L'ultima battaglia (1956)

And so it ends.

Disappointing.

I really wish there were better things to say about [b:The Last Battle|84369|The Last Battle (Chronicles of Narnia, #7)|C.S. Lewis|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1308814830l/84369._SY75_.jpg|1059917]. After seeing the beginning of Narnia in [b:The Magician's Nephew|65605|The Magician's Nephew (Chronicles of Narnia, #6)|C.S. Lewis|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1308814770l/65605._SY75_.jpg|1031537] (what I can now safely say is my favorite of the series), I expected great things from the end of Narnia.

Thre's a decent enough start, with an Aslan impersonator taking power and a Colormene takeover plot (Racist much? They're literally called 'darkies' and are cartoonishly evil for the most part). That would be well enough. But then things start going terribly wrong and the good guys keep losing. That's... I mean, it's the last book of the series, but it's completely different from any of the rest of the stories.

But what really bugs me about this book?

Everyone dies and goes to 'Heaven'.

Not even kidding. We get (almost) all the gang back together, despite the fact that we're told they would never be able to return to Narnia--which I guess technically they didn't do--all except for Susan, who apparently is too grown up and interested in nylons to come back. Sexist much? She was a queen. She saved the land, more than once. I guess there's some vaguely silver lining in that apparently everyone else randomly died in a train wreck, but Susan gets to live? Without her family? Woo?

That really does bug me though. Couldn't they have all lived their normal lives and then timey wimeyed their way into Narnia at the 'same time'? We already know time is weird there. Nope. They just died. And what's worse, for some reason Aslan decides to just kill everyone in Nania. Sure. They go through the door to a 'better Narnia', but... no. They're dead. He killed the whole world.

I just... I don't like it. I don't get it. And I so enjoyed a number of the other books...

So it goes. Time for something else. ( )

Great ending to the series. ( )

This book makes me uneasy, quite frankly.

Look, I'll give Lewis props for a rather unexpected ending to the series. It's bold, mature and the exact opposite (in some ways) of the "everyone lives" philosophy of Russell T Davies or JK Rowling. Completely destabilising Narnia is something that feels visceral to anyone who fell in love with the books as a child. And I did enjoy, somewhat, the comic allegory of the faux Aslan.

But... pardon the pun, Jesus Christ this is skeevy. For the most part, the series as Christian allegory could be wilfully ignored if you wanted to just enjoy the texture of the books and their creation of a world. Not so much here, quite frankly. Even aside from Lewis' infamous "screw you" to Susan for, you know, being interested in sex and make-up, the book is rather blatant in what it wants to push on to children.

As I mentioned in my "Silver Chair" review, I'm not inherently against this. After all, it worked for such luminaries as Dante and Evelyn Waugh. But there's a clear difference here, I feel, and - while I can still appreciate the allegory even from my anti-religious bias - this simply doesn't feel like a fitting end to the Narnia series. Instead, it feels like an overly aggressive Sunday School teacher who's tired of just sitting around and telling kind stories. I completely understand Lewis' passion, from his point of view, to try and show the true terror of losing his world to a more secular one. It's just a pity that rather than simply writing essays about the perceived problem, he had to incorporate it so thoroughly into the final book of a much beloved children's series.

In spite of my beliefs, and the fact that Philip Pullman and his ilk have eradicated our generation's need for Narnia, I still treasure these books from my childhood, and always will. It's just a pity, that's all it is. ( )

I don’t really love this book for a lot of reasons that have been said by other people in a better way than me so instead I’ll say how charmed I am by the Talking Dogs. In real life talking dogs would be miserable to be around because they’d be constantly asking you for food and cuddles and then telling about every creature that comes near your house in detail because you don’t seem that interested (but you should be). But in a magical fantasy-land Talking Dogs are not annoying and it’s sweet and I want to go on a trip with them. ( )

Go-around #2 (or maybe #3) with kids. ( )