Book Review: “The Silver Chair”

Book twenty of my 2019 Reading Challenge.

C.S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair

The sixth book in the Chronicles of Narnia brings a new adventure and new characters to the series. I remember this being one of my favorite movies from the BBC film adaptations because of the characters and the different style of adventure it brought.

In this book we see Eustace, cousin to the Penvensie children, again with a new character, a schoolmate named Jill Pole. Eustace and Jill are summoned to Narnia by Aslan to help find and return Prince Caspian’s son who has been missing for 10 Narnian years. And if you’ve ever read the series or seen the movies you’ll know that in Narnia time moves differently. So when Eustace arrives again in Narnia he doesn’t realize the old frail king about to board a ship is his old friend Caspian.

After arriving and missing the chance to speak with his old friend, Eustace and Jill head out to find the lost prince with four key clues given to Jill by Aslan. Now this is where another new character is introduced and the adventure begins. Jill, who has just been introduced in this book, plays a key role in the journey that encompasses the book’s plot. Even though Jill is a new character I found that she fit well in Narnia. I liked that even though Eustace was the returning character the plot was focused on her and her own challenges. Her character really made or broke the individual tasks that made up the entire adventure.

The adventure in this book is similar to all the other books but with different challenges, tasks and settings for the characters. This was an aspect of the book that I really enjoyed because it took the characters outside of the areas we readers have already learned about in other books of the series. The tasks and challenges presented to the characters were unique compared to others thus keeping my interest.

In addition to the new characters, tasks and challenges and settings, the book was very fast paced which kept me interested and engaged. This cannot be said about the other books in the series so I found this refreshing.

I’m happy to have continued reading this series and with only one book left I am actually a bit sad about it all ending. Overall the series is an easy read and I enjoyed being able to read the books in only a few settings. I still recommend reading this series to anyone who is okay reading YA.

I won’t be jumping straight into the final installment of The Chronicles of Narnia quite yet, but I will read The Last Battle soon and post an overall series review.

Stay tuned for my next review: The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One by Amanda Lovelace.