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A review by ar_etc
The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis
2.0
Yeah, not a good foot to have ended this series on.
Probably my least favorite of the novels for a number of reasons:
First point: The tone of this one is strangely dark - Early in the novel the king of Narnia, who is not yet 25, remarks to his unicorn bff " If we had died before today, we should have been happy" to which the unicorn replies "Yes, We've lived too long". And while I normally dig a gloomy YA story, that is just weird. For all that, I kind of like Tirian and Jewel and their friendship/suicide pact. They were highlights of the book for me. Lewis seemed to want to be done with the series (not sure why), but even anticipating that I found the ending to be kind of unpleasant and an invalidation of my emotional investment in this story. The book was a bummer and as such stuck out from the rest of the series in a bad way.
Second point: This novel features a return of POCs to Narnia, and sadly as a result is despicably racist. POCs are characterized as cruel slavers, manipulative, illogical, greedy, and "smelling of onions". yep. Not just one individual character, but the entire fictional race of people of color are said to smell like onions. Lewis' contempt for people of color is not at all subtle.
Point three: Also not subtle is the Christian religious allegory, which reaches a fever pitch in this one. Why do I bring this up so much as a problem? Basically, I hate being lectured to in fiction - a writer cannot possibly respect their readers if they also think they are morally superior to them. Furthermore, I find unsubtle religious allegories to lack imagination. There are definitely some subtle and interesting religious allegories in fiction - think Dostevsky, or Vonnegut. But this series preserves all the heavy handedness of a religious text and none of the ambiguity or conundrum of a more meaningful, persuasive religiously themed work. Finally I dislike books with an obvious agenda, and The Last Battle is straight up proselytizing. Would I have had such a problem with this if I had first read these as an unsuspecting child rather than a salty cynical adult? We’ll never know.
The whole thing was quite disappointing. My fondness for the doomed King and his unicorn bro aside and the excellent reading by Patrick Stewart (yeah, that's right Patrick Fucking Stewart reads the audiobook - so wasted), I really wish I had not read this and ended it on the high note of The Silver Chair.
Probably my least favorite of the novels for a number of reasons:
First point: The tone of this one is strangely dark - Early in the novel the king of Narnia, who is not yet 25, remarks to his unicorn bff " If we had died before today, we should have been happy" to which the unicorn replies "Yes, We've lived too long". And while I normally dig a gloomy YA story, that is just weird. For all that, I kind of like Tirian and Jewel and their friendship/suicide pact. They were highlights of the book for me. Lewis seemed to want to be done with the series (not sure why), but even anticipating that I found the ending to be kind of unpleasant and an invalidation of my emotional investment in this story. The book was a bummer and as such stuck out from the rest of the series in a bad way.
Second point: This novel features a return of POCs to Narnia, and sadly as a result is despicably racist. POCs are characterized as cruel slavers, manipulative, illogical, greedy, and "smelling of onions". yep. Not just one individual character, but the entire fictional race of people of color are said to smell like onions. Lewis' contempt for people of color is not at all subtle.
Point three: Also not subtle is the Christian religious allegory, which reaches a fever pitch in this one. Why do I bring this up so much as a problem? Basically, I hate being lectured to in fiction - a writer cannot possibly respect their readers if they also think they are morally superior to them. Furthermore, I find unsubtle religious allegories to lack imagination. There are definitely some subtle and interesting religious allegories in fiction - think Dostevsky, or Vonnegut. But this series preserves all the heavy handedness of a religious text and none of the ambiguity or conundrum of a more meaningful, persuasive religiously themed work. Finally I dislike books with an obvious agenda, and The Last Battle is straight up proselytizing. Would I have had such a problem with this if I had first read these as an unsuspecting child rather than a salty cynical adult? We’ll never know.
The whole thing was quite disappointing. My fondness for the doomed King and his unicorn bro aside and the excellent reading by Patrick Stewart (yeah, that's right Patrick Fucking Stewart reads the audiobook - so wasted), I really wish I had not read this and ended it on the high note of The Silver Chair.