Planet Narnia by Michael Ward

We got to go on a Caribbean cruise a few months ago, and in addition to being a ton of fun, it allowed me to actually catch up on some "real book" reading (as opposed to audiobooks, which constitute about 90% of my reading list). Near the top of my list was Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis, a literary analysis of the Narnia series that makes a rather interesting claim. According to the author, Lewis wrote the seven books of the series to correspond to the seven medieval planets: Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Saturn, Mercury, the Sun and the Moon.

I thought the idea was interesting at first, then after reading his first chapter, which added to the initial claim and made the planetary link the main and central reason for writing the entire series, I was like "riiiiight . . . no I'm pretty sure the Christian allegory was his main reason". But over the course of the book, he builds a pretty good case. He starts by addressing the 'kappa' element in literature, which Lewis had written about in cases such as Spenser's Faerie Queen--a kind of secret meaning behind a large work. The whole point of the kappa element is that it must remain hidden, the author himself can never call attention to it, which is why Lewis had no problem discussing the Christian allegory angle, but never let on to the planetary links. This was the high point of my skepticism, it just sounded way to conspiracy-theoryish to be true.

However, the fun part was the book-by-book analysis of the series. Ward explains the themes and attributes that belong to each planet, how Lewis identified these attributes/themes and used them in his other works (mostly unpublished poetry and his Space Trilogy, so the ST is basically prerequisite reading), and finally how they were used in their particular book. These ranged from the large scale aspects of the plot and setting to seemingly insignificant details like word choice, colors ,names, and metallic elements.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, although it probably doesn't have universal appeal. If you really like Lewis, Narnia, and super-detailed literary analysis, you'll love Planet Narnia :-p otherwise, it's very easy to get lost in the mire.