humans long before the events in the Ring trilogy,
a desire that caused a fatal rift between their race
and that of the elves. The conflict eventually re-
sults in war, and it is only after considerable de-
struction that the Dark Lord is defeated and the
threat ended, although it is later revived in altered
form with the rise of Sauron.
Based on other notes left by Tolkien, his son
Christopher later published a multivolume series of
histories of Middle Earth. Other associated mate-
rial by Tolkien senior was also published in two
volumes as The Book of Lost Tales(1983). In com-
bination with The Silmarillion,these additional ti-
tles provide the most complete history of a
fictional reality ever written.
The Silver Chair C. S. Lewis(1953)
The fourth book of the CHRONICLES OF NARNIAby
C. S. LEWISis cast in the form of the traditional
fantasy quest, an adventure in which Eustace
Scrubb, the human boy who appeared first in THE
VOYAGE OF THE“DAWN TREADER,”along with a
new character from our world, Jill Pole, are trans-
ported to the world of Narnia. The two are
lamenting the bullying tactics of their schoolmates
when they are summoned to that magical land by
Aslan, the mystical Christ figure who appears in
the form of a lion. Aslan gives the children a series
of signs to watch for. Jill gets them confused, and
Eustace is too impatient to listen to her at critical
moments.
Caspian is still king, but his death is immi-
nent. The future of Narnia is in jeopardy because
Caspian’s son, Prince Rilian, has been missing for
many years, and every effort to find him has met
with failure. The signs given to the children will
supposedly save the day, but only if the children
have faith in them and understand their some-
times unclear meanings. They set out on their
own rescue mission, even though that will take
them into the territory of the potentially hostile
giants in search of a ruined city under which Ril-
ian may be imprisoned. They encounter a woman
in green who gives them supposedly helpful ad-
vice, although even unsophisticated readers will
likely suspect her motives. She is, in fact, the
chief villain, the Emerald Witch who is responsi-
ble for Rilian’s captivity and who also appears in
the form of a serpent. The children fall in with
the giants as guests for a feast, unaware of the
fact that they are meant to be the main course,
until they fortuitously stumble across a cookbook
with a recipe for humans, which seems inconsis-
tent with the author’s previous statement that
humans, were unknown in that world until quite
recently.
Although they have consistently misread the
signs, Eustace and Jill reach the underground city
and encounter the Knight, who is blindly loyal to
the Emerald Queen except for one hour each night
when he is confined to an enchanted silver chair
during a spell of “madness,” which we and eventu-
ally the children recognize as his only moment of
actual sanity. The children release him, the spell is
broken, and the Knight is revealed as Prince Ril-
ian, although another confrontation with the
witch queen nearly reverses their victory. The Silver
Chairhad the most complex plot in the series at
that point and was of much more interest to adult
readers than the previous volumes.SilverlockJohn Myers Myers(1949)
John Myers Myers spent most of his life writing his-
torical novels and nonfiction, but his reputation
rests almost entirely on this single fantasy novel.
Silverlockis as much a game as a story, because the
protagonist, Silverlock, survives a shipwreck and
then experiences an episodic series of adventures
in the land of Commonwealth, which is actually
the sum total of all fictional worlds created by the
human imagination. The very large cast of charac-
ters includes a large number of figures from other
works of fiction, although they are generally dis-
guised and sometimes unrecognizable.
His encounters are often quite cleverly done,
although the book never really holds together as a
novel. Readers should have no difficulty picking
out the more obvious characters—Robin Hood,
Robinson Crusoe, Beowulf, Don Quixote, and
Circe, for example—but others are sufficiently ob-
scure to evade easy identification. To remedy this,
there exists The Silverlock Companion (1961),
edited by Fred Lerner, which explains all the allu-
sions and reveals the concealed identities.322 The Silver Chair