Why the Magician's Nephew Fails

This will contain Spoilers, though I doubt anyone cares. If you do, you've been warned.

I haven't been able to re-read Narnia since I was about 12 because I find all the religious symbolism too difficult to ignore. It's laid on so thick that it spoils the experience for me. However, I did recently decide to give them another read and see what happens. I started with the first one in chronological order: The Magician's Nephew. I like to refer to it as the one that should never have existed. 

It actually started really well with the two children Polly and Digory who spend their time sneaking around some type of weird passageway between their attics. Unfortunately, with all this sneaking they end up in Digory's uncle's study. Digory's uncle, uncle Andrew, is not a pleasant man. He tricks Polly into touching a magic ring that will transport her into some other world (because he's too scared to go check it out himself) and then guilts Digory into going after her with the ring that can bring her back. This part of the story was amusing. I even accepted the whole Charn episode where they meet the white witch and bring her back to London. It was highly amusing. 

But then when we get to Narnia everything just becomes unbearably fake. The "birth of Narnia" thing got on my nerves and then from there on the whole story with the witch and the apple and the magical tree was stupid. I especially hated the changes that Aslan was making left right and center. Why did strawberry's name have to become Fledge? Seriously, Fledge?!! And then the cabby and his wife who become King and Queen of Narnia apparently lose their accents, because how can you possibly be a King with that lower class accent? *headdesk* It's all just stupid and contrived and loses any sense of adventure that was present in the first half of the book. 

At some point as I was reading I realized that the only reason Lewis wrote this book was to explain how the lamppost and wardrobe got there and to show his own super-symbolic version of creation, not to tell a story.  That's why it failed. There wasn't really a solid story behind it and the whole concept of "explaining" the lamppost is stupid. You don't need to explain the lamppost. It's just there and it's awesome. It's part of the magic of Narnia. Explaining how it got there only spoils it. 

In short, if you are thinking of reading Magician's Nephew just don't. At least, not until you've read all the other ones, the ones that actually have a story.