The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis

I am always vaguely amused at the debate that goes on over the reading order of The Chronicles of Narnia and how worked up some people get over it. True, some books should be read before others and The Last Battle should definitely be read last; but in my own experience The Silver Chair (published fourth, written fifth*, and chronologically sixth in the series) was read first! Was my love and appreciation of Narnia ruined because of this? Of course not!

The Silver Chair is set about a year after the proceedings of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, in which Eustace Scrubb accompanied his cousins Lucy and Edmund Pevensie into Narnia and became a much better person for it. Returning to school as a reformed bully, he happens upon a fellow school-student Jill Pole crying behind the gym, and in an attempt to cheer her up, divulges the secret of Narnia and the great Aslan. Interrupted in their discussion, Eus... Read More