Thursday, February 2, 2017

To Narnia and Back (January Book Wrap-Up)

I have my reasons for why my January wrap-up is a couple of days late, but I won't go into them. Suffice it to say that I was SUPER close to finishing The Chronicles of Narnia by the end of last month, and rather than wait until the end of February to give you my review I decided to just postpone January's wrap-up by a couple of days. So here we are!

Writing
I did not end up writing the 1,000 words I'd set with NaNo's Goal Tracker for Follow the Raven last month. I don't even have an excuse for this; I just didn't do it. However I've set a new goal for February to write 5,000 words of the story, which will probably take up about the first two chapters or so.

In the world of Wattpad, I released my brand-new Sonic fanfiction, "Everything Changes," on January 27. The story has had a great kickoff, with 132 reads, 23 votes, and one comment so far. The story will really begin to get under way this month, obviously. I'm looking forward to what my readers have to say about the new direction I've taken.

Reading
My reading list for January was pretty straightforward. All of the books I read were part of the Narnia series, with the exception of the first one (the promised library book, which I'll get to in a moment).


The story behind why I read The Hating Game is fairly simple. Late summer of last year my bookworm friend Kailey discovered this book (which incidentally happened to be published on her 21st birthday, I later found out) and fell in love with it instantly. She raved and raved about this book and how much she wanted the entire world to read it and so on. Kind of like me with Skulduggery Pleasant. She begged me to drop all other reading priorities in order to read this one book, which she now calls her all-time favorite. So I finally promised her that I would make it one of the books I read in January. As it turned out, it was the first book I read in January. Kailey gave this book five stars. I gave it three. Don't get me wrong; for what it is, this book was great. It certainly had its moments. However, my main issue with The Hating Game was that it was NOT my genre. I am a heavy fantasy / sci-fi / magical realism reader and this book was a romantic comedy that was predictable and cliche. There were definitely parts of it that I enjoyed, but ultimately I knew how it was going to end WAY before I ever reached the final pages, and books like that just kind of fall flat for me. So, as promised, I read The Hating Game. It was okay for what it was. And now I'm going to move on from it.

*Spoilers Ahead*
Now, before I begin my review of The Chronicles of Narnia, I feel it important to note that I read this series in chronological order. That's how the set I was given for Christmas was designed. And actually I'm glad I read it chronologically, because it helps me piece together the events a lot easier and I can better give you my thoughts on the rise and fall of Narnia as a whole.

This series in its entirety is really very good and very well-written. I've never truly been able to appreciate C.S. Lewis as an author until now. I loved that everything in Narnia had a story behind it, down to the iconic lamp-post. I thoroughly enjoyed the stories of every character I read about. I would love to visit Narnia if I could.

What really blew my mind was how much of a parallel the story of Narnia is to the story of our own world, from Adam and Eve to the Rapture and beyond. Of course I was aware that C.S. Lewis was a Christian author and that Aslan was the Narnian equivalent of Jesus, but I had no idea how much so until now. I loved Aslan so much in every book I read; how much more will I certainly love Jesus when I meet Him face to face? Ahhh. I could go on about the awesomeness of this parallel for days. Suffice it to say I found it very well done and I'm now kind of sad the series is over. (But the last line of the last book was one of - if not THE - greatest I've ever read in my life.)

There were a couple of things that did kind of come as a shock to me. First was that Susan eventually went on to become "no longer a friend of Narnia," which essentially means she turned her back on Aslan. I was surprised about that at first, but then again, her character always was the most grounded in the 'real world.' The other thing that came as a shock was that the rest of the friends of Narnia died in England and that's why they were able to live in the new Narnia forever. That was thrown in so casually on the last page of the last book that I was just like, "Wait...what?!" I can't say that I thought it was a fitting ending to their real-world stories, but it is what it is.

These are my favorite books in the series, in order from best to least favorite:
The Silver Chair
The Magician's Nephew
The Last Battle
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Horse and His Boy
Prince Caspian
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

All of the books in the series earned a three-star rating from me, with the exception of the last two on the list above, which earned two stars. If I were to rate the entire series overall, I'd give it a 3.5. It really was very well written and I enjoyed the stories very much. I'm actually really glad that getting them for Christmas (and thus putting them on my TBR) became an excuse to finally read them all.

Also, as a possibly irrelevant side-note, my favorite character in the entire seven books was Puddleglum from The Silver Chair. I love him so much I can't even.

And there you have it! (Finally.) Now I'm off to go on my annual blind date with a book. As of this post I still have not unwrapped it yet, so it's still a mystery. Find out what book I ended up with at the end of the month when I do my February wrap-up! See you next time!
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