right. Nobody else is much better. Puddleglum is an interesting idea for a character, but I don't find him that compelling.

It doesn't help that this book is fairly dreary. Snow, stone, cold, giants, underground, sunless seas... there are some beautiful, beautiful sections, like the description of Bism, and little gems about Narnia, like about how serious it is to ask a centaur to stay for the weekend. Overall, though, I find it hard to get into and sympathise with the characters.

I do find myself tearing up, even now, at Caspian's death and renewal.

Review - The Last Battle

This is probably my least favourite of all the Narnia books. I often skipped this, when I was younger, and actually contemplated it this time. The characters are not my favourites, at all -- Tirian and Jewel inspire me with no particular affection, and while I actually find Eustace and Jill less annoying than in The Silver Chair, I don't find them compelling either.

What makes the book worth it, for me, is the end. It's hard, because it's the end of Narnia, but it's also a beautiful end -- the Time giant, the stars falling, squeezing the sun out, and everyone going to Aslan's country. I liked the universalist aspect of what happens to Emeth (although I have problems with the good god/bad god thing with Aslan/Tash -- it's all very binary, which is not what I believe). It's good to see a "nice" Calormene character.

Thinking about it, the writing is also less friendly and more serious than in the other books. It's hard to make a last stand sound like fun and games.

Review - The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood

Read this for my Robin Hood module, as with Ivanhoe. This is the second book which I just couldn't read as anything but an English Literature student; my lit student hat remained firmly jammed upon my head. It pains me to read other people's reviews and thoughts on this, given that they're so wildly inaccurate about it. E.g. someone thinking it was "the" book of Robin Hood (and not knowing about the ballad tradition, or the forerunners to this such as Ivanhoe). Or someone thinking it's written in Old English (see also: my review of Ivanhoe). Seriously, no, guys. It's not even Middle English. It's faux-Middle English in parts, but it isn't even that old a text, for God's sake. Even Shakespeare (late 1500s/early 1600s) was writing in Modern English. This was written in 1883 or so, right? About as Anglo-Saxon as what I'm writing right now!

And then people thinking this is "the" book, the original. Sheesh.

Obviously, a lot of the stories come straight from the surviving ballads -- perhaps all; I haven't read every single Robin Hood ballad. They're expanded upon by Howard Pyle, in that he writes them out as a coherent narrative and with all the same characters recurring, and obviously it's not in verse. It's a pretty sanitised version, given that Robin rarely kills as an outlaw: once when he becomes an outlaw (as opposed to the fifteen he kills in the original ballad, Robin Hood's Progress to Nottingham) and once when he kills Guy of Gisborne (and unlike in the ballad, he doesn't cut Guy's face off). It wasn't obvious that it was an adaptation for children, from the language -- it's not exactly difficult, but nor is it easy or exciting. Still, in the time period, perhaps that's not surprising. (I should have some basis of comparison, given my Introduction to Children's Literature course, but I can't bring anything to mind right now.) The sanitisation gave it away rather, in any case.

I did get kind of bored reading it, honestly. Each tale is more or less the same -- they're practically all "Robin meets his match" stories, and at the end the stout yeoman will join the band. The writing isn't intensely exciting, as I mentioned. I did enjoy it, and possibly would have enjoyed it more in small doses. And, of course, it's very episodic so it can easily be read in small chunks.

It's, ah, one of the more 'homosocial' Robin Hood stories I've read, honestly. There are two or three mentions of Marian, at most, and she doesn't come into it as a character at all -- I half-expected a chapter that came from Robin Hood and Maid Marian. And Will Scarlet is so very, very camp. And Little John and Robin are so very very close. It kind of read like a slashfic of Robin Hood, sometimes.

I will confess, the epilogue made me want to cry. Oh, Robin. Incidentally, apparently tales of Robin's death are quite rare, and this is one of the few.

(Note: If anyone wants links to the ballads, or indeed, this book, online, I know where the book can be downloaded legally as an ebook, and where the ballads are collected online.)