Diego Delavega Delavega থেকে Mohlai, Chhattisgarh 493773, India
It should be said that this book opens with a tremendously wonderful first line: "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." It's not necessarily downhill from there, it's just that I wouldn't so much call this book plotless as I would call it a sort of collection of linked short stories. Really, it seems the the Dawn Treader's trip was an excuse for Lewis to come up with more outlandish environments (given that the only thing particularly strange about Narnia is the talking animals). Each island the ship visits has unusual geography or strange residents or some crisis to be averted...but the boat bits are either "the water was calm and they sailed quickly" or "the water was choppy and they were relieved find land." The introduction of Eustace was interesting. I suppose it's always useful to have a naysayer/contrarian character (there's at least one in each of the last two books), and it was interesting to see what Lewis clearly believes to be bad parenting/lifestyle choices. My favorite island was with the Dufflepuds, largely because I love that Magician. More magicians please! It was in this book, too, that I really started paying attention to the biblical allusions. Baptism seems the most obvious theme recurring in this one. I look forward to reading some commentary about this later.