What a timely title that is: The Last Battle. So many people, including Christians, think we are in the last days, the battle(s) before the end of the world. Maybe that’s true, but who knows? The world’s gone through some pretty bad times before now and still went on. Our times now are projected to get tougher, but, hey, we get tougher with it.

This is my least favorite book in The Chronicles of Narnia. I realized I’d never actually read the whole thing, because Puzzle and Shift and the wearing of the lion skin made me sick to my stomach. No different this time. Ugh. Really, I only liked the very end, when everyone, all the children now grown up, now young again, who had ever visited Narnia get to go to heaven or Aslan’s country.

I so admire Tirian’s bravery and also that of Eustace and Jill. No lack of fighting here. However, I was kind of bored by it and just sad about the false Aslan, the false god. Perhaps it was just too gloomy for me. I also wasn’t sure what to make of Lewis’s including of a character who did not believe in Aslan in Aslan’s country. Going by allegory, it is not theology in line with the Bible, for the Bible says faith in Jesus is what one must have for salvation. But, perhaps this young man always believed in Aslan, or Jesus, and just didn’t know his name? Certainly people before Jesus was born on earth still believed in him, in God’s promise of a Savior, and were saved, so maybe Lewis is getting at something like that. It was perplexing, though, and not clarified well.

The very end is great, Lewis’s vision of heaven is pretty neat, although it is sad that the Pevensies all died in a train accident. Fortunately they don’t care and are on to bigger and better adventures. How great it was to have all the characters of all the stories together. What fun they will have!

Maybe someday I will read The Last Battle again and appreciate it more. I know a lot of fans of the series really like this one.

To conclude: My favorite is still The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, though it was fun reading all seven books. I realize that in many ways I have grown up and maybe can’t appreciate the series the same way in which I did as a child. Being grown up isn’t so bad, though, we have our adventures too.