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That hideous strength,: A modern fairy-tale for grown-ups
RECEIVED FREE COPY FROM LIBRARYA smart writer, Lewis saved the best for last in his space and time triology. He ties ancient Celt and Roman legend into a modern day state acting as God on earth.
That hideous strength,: A modern fairy-tale for grown-ups
CS Lewis weaves an interesting story that helps one understand the spiritual environment in which we live. He resolves this story just enough to satisfy you but leaves enough unsaid to make you long to start volumen 2, Perelandra. Full of spiritual meaning relevant to our times.
That hideous strength,: A modern fairy-tale for grown-ups
This book will haunt you the rest of your life in its subtle depiction of pure evil. Caution, though, it's written in 12th grade English which can be a challenge for less accomplished readers.
That hideous strength,: A modern fairy-tale for grown-ups
[Throughout the years, I have written a number of reviews that have never been published online on Amazon. These writings comprise two types of reviews: unfinished reviews, abandoned during various stages of composition, and completed reviews that for life reasons were never posted. Of the later type, back in September 2001 I wrote a cache of work, a full sixteen reviews of several different C. S. Lewis books which have never been released. I am publishing these reviews now for the first time, over a decade after they were initially written. Mike London 10-3-2012]"That Hideous Strength", the third volume in Lewis's "Space Trilogy", stands as central novel of his that gives me the most pleasure in reading it. While "Till We Have Faces" is certainly his best work, "That Hideous Strength" is the central novel in my own imagination that I most sympathize with in terms of where I want to go with my own fiction.There is so much in "That Hideous Strength" that absolutely fascinates me, and much of the themes I also want to deal with in my own fiction. The abuse of language stands as one of the most terrifying elements in the novel. Wither stands as one of my personal favorites on the side of the N. I. C. E, as does Fairy Hardcastle. Wither is very developed and incredibly diabolical, and Fairy is a very masculine woman involved in sadistic police torture. The Nazis have a very strong place in this work. Much of the more hideous and hellish scenes in this book comes from the inclusion of the N. I. C. E as the dominant villainy that works evil throughout the text. Much of what they want to do tie into the Nazi movements, and each are equally terrible.The inclusion of Merlin makes it a much more interesting text, for there is the key theme of Nature against Anti-Nature, and Merlin very much is in harmony with Nature. What makes this such a strong work is that each group parallels the other, and wherever there is a vision of total evil there also stands an equally dramatic picture of that which is good.One thing that the critics seem to really harp on is the fact that this text has such a complex structure, but for myself that is one of the most exciting things about it. It is the fact that Lewis manages such a huge cast of characters, and does so rather well, that makes this one of my favorite of his novels, and certainly my pick for the Space Trilogy.While I respect "Perelandra" and find it a very fine artistic effort, it is this book that I keep picking up to reread when I make my jaunts through Lewis's imaginative gauntlets. This is truly the most fascinating of the "Space Trilogy".(These reviews covered all seven books of "The Chronciles of Narnia", the three novels of "The Space Trilogy", "The Abolition of Man", "The Four Loves", "A Preface to Paradise Lost", a revised version of my 2000 review of "Till We Have Faces", "Surprised By Joy", and "The Screwtape Letters". I have published newly written reviews of "The Space Trilogy" composed long after I wrote the three original reviews of Lewis's science fiction.)..-----[In Late 1999 or early 2000 I also wrote this abandoned, unfinished review to "That Hideous Strength"]The first time I've heard of the trilogy, it was from a pastor's wife. I was only then reading THE LORD OF THE RINGS (this was back in 1994), and I decided I would try it. Being a fan of Narnia (although I do not like Lion nearly as much as the others), I figured this would be good also.THAT HIDEOUS STRENGHT, which is longer than the other two books combined, is a book like no other I've read. Its main weakness is it jumps from modern to mythical too soon. It is a novel of ideas, and then at the climax the story becomes mythical, with a violent ending. Also, Lewis assumes to much of the readers on the matter of Merlin. Merlin was an incubus, and had no father.
