Tash is the antithesis of Aslan the lion. In The Last Battle he’s the principal god of Calormen, a horrid epitome of an ancient Middle Eastern deity who receives sacrificial victims in bizarre and novel ways, like being tied up inside a brass bull which is heated by a wood-burning fire from below. He’s cut …
In The Last Battle, Lewis introduces the reader to Narnia’s equivalent of Satan: Tash. Tash is the foremost deity of the desert nation of Calormen, mentioned first in The Horse and His Boy. However, in that book we are not told what he looked like, only his temple: it has a silver-plated roof and sits …
Lewis ended the Narnia Chronicles after seven books. Not only that, he burned that bridge behind him: In The Last Battle, both Narnia and the child protagonists are destroyed. But what if he made a never-ending series of Narnia, or allowed other writers to carry on his work, as L. Frank Baum did with Oz? …
Lewis heavily drew on pulp SF and fantasy tropes to create the masterpiece that is Charn; but he also drew on the good old-fashioned fire and brimstone of The Bible. Since it was, and may still be, the most-read book in Western Civilization, it’s natural that many of its stories influenced fiction of a fantastic …
One of the questions I always wanted answered about Narnia-the-world is that of other civilizations. Sure, we had Narnia; then Telmar, dull and problematic as it was, and Archenland in Prince Caspian; in the next book Galma, Terabinthia, Calormen, and the Seven Isles came along, then Ettinsmoor and the Underworld in The Silver Chair. But …
First editions of the Narnia books, grouped all together.
Charn is my favorite Lewisian creation … more than Aslan, more than Narnia itself. No other place in fantasy embodies such grandeur, sinisterness, and decadence … which is quite the accomplishment, as Lewis only gives hints of it. Jadis herself says, in a reflective moment: I have stood here when the whole air was full …
So, with The Last Battle, we come to the end of the Narnia series, and of Narnia. There’s not much to say, except “Everybody dies.” Or sort of. Really, it’s not as bad as all that. I actually started to read Battle immediately after LW&W, and was rather confused, as you can imagine. I wanted …
I am not sure what language this is (Czech?) but the book seems to be Prince Caspian, going by the prominence of Susan’s bow and horn, Reepicheep, and Trufflehunter on the borders. The second creature from the left could be one of the Bulgy Bears, or a de-maned Aslan. The goofy “wizard” of the central …