Roger Ebert has a very good review of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I agree with him that it seems inevitable that the series will tip over into R -- I don't see how The Last Battle can possibly avoid it. The joke about the animal inhabited by an archbishop is a good one, and I liked this point to ponder with which he ends:
But it's remarkable, isn't it, that the Brits have produced Narnia, the Ring, Hogwarts, Gormenghast, James Bond, Alice and Pooh, and what have we produced for them in return? I was going to say "the cuckoo clock," but for that you would require a three-way Google of Italy, Switzerland and Harry Lime.
I agree with Jared Wilson of Thinklings fame that Anna Popplewell's performance as Susan, although very likely to be overlooked, was excellent, and deserves commendation. The boys had nothing on the girls, although Skandar Keynes as Edmund managed to capture the look of an Edmund very well -- miserable and beastly simultaneously. I hope that when the Dawn Treader comes along they get someone who captures the look of a Eustace (my favorite character in the series) well. I think it's possible to exaggerate the weakness of Moseley's performance; I'm inclined to put it down to a weakly written part. Swinton as the White Witch was good -- she managed to come across as quite cold. I look forward to seeing how she does in The Magician's Nephew (my favorite book in the series), assuming that she continues with the role -- the signs are quite promising.
Other
I am very, very picky about fantasy -- it's my favorite genre, but it's a little like free verse: everyone can write it but only a handful of people can write it well. So I usually don't catch up to more recent good quality fantasy until quite a bit after everyone else. I had read China Mieville's Perdido Street Station and The Scar some months ago, but only got around to reading Iron Council yesterday. Of the three, PSS is still the one most worth reading. TS was a massive disappointment; a rather crude and unimpressive bit of misdirection that was only alleviated in its tediousness of plot by Mieville's undeniable talent for description. Fortunately the story of IC, while not up to the level of PSS, is much better. I confess, by the way, that I don't understand why he has a reputation as a 'gritty' or 'edgy' author. Perhaps my notion of 'gritty' and 'edgy' is much grittier and edgier than that of everyone else, but I just don't see it. There's certainly a lot of squalor in Mieville's world, but it's one of the things he conveys least satisfactorily -- he has an odd tendency to romanticize it. He also likes fight scenes, but does them remarkably badly -- again, his talent for description often saves him, but for battles that should be rather grim, they read an awful lot like staged pyrotechnics. (Admittedly, they are difficult to do properly.) Mieville does best, I think, with the political side of the story -- he's clearly quite comfortable here, and not stretching at all. IC, while less of a story, is very skillfully done -- better even than PSS in some ways, and I recommend it for those who like that style of storytelling. (Crooked Timber had a seminar on the book in January.)
Likewise, I only just recently got around to reading Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. It's a bit self-indulgent -- it could easily be a hundred pages shorter without serious damage to the story -- it's excellent, and I recommend it highly. (There was also a Crooked Timber seminar on it, much more recently.)
