The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the third story in the Narnia series (other numbering sequences are available, but ignore them and read these novels either to yourself or your children in publication sequence). To my mind it’s the last of the really great Narnia novels – I think the series divides into a) the first three novels, which are all quite magical, b) the next three novels, which are wonderful but mainly for existing Narnia fans, and not as well constructed or engaging as the first three, and c) the Last Battle, which is the Narnian equivalent of series 8 of Game of Thrones.

Following the structure established in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian, the Pevensie children are summoned into Narnia to help with a quest. This time it is only Lucy and Edmund, the two younger children, who make the journey – Peter and Susan were warned at the end of Caspian that they would not be returning because they were getting too old. At the time Lucy and Edmund are staying with their aunt and uncle Scrubb in Cambridge. These relatives are ‘progressive parents’, and there are lots of not so subtle comments on their parenting style. (I wonder whether Lewis, a long term Oxford academic, was having a little dig at Cambridge in making it the home of the appalling Scrubb family?) Peter is studying for an exam with Professor Kirke, the kindly old gentleman who featured in the first novel, and sister Susan, clearly her parents’ favourite, is travelling with them in America. Cousin Eustace Scrubb is a brat and a bully, and clearly needs some time in Narnia to grow up. I have quoted the novel’s opening line before, but it still packs a punch:

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

The magic obliges, and the children travel to Narnia through a picture of a ship at sea. The three children land in the ocean near the Dawn Treader, and are taken aboard.

And thus begins the adventure of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The ship belongs to Caspian the Tenth, King of Narnia, who the Pevensie children helped gain the throne in Prince Caspian. This time only three years has passed since the children were last in Narnia. In that time Caspian has brought peace to his realm, conquered the Ice Giants of the frozen North, and is now undertaking a quest to fulfil his coronation oath to sail east to find the seven lost Lords of Narnia. These lost lords were first mentioned in Prince Caspian, described as having sailed east on a voyage mainly to avoid King Miraz, Caspian’s evil uncle, showing the extent to which Lewis planned the series well in advance.

Eustace appears to not understand he is in Narnia, rejects the evidence of his own eyes in the form of talking animals etc, and asks to be put ashore at the nearest place that has a British consulate. Reepicheep, the magnificent talking mouse who I somehow forgot to mention in my notes about Prince Caspian, teaches Eustace some sharp lessons about politeness. Once the voyage is underway the novel becomes a fairly straightforward adventure story. The Dawn Treader sails steadily east, visits a series of islands, and on each the children and crew have an adventure and discover one or more of the missing lords. They are captured as slaves, attacked by a sea-serpent, meet mer-people, find a magic stream that can turn anything dipped in it into gold, and so on. On Dragon Island Eustace is transformed magically into (you guessed it) a dragon, and this transformative experience does much to turn him into a nicer person, helped by a personal encounter with Aslan. On Duffers’ Island Lucy removes an invisibility spell from the Dufflepuds, comic creatures with one foot. There’s an element of silliness about this chapter which will appeal to younger readers, although the subtext about colonialism – the Dufflepuds are too stupid to manage their own affairs, and need to be governed by a patriarchal wizard – is fairly uncomfortable. The religious symbolism in the novel remains largely under control, although it surfaces unambiguously once more at the end. Apart from the children’s instalment-friendly adventures on each island the main attraction of the novel is Eustace’s steady transformation under the positive influence of Narnia from an appalling brat and a bully to a much more thoughtful considerate young man.

Partly to justify my reading children’s stories I have been trying to work out why these novels were so compelling (and memorable) when I was a child, and why the remain popular to this day. Lewis’s world-building is wonderful – Narnia is utterly believable, and while it avoids being derivative it is immediately recognisable. The children are the heroes of each story, and behave and are treated as adults. Peter fights a king in Caspian, and almost wins. At the end of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe the children grow up, reign as adults and the girls are courted by princes from other countries – adult experiences which seem quickly forgotten when they return to our world. What child doesn’t want to imagine a world in which they are the equal of adults, with no bedtimes, no school, and unlimited Turkish delight? The sense of peril in the novels is carefully contained – while the White Witch is a serious villain, she is swept aside when Aslan gets serious (prompting adults to wonder why it took him a hundred years to get round to returning to Narnia?) and later novels don’t have antagonists on the same scale. No-one dies in Voyage, and the battles in Prince Caspian go on for days with only bruises and cuts to show for it. (The account of one of the battles at Aslan’s How, before the children arrive, ends with the line “The best of the Bears had been hurt, a Centaur terribly wounded, and there were few in Caspian’s party who had not lost blood.”

There are many comic, slapstick moments in the series that will appeal to children, such as Mrs Beaver’s madcap approach to packing for a flight in the snow (insisting on taking her sewing machine!), or the comedy turn that is the Dufflepuds. There’s also a strong moralistic tone to the novels which children respond to (or should I say responded to?) – not least Eustace’s journey from being a nasty spoiled brat to where at the end of the novel “back in our own world everyone soon started saying how Eustace had improved, and how “You’d never know him for the same boy”: everyone except Aunt Alberta, who said he had become very commonplace and tiresome and it must have been the influence of those Pevensie children.”

I wonder whether these novels have aged well? Are they still read with the same sense of wonder by children of the internet age? Is the Christian allegory just a bit too insufferable? It would be a bit sad if that were to be the case. Certainly they all remain in print, and the films of the first three novels few years back were reasonably successful, but part of me suspects they will have lost some of their shine.