The Magician's Nephew | C.S. Lewis | Harper Collins

Chronologically, The Magician's Nephew was the sixth book written by C.S Lewis for The Chronicles of Narnia.  However, in the HapersCollin version of the Chronicles that I own, The Magician's Nephew is the first book.

While The Chronicles of Narnia was written principally as a children's fantasy novel, I thought the series of books would have made more sense to adults, what with the religious themes, and strange characters that children might not have understood.

The books are also strangely coincidental (at least to me) in terms of numbers.  There are altogether seven books in the series, and in The Magician's Nephew, Aslan created Narnia in seven days, much like how God created life in seven days.  Also, the central theme of being the chosen one is very strong.  Certain animals were selected by Aslan to receive the gift of intelligence and spreech in pairs, and humans were chosen to be Kings and Queens to rule in Narnia.  There is also the complementary evil Queen Jardis who came into Narnia, brought by Digory.

It was altogether a strange story, with mulitple parallelisim with the Book of Genesis and legends common to the Western world during C.S. Lewis time.  Nonetheless, it was a strange and interesting story, although the implications might have been lost to a reader unfamiliar with the story of the Bible.