A review by mattdavenport
The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis

4.0

A refreshingly brilliant installation in a series that has overall been kind of disappointing. None of the blatant racism/sexism problems found in some other books are found here, and the smaller issues I've had of distractingly off-track dialogues and pointless plot points are lessened dramatically. Instead, we meet two kids who's interactions and motivations are actually interesting, and we get an amazing allegory for the Creation story, the temptation/detriment of sin, and God's grace all in Lewis's creation story for Narnia. Along with this, we get some incredible tie-ins to questions about the series I hadn't even thought of much (such as how the Witch came to Narnia, how other humans are in Narnia, and how the Professor knew about Narnia).

Overall, this is as good of a children's fairy tale as you can write, and it was a great addition to the series. I don't think I'll ever read the entire series to my hopeful-kids someday as I had planned, but "The Magician's Nephew" joins Books 1-3 as stories I will want to make sure they know.