The Magician's Nephew!

The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis was published in 1955 and is the next-to-last novel in The Chronicles of Narnia. That said, it's the one in which Lewis decided to share the story of how Narnia came to be. It's a story told well into the series and so Lewis is able to foreshadow many elements of this fanciful land, which is found by several means, but most famously through a wardrobe. Just a quick note to compliment the interior art by the renowned Pauline Baynes. 

The story begins in 1900, the turn of the previous century and our attention is drawn to Digory. He's a young boy who lives in a row house and is constantly on the lookout for something interesting to do. He finds a potential partner in the girl Polly who lives next door. They choose to go upon an adventure of sorts by prowling the dingy depths of the attic and find themselves unfortunately in the study of Digory's Uncle Andrew, a man with a bit of a recluse with a strange reputation. They soon discover that he's discovered a means to travel to other places in time and space and being a coward of sorts, he uses the two children as guinea pigs without hesitation. 

The two kids find themselves in a strange quiet wood and ultimately in the clutches of Jadis, a cruel and murderous sorceress. Despite their best efforts, Jadis follows the kids back to Uncle Andrew's study where she immediately schemes to conquer our world. That goes poorly and before you know the children, Uncle Andrew, Jadis and some other unfortunate souls find themselves in a distant territory in which they encounter the great lion Aslan. They have come at a propitious moment as they are witness to Aslan's creation of Narnia itself.

This is a nicely crafted tale with a really good pace. Both Digory and Polly are proper protagonists you can root for and both Uncle Andrew and Jadis are proper villains. The encounter with Aslan upsets the status quo in all sorts of fascinating ways.  We discover some cool secrets from the next volume, such as where a certain wardrobe came from and why there is a streetlamp in the middle of the forest. But this is just the beginning of the stories in Narnia. 

Next time, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. 

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