That hideous strength,: A modern fairy-tale for grown-ups
I am an avid reader of sci-fi and fantasy and finding good books that are Christian in that genre can be difficult. This is the third in a series called Lewis' "Space Trilogy." The first two books, though set on other planets are more along the lines of works of fantasy than sci-fi. This one follows suit, though not set in space. It is set in post WW2 England and deals with a rich cast of characters facing an evil that wants to take over the country and ultimately the world. I highly recommend reading the first two books, Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra before you read this one but it is not necessary to do so as enough is explained that the reader won't feel lost without having done so. Lewis is a wonderful writer who gets the reader personally involved in the story and characters. I was so excited when this came out on Kindle and not simply as an audio book. I hadn't read it since I was a child, and gained a whole new understanding of the theology and issues that Lewis deals with in the book. A definite must read!
That hideous strength,: A modern fairy-tale for grown-ups
I enjoyed this book. As the third part of the Space Trilogy, it is VERY different in style. Whereas the first two basically follow the adventures of the main character Ransom on other planets, this one is set on earth, and follows a much larger set of characters with a more complex plot. It reads much more like a contemporary novel, switching between multiple threads of the plot, from several different character's points of view.Relative to the other two novels, this plot is downright labyrinthine, with a grand conspiracy to take over Britain and ultimately the world. On the surface this is a secular progressive movement, but below the surface are demonic elements (the dark eldila that we learn about in the previous books). Supernatural elements aside, the crazy plot with conspiracies within conspiracies reminds me of a Robert Ludlum novel (of course predating Ludlum by a few decades), and also (like classic Ludlum) the body count gets pretty high. Some of the occult elements of the conspiracy, and some of the serious-silliness also reminded me a bit of "Foucalt's Pendulum", although from a very different point of view from that novel. The whole plot is rather melodramatic, almost campy, and in parts Lewis's writing is rather cheeky, but this is also interspersed with more straightforward CS Lewis insights and thoughts into this, that, or the other thing (he's surprisingly insightful on marriage and relationships for a man who was a bachelor for most of his life). At times the plot suffers a bit under its own weight - there are some little strands that don't really go anywhere, and some characters that don't really matter, and some loose ends that don't quite get tied up. Lewis clearly likes his animal characters, but I found all the stuff with the bear and the other critters a bit silly and overdone. I also think the story could have been tighter as a standalone novel, without it being part of the "Space Trilogy" mythos, with the eldila and Oyeresu and Ransom and what not.As with the first two parts of the trilogy, a central theme is the dangers of "Modernism" or "Progressivism". With the larger cast of characters (vs just Weston as the main antagonist in the first two), Lewis gets to skewer many more caricatures of Modern thought. His main target remains scientific Materialism, but the bad guys include all manner of "Progressive" sociological thought (circa 1940s). It is striking how much of it rings true today, like we're still having the same debates, and the materialists and progressives of today are not that far removed from those of Lewis's day. I also thought Mark Studdock was an interesting character; I think he symbolizes all of Lewis's fears and suspicions of young academics (Lewis was a fairly senior professor by the time he published this). Studdock is thoroughly Modern in every respect, and as a result is continuously buffeted and blown about, going one direction and then another, always on the outside trying to be on the inside of something, anything. There's a quote, I'm not sure about the real attribution, about not being so open-minded that your brain falls out, and I think this is what Lewis has in mind with his portrain of Studdock. As I've read through the Space Trilogy, I really get the feeling that a lot of the characters and philosophies that Lewis disdains are drawn directly from Lewis's experiences with his fellow academics. It really comes through in this book - you get the feeling that Lewis wrote large parts of this book while sitting through interminable faculty meetings at Oxford.An interesting little tidbit is that Lewis borrows (or perhaps appropriates?) his friend Tolkien's concept of Numinor (Lewis's acknowledgment at the start of the book is amusing!) Now Lewis's book was published probably 6 or 8 years before The Lord of the Rings, and I suspect that the way Lewis ties in Numinor fairly literally with both our contemporary history as well as (for the purposes of this novel) a "historical" Arthurian Britain is probably not what Tolkien envisioned. It's a very minor part of the book (Numinor is mentioned by name only a couple of times) but I do wish Lewis would have skipped that, or just made up a different name for a mythical prehistorical age that fit the conception in this story.