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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing, definitely an instant favorite., 6 Mar 2001
By A Customer
Perelandra is an amazing book. After having just finished it, and digesting it, I came to the conclusion that the word "beautiful" seems shallow and crude in describing this book. Its imagery is very enchanting and exotic, and the storyline very gripping and, while intense and suspenseful, also very calm inducing: Lewis's descriptions of the planet Venus allow you to feel the purity, calmness, peace, and innocence of its setting while still appriciating the stakes at risk. I have read Out of the Silent Planet, and I loved it. But now it seems harsh in comparison to Perelandra. Most say the Space Trilogy is an allegory. I see it rather as a fictional extension to the history of the Universe as told in the Bible. It is a very stimulating and imaginative book. Get this one.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful but flawed, 20 Aug 2007
C. S. Lewis is said to have found "Perelandra" his favourite among his own books, and an improvement over "Out of the Silent Planet". Though a strong Lewis fan, I'm afraid I cannot agree. OOSP attempts one thing, and achieves it perfectly. Perelandra fails by being too ambitious.
"Out of the Silent Planet" is an almost perfect story. The description of Martian creatures and scenery is delightful, without the author having to ram home how terribly significant it all is; and the evil targeted for attack is limited, believable, and allowed to collapse under its own weight. (Ransom's translation of Weston's speech out of the Shavian-evolutionary into Malacandrian i.e. plain English is one of the funniest things I've read.) In Perelandra, on the other hand, the author is always TELLING you how beautiful everything is, instead of letting you find this out for yourself, and the appeal of every new fruit or creature is swept aside by its being used as the occasion for yet a further sermon on the nature of pleasure.
The central flaw is the problem of any writer in depicting evil: how do you make it obvious enough that it IS evil, but also account for its appeal? It is cheating, and ultimately self-defeating, first to depict the beliefs you dislike, and then to make them more obviously evil by adding a few extra unrelated vices. Weston (the devil figure in this book) is so plausible in his attempts to mislead the new Eve that Ransom does not know how to reply other than by physically removing him from the scene. However, Weston also amuses himself in his spare time by pointlessly mutilating frogs. This is of course explained by a further lecture on the banality of evil and its fundamental hatred of intelligence; but it is a grave tactical mistake, by the author as well as by the devil, as surely all Ransom needed to do was to show a frog to the lady. (In the same way, in That Hideous Strength, the Institute's programme as originally outlined by Devine is already bad enough, without adding gratuitous devil-worship.)
The odd thing is that no one knows these things better than Lewis. For the importance of letting the emotional situation speak for itself, see An Experiment in Criticism; for the blackening of villains by adding an inappropriate vice, see his review of Orwell's 1984. (That, incidentally, is where Brave New World scores heavily: the rulers there are not villains but entirely well-meaning, it is their beliefs that are gently shown to be disastrous.)
OK then, why so many as three stars? The language, as always, is wonderful. Lewis really is, in the words of Beachcomber's spoof review (obviously prophetic of Da Vinci-style tripe), "that rare thing, a writer who can combine breathless excitement with profundity of thought". The Lady's combination of innocence and majesty is perfectly done, and the consideration of the ways in which she does, and does not, need to grow up and of how Ransom's feelings for her are, and are not, sexual is suggestive and moving. The vision at the end is reminiscent of Dante. In showing how each thing in turn, by being utterly different, is in its own way the pivot of creation, it suggests an imaginative solution to the problem of creating a world that is both peaceful and interesting.
Not a book to miss.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The space trilogy sags in the middle., 11 Sep 1997
By A Customer
To criticize C.S. Lewis is to incur the wrath of millions of his faithful. However, Perelandra simply drags. Where Out Of The Silent Planet was a breezy sci-fi allegory of humankind's failings, and That Hideous Strength is simply the penultimate Lewis tale, this middle chapter is overlong and overly dense. Ransom is taken to Perelandra by an eldil, where his mission is to thwart the devil's temptation of that planet's Eve. Once more, Lewis's description of a foreign environment is rich and brilliantly imagined. Once the devil arrives (in the body of Weston) things kick into low gear. While philosophically intriguing, the arguments of Satan and Ransom and the questions of Eve quickly begin to appear circular and meandering. The climactic chase and physical confrontaion with the devil is both much too long and rather illogical. The denouement is classic Lewis, setting up Ransom's position for the final chapter of the trilogy with magical and moving brilliance, though it is too little to redeem the rest of the novel. Perelandra is a slow and tedious read, worth it only for the wonderful payoff in the third book, That Hideous Strength.
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