As I mentioned in last week’s Worldbuilding Wednesday, almost none of Lewis’s female Narnian creatures received a name, whether they were Talking Beasts or mythological beings. I’ve attempted to rectify that here. Naiads and maenads have Greek-type names, and dryads and hamadryads those relating to trees. As Hamadryads are bonded only to a particular kind …
In addition to Talking Beasts, Narnia was home to many other beings from Western mythology, as well as a few Lewis created himself. Some were referenced often, like centaurs and dwarves. Others received just one mention, like the laundry list of baddies under the White Witch’s command who bind Aslan to the Stone Table. I’ve …
As written by Lewis, the Talking Beasts of Narnia cover a wide range of species. The Magician’s Nephew, which was the third book Lewis wrote (but the 6th published) gives a good depiction of their genesis: they bubble up from the earth itself like bubbles of gas through hot lava. There’s an elephant, big cats, …
Speaking of Prince Caspian, the book contains one of the most memorable of all the series’s peripheral characters: Reepicheep the Mouse, short in stature but long on bravery. To me he was the Narnia equivalent of Scrappy-Doo, Scooby-Doo’s more eloquent little nephew: annoying. He does introduce, however, the Narnian way of naming mice: three-syllable names …
C. S. Lewis actually wrote Prince Caspian, the second book of The Chronicles of Narnia, hot on the tail of the first. In it, he explored an idea he had been playing around with for a while: What if King Arthur actually returned to England during the Battle of Britain as prophesied (when England was …
British writer C. S. Lewis’s well-loved children’s fantasy series, The Chronicles of Narnia, began in 1950 with the publication of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by publisher Geoffrey Bles (in the U.S. Macmillan was the publisher.) The book was, according to Lewis, inspired by a drawing of a faun — a satyr — …
Of all the depictions of The White Witch, this is the closest that comes to my own vision of the character. Regal, aloof, alien, and seductive.
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi Pantheon Books, 2003 [Challenge # 29 : A graphic novel or comic book.] I finally got around to reading Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis which served as the graphic novel for this year’s reading challenge. It retread a lot of the ground I had just visited when I read Reading Lolita …
Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi Henry Holt and Co., 2019 I was impressed by Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone when it came out in 2018. It was something different, an African-based culture handled in a Western fantasy way. There’s a monarchy, magic-users who are persecuted, swords and armor, and exotic …
Surely its name was S’phink-Ter?