3 stars

this book felt like a fever dream. can’t say it’s my favourite narnian story, but rather my least favourite at the moment. it didn’t have the same magic the other books have, and i couldn’t connect with the characters like i connected with our original 4 and caspian. if anything seeing caspian old was sad, i thought we would’ve had another story with him adventuring, maybe with his son. but instead he was really old, sailed away, came back to reunite with his son, then DIED? now he’s in aslans country frolicking with reepicheep.

our marshwiggle puddleglum was my favourite new character, especially with the audiobook sounding like hagrid. jill was sorta meh, she reminded me a little of wendy from peter pan.

the entire underground plot line fell a little flat for me. it reminded me of the story of yecuc and mecuc (scary islamic belief), which gave me yucky feelings, but then it disappeared pretty fast. prince rillians character felt a little underdeveloped compared to what we have seen in earlier books, but maybe he will be back in the final book? i’m not too sure.

the witch of the underworld being the same kind as our original white witch was fun, but even she was too easily defeated. this woman who had the prince and the entire underworld enchanted under her spell to create an army and function as a society got defeated in a couple chapters? i wanted some more from her.

i will note that the journey into the underworld did a great job at making me feel claustrophobic. the descriptions of us going deeper and deeper, with the tunnels getting tighter, and the light being nothing - did not like that feeling

i liked the religious messages i pulled from it, and still enjoyed my time. butttt this is sitting at the bottom of my ranking system now, pushing the horse and his boy up a level

onto the next!