My goodness there's a lot of chicanery going on here.

Somehow I always remember the end, but don't ever remember the whole plot leading up to it. The "false Aslan" plot with ape, donkey, and Calormene just feels so strange. It feels so like something that doesn't belong in a Narnia book. I'm not sure why.

Once Eustace and Jill get there, the action is interesting enough to read, but the whole meat of this book is the end, I think. People have written entire essays for decades on the end, so I won't be doing that. I am trying to take it in exactly the way Lewis intended the children reading this to take it: with simple hope and joy.