The Irresponsible Reader

Prince Caspian

by C. S. Lewis , illustrated by Pauline Baynes

DETAILS:
Series: The Chronicles of Narnia, #2
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication Date: July 01, 1994
Format: Paperback
Length: 223 pg.
Read Date: November 8-10, 2025

If you need to know what this book is about, or anything about this series…seriously, just stop what you’re doing and pick up this book. I don’t mean to be a snob, or maybe I do, but something was missing from your childhood, and now is your time to fix it. I realize that there are many legitimate reasons for people not to have read this (more for some of the later books), and I’m not questioning the choices you or your parents made (actually, I guess I am). But I’m not going to try to talk about this book like I do most others.

If only because everything worth saying has been said by other, better, writers. Probably several times.

I’ve also read this too many times to count as a child—even through my college years, and at least once a decade since. I’ll probably pick up the pace of re-reading them so I can talk to the grandcritters about them, too.

But I feel the need to say something now, so here are a few things that jumped out at me during this read:

The cover on the edition we bought for our kids is just bad. The art’s fine, but this is a silly scene to capture. It really makes me miss the version I had growing up.
It’s so hard to be patient with the Pevensies as they suss out where and when they are.
I enjoyed the way that Trumpkin stumbled while trying to recap Caspian’s story and then just had to start at the beginning. I think this was a pretty smart move for impatient readers–give them a little bit of our friends and then go back to tell Caspian’s story–if he’d started with Caspian and his Nurse, how many of us would’ve put the book down? This way we get the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, some excitement, then the long backstory, and we’re back into the action.
I loved the way Reepicheep was introduced. NB: I love everything about Reepicheep, so I won’t note every example.
It was good to see (and helped the single combat later on be believeable) the way that Narnia is slowly making the Pevensies back into who they were.

“Such a horrible idea has come into my head, Su.”
“What’s that?”
“Wouldn’t it be dreadful if some day in our won world, at home, men started going wild inside, like the animals here, and still looked like men, so that you’d never know which were which?”
“We’ve got enough to bother about here and now in Narnia,” said the practical Susan, “without imagining things like that.”

And if you like that kids, let me tell you about some books I’ve written for grown-ups…
I truly appreciate the way that Edmund sticks up for Lucy here contra-Peter and Susan when it comes to beliving her experiences. As annoyed as I am with Susuan, Peter actually thinking Lucy’s right, but weaseled away from it is far worse.
The betrayal of Nikabrik and the way he talks about Dwarfs sounds like Mr. Beaver’s prejudice. I’m glad we have Trumpkin, our DLF, and others to show him wrong.
While dictating his letter, I rather enjoyed Peter (who surely looked like a punk kid) getting picky about the spelling used by a noted scholar.
Trufflehunter’s insistence that animals don’t change, their beliefs are rock-solid, unlike flighty humans/human-esque people is striking. That has to be an impact of Eve–but where do Dwarfs come from then?

The first house they came to was a school: a girls’ school, where a lot of Narnian girls, with their hair done very tight and ugly tight collars round their necks and thick tickly stockings on their legs, were having a history lesson. The sort of “History” that was taught in Narnia under Miraz’s rule was duller than the truest history you ever read and less true than the most exciting adventure story.

That last sentence is such a good one.

…all the-Talking Beasts surged round-the Lion, with purrs and grunts and squeaks and whinnies of delight, fawning on him with their: tails, rubbing against him, touching him reverently with their noses and going to. and fro under his body and between his legs. If you have ever seen a little cat loving a big dog whom it knows and trusts, you will have a pretty good picture of their behavior.

That last sentence is such a good one, too.
We just don’t get enough time from Caspian’s victory to the end of the book. There wasn’t a lot of denouement in the first volume, either. But this felt too rushed.
That last line–which is simply not good–makes me think of the last line of an 80s TV show. Someone makes a dumb joke while the entire cast is sitting together, they all laugh too hard at it and the picture freezes before the credits roll.

This is the first of 3 Caspian novels–putting him on a level with Lucy and Edmund for appearances. There’s not a lot of deep theology here, just Aslan’s protection of the land with direct intervention when called for–with Old Narnia’s royals along for the ride (somewhat literally). I liked the different way the children were pulled into Narnia–I really like young Caspian here–and everything else. It’s just a fun read.

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