Book Review

Last night was very trying for me, and I handled it in typical Jana fashion. I curlled up with a book that seems like a friend. You can become so familiar with a book that every word in it is familiar, like comfort food only less fattening.

"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" is right in the middle of the Chronicles of Narnia. I read it as #3, but I know most people now-a-days consider it #5, but either way it's really good. The first line in it "There was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it"

This one is about King Caspian, the two younger kids, and their cousin Eustace, as they sail out to the eastern end of the world, searching for 7 people that went into hiding 10 years ago. On there adventures they find a cave that turns people into what they are in their hearts, and a river that finds what's underneath. They find another river that has the Midas power, and dicover the difference between the worth of an object, and the worth of a soul. They learn about what governs a God, and why someone with those powers does the things He does.

I have always loved the personifications C.S. Lewis puts into the Chronicles (i.e. "The birtch was the graceful and majestic lady of the wood, watching the Lords of the Sky (stars) tread their celestial dance) and this book brings that up to a whole new level. Somtimes I get lost in how poetic it sounds, and forget to wonder what the point of the story is. But when you really listen with your spiritual ears, so many eternal truths are between those pages.

I was reading about a wizard (I think a prophet figure in this book) named Coriarkin who is very unpopular with the people he has been given charge over because he makes so many unreasonable demands. He wants them to draw water from the stream 1/2 a mile away rather than walk 5 miles to the well several times a day. More importantly, he wants them to grow a garden, since there is no contact with the world off the island. It made me think that as human beings we can have a tendancy to complain about comandments, but really Heavenly Father's only purpose is to help us be happy. Every comandment ever given has been to that end.

I would love if all my blog readers could tell me what gems they have found in this wonderful story. I would love to look at it from new angles, like the lifelong friend that can still suprise you.