The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

This was always among my favorite of the Narnia books. Lucy and Edmund are having a frustrating holiday at their cousin’s house- Eustace is annoying to be around, argumentative and rather sour-tempered. “Something of a prig” I think they referred to him as. He’s been making fun of them for talking about Narnia- thinking it’s all make-believe, when suddenly they’re pulled into the magical world via a painting on the wall. They find themselves on board a ship with Prince Caspian, and it’s only been a few years since Edmund and Lucy last saw him. Caspian is on an adventure, seeking seven lords of Narnia who had fled the usurping uncle into exile. They sail to some distant but known islands, and then into uncharted territory, traveling further and further East until they literally come to the very end of the world. Each island they land on presents a different adventure, challenge, or fantastic puzzle they have to solve. Admittedly, to me some of them were boring (like the first, where some of the children are sold into slavery and Caspian gets rid of a governing party that had taken things in the wrong direction). On the different islands they encounter a dragon, water that turns anything it touches into gold (dangerously), funny not-very-intelligent dwarf creatures called the Dufflepuds who think they’ve been cursed with ugliness, men who have fallen into an enchanted decade-long sleep at a banquet table, and a horrible place where dreams come true. Lucy faces temptation in a book of magic spells, Eustance undergoes a transformation that changes his attitude towards things, Reepicheep (the talking mouse) finds the final adventure he had always longed for. They also encounter terrible storms, a sea serpent, and at several different times, Aslan himself. Lucy even glimpses sea-folk that live in the ocean (not mermaids). Morality is gently present in most of the adventures, and the characters are interesting. This time around, I didn’t quite believe Eustace’s personality would have had such an about-face so quickly, but I was just as intrigued as ever in the description when he first woke up in that cave and didn’t know what had happened to him. In the end, they find out what happened to all the missing lords, Caspian meets a beautiful lady he will someday wed, and the three children are sad to be escorted out of Narnia by the Lion once again. Back to the dull, ordinary boring world.