As far as my prior knowledge of the Chronicles of Narnia was concerned, books 4-7 were a complete mystery.
I mean, I knew there were 7 books in the series. But it seems to have been difficult for movie adaptations to get past The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
I imagine one of the reasons the movies have a more difficult time getting further into the series is that the children start rotating out.
Books 1 & 2 have all four Pevensie siblings: Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy.
Book 3 has Edmund & Lucy, and introduces their cousin Eustace.
Book 4, The Silver Chair, has none of the Pevensie siblings, and deals primarily with Eustace and a girl from his school named Jill.
Books 5 & 6 introduce different children entirely, but we’ll talk about that in future reviews.
In The Silver Chair, Eustace and Jill are brought to Narnia to rescue Rilian, the son of King Caspian, who has been missing for 10 years.
One of the problems I have with The Silver Chair is similar to one I had with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. There isn’t really a purpose to this book, other than it being a fun adventure for children to read about.
There’s no real reason why we need to know about Prince Rilian, and – now that I’ve finished all 7 books – I can say that the adventure itself doesn’t really add to the series as a whole. The only thing we take with us from this book to a later book, along with a brief mention of Father Time, is who the character Jill is.
And even then, she only comes back in book 7, and I don’t see why her part in that book couldn’t have been covered by another one of the children. I mean, Lucy comes back in that one too. Why did we need an entire book just to introduce a character named Jill?
Another aspect that I found unnecessary was that Eustace and Jill refer to each other by their last names. So, for the majority of the book, Eustace is called Scrubb. It was a little odd to have him called Eustace throughout book 3, and then spend almost the entirety of book 4 calling him Scrubb.
I mean, his character could have been an entirely different person.
Anyway, a decent adventure but still unnecessary.
Denver Nay Blogs 