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I knew the story well, of course. Edmund and Lucy are staying with their unpleasant cousin Eustace, who is rather a bully. The book was first published in 1952, and CS Lewis was rather judgemental about many ‘new’ ideas. He says, rather scathingly, that Eustace’s parents were vegetarians, non-smokers, and teetotal. Their style of living was minimalist and they kept their windows open. It sounds to me like a healthy way of living, and rather unfair to blame this (and the lack of any corporal punishment) on Eustace being a bully who likes to complain about everything.
Eustace is also quite practical and interested in science, but has very little imagination. So when he hears about his cousins previous forays into Narnia, he dismisses it as rubbish, and likes to tease them. But when he finds them looking at a very realistic painting of a Narnian ship, he has to agree that the waves really do look as if they’re moving… and, with his cousins, he finds himself rescued from the sea, on the ship Dawn Treader.
Caspian is only three years older than in the previous book - Narnian time and its relationship to our world is quite unpredictable. He’s on his way to unexplored seas, in the hope of finding out what happened to seven lords who were banished by his wicked uncle Miraz. They were mentioned in the previous book, almost in passing.
The bulk of the book then covers different adventures as the crew discover new lands. Each chapter is complete in itself rather than having an overall plot, other than the gradual crossing off from Caspian’s list. He discovers one of the lords living in a place where slaves are still sold; then, in different circumstances, he finds - or, at least assumes - that two of them are dead. He had hoped to avenge any deaths, but this is not appropriate in either case.
I have to admit I didn’t find the book as gripping or exciting as I did after previous readings. I did like the well-known chapter where Eustace is transformed into something unpleasant, and goes through some serious heart-searching before meeting Aslan. I didn’t find the ‘Deathwater island’ section nearly as scary as I did as a teenager, when I used to avoid reading it entirely. I liked the chapter where Lucy is persuaded to find a magic spell to make some unusual people visible. And I loved the ending.
However, the chapter with the sea-serpent and the one with the ‘dark’ island feel more like fillers than relevant to the story. I know this is how ‘quest’ books tend to work - each chapter has a new problem or difficulty, and it’s solved by the end of the chapter. And the writing is good, with a fast pace and some interesting dialogues. Eustace is an interesting character, as is the very different Reepicheep.
But I didn’t find it particularly gripping, and sometimes forgot to read at all. It’s not just familiarity with the story; I loved rereading ‘The magician’s nephew’ in April, and ‘The lion, the witch and the wardrobe’ in May. I was surprised at how much I liked ‘The horse and his boy’, which I reread in June; I hadn’t recalled enjoying it much when I was younger.
This is still a good story, and I love some of the Christian symbolism which seems to me to be stronger in this book than in the earlier ones. Indeed, the scene at the end where Aslan talks to the children was what gave me a major ‘aha!’ moment about the analogies when I was perhaps eleven or twelve, so this book (or its ending, anyway) has an important place in my heart. It’s certainly worth reading as part of the series. But I wouldn’t any longer rate it as one of my absolute favourites of the Narnia books.
As with the others in the series, this is suitable for fluent readers of about seven or eight and upwards, or as a read-aloud. There are some tense scenes, which some children might find frightening, but nothing inappropriate.
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