This book is the first novel (not in writing order but in reading order which is the order I read them in and thus am blogging them in) in C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia series. As I tend to do with all series of books, I will reserve my overall reflections and recommendations until the last post in the series, and here simply resign myself to a spoiler-free-as-can-be plot summary.
Digory and Polly, two childhood friends, are playing in a garden when uncle Andrew invites them into his attic and tricks them into touching magic rings that transport them into another world. The exact otherness of these worlds are not really specified by the narrative, but they go through several different dimensions of place until they run into a scary lady called Jadis, who then tags along with them, back to England which she tries to take over, until they end up in a new place - Narnia, in the process of its being created ex nihilo by Aslan the Jesus-lion. Jadis has a hissy fit and throws away the lamp-post she'd been using as a weapon; it grows into a whole new lamp-post - then Aslan says hello to Digory and Polly, and uncle Andrew and the cab-driver who for some reason has come with them, Aslan summons the cab-driver's wife from England and makes her and him the new King and Queen of Narnia, and Digory and Polly go back to normal reality with uncle Andrew. It's a weird story, I know. I've left out a few details but nothing that really has any bearing on the rest of the books in the series other than that you should know that Jadis is still annoyed and knocking about Narnia somewhere, and Andrew stole a magical apple that he planted into his garden that might someday grow into a tree large enough that you could, if you wanted, make a wardrobe out of its wood... and one has to wonder whether said wardrobe would maintain some kind of magical linkage to the realm of its origin?
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