![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Time is relative, lunchtime...
Dec. 30th, 2007 12:07 pmDymocks managed to score a whole pile of very cheap Chronicles of Narnia omnibus editions - ones with all seven books in one volume. I guess somebody overestimated the appeal of the books when the film came out and now they are trying to unload the surplus. Anyway, I bought one and had a read of these works again - apart from The Magician's Nephew, it was the first time I had read them for a long time.
There isn't much to say about these books that hasn't been said many many times before. One thing did interest me however - the order of the books in the volume. They have been put into a sequence corresponding to the internal chronology of Narnia. This is not the order in which these books were written or published. I don't think this is the right order to read these books. Contents of the books written later, but set earlier, are informed by the earlier books. To read The Magician's Nephew without having first read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is to lose something. I think the same general rule can be applied to other series - would you read all the Dune prelude books before reading Dune. Likewise, would you read Asimov's Foundation books in internal chronological order or in the order written? I can think of similar examples on TV - the B5 movie In the Beginning, only works if you have seen the series. So I would say that you shouldn't read prequels before reading the original work. Or is it just me?
There isn't much to say about these books that hasn't been said many many times before. One thing did interest me however - the order of the books in the volume. They have been put into a sequence corresponding to the internal chronology of Narnia. This is not the order in which these books were written or published. I don't think this is the right order to read these books. Contents of the books written later, but set earlier, are informed by the earlier books. To read The Magician's Nephew without having first read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is to lose something. I think the same general rule can be applied to other series - would you read all the Dune prelude books before reading Dune. Likewise, would you read Asimov's Foundation books in internal chronological order or in the order written? I can think of similar examples on TV - the B5 movie In the Beginning, only works if you have seen the series. So I would say that you shouldn't read prequels before reading the original work. Or is it just me?