Die böse Macht (1945)

I liked this book better than the other two in the Space Trilogy (there's no space in this one though), but still not enough to give it four stars. It takes place mostly on earth so the scifi elements don't seem as dated as in the other two books where outer space is involved.

The beginning was really dull, with all the small English university and foundation politics. Lewis used this to introduce and develop most of the main characters. Everything he wrote may be true of the small university in the UK (or maybe everywhere, I'm no academic), but it seemed so petty and silly considering the monumental importance of everything that was at stake.

The middle part was pretty good with more action and tension, more people in real peril. The suspense leading up to the Merlin reveal was well done.

The end was a small problem for me. Once St. Anne's had Merlin in tow and the N.I.C.E had the impostor, all the suspense washed out and it was simply a matter of the mechanics of how the good guys were going to overcome the bad guys. Now I'm a take sides sort of reader, so this wasn't a problem for me, but the lack of suspense seemed to take the wind out of the novel.

As always, Lewis' prose is exquisite. Other than Mark and Jane, most of the characters are pretty much good or bad, one of the themes, of course, being you have to ultimately choose sides.

Unlike the other two novels in the trilogy, the scifi elements have dated better. One of my prejudices with old scifi is technology prognostication that didn't date well: computers the size of houses, everybody flying to work, etc. These just distract me; I don't know why. I don't have this problem with other fiction. ( )

The Space Trilogy:

A guy named Ransom gets kidnapped by two scientists and taken to Mars. In the second book he voluntarily goes to Venus, and the third one takes place on Earth with some Arthurian mythos woven in. I really enjoyed the first book and would recommend it, but the second one turns into a really long philosophical debate in the middle and the third one is pretty much long and boring all the way through. My recommendation would be to read the first, skim the second, and skip the third. ( )

"...and great words like castles came out of his mouth."

There were several times i came near deducting marks here. The main characters didn't really do anything in the story. There's a big exposition dump in the epilogue which feels like it should have been in the prologue. Half of it is hilarious and i don't think its meant to be and then there's the female question which we'll get to.

Nevertheless, this is some of the best writing i've seen from Lewis. Filled with memorable characters and great descriptions.

Its quite hard to describe because it feels like a clash of many different genres. Most of this comes down to the bad guys.
At first i found them very scary, some seemed Kafka-esque others Orwellian, then you find that the group consists of every type of evil trope. The corporate evil, politically evil, religious evil, police state, mad scientists etc. Etc.
This is where any sense of horror collapses. There’s just too many genres of bad guy all in one place so that it becomes absurd rather than scary.
Each bad guy is also convinced that their plan is the real master plan and they’re just using the others to get to their particular goal. After the third or fourth time you run into yet another new evil scheme, it loses its punch :lol .
Any sense of suspense isn’t helped by the evil plans their hatching not even getting off the drawing board. By about half-way it had become a complete farce but a highly entertaining one :) .

But i can’t avoid the female elephant in the room. So what seems at first like the main character is a woman and a very well drawn one. In a loveless marriage, intelligent, independent and certainly with ambitions beyond being a housewife or mother.
However Lewis only spends so much time crafting this character so that what he says next cannot be dismissed as mere ignorance, he then goes on to state his religious beliefs.

Which boil down to, god is a big phallus in the sky and he only gave women legs so they could walk from the bedroom to the kitchen.
Lewis expresses this very politely and almost apologetically, after all it isn’t his fault god is like this, it just is... pardon me a moment while i vomit.
Anyway, obviously i have not rated this book on its morality.

Far more in everyway than the previous two oddities in this very odd trilogy.

"Your husband is waiting for you... You will have no more dreams. Have children instead."

The above quote in context does not mean what it sounds like, but on a subtext level it means exactly what it sounds like :| . ( )

She had begun by dreaming simply of a face. It was a foreign looking face, bearded and rather yellow, with a hooked nose. Its expression was frightening because it was frightened. The mouth sagged open and the eyes stared as she had seen other men's eyes stare for a second or two when some sudden shock had occurred. But this face seemed to be meeting a sudden shock that lasted for hours.

I think this may be a new favorite. It felt like a deeper, more thoughtful, longer version of [b:The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare|184419|The Man Who Was Thursday A Nightmare|G.K. Chesterton|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1403181403s/184419.jpg|195447].

I read a review by a favorite writer, Connie Willis, that deemed this novel anti-feminist. I actually think it is one of C. S. Lewis's most feminist books. After all it is Jane who has the special gift, Jane who doesn't succumb to N.I.C.E., and Jane is writing a thesis. His goal isn't for her to be barefoot in the kitchen. And, for all the Director's talk about marriage, he really doesn't stick to his guns after the big event anyway. Most of his other books seem to ignore women altogether, or it is a woman vs. woman thing like [b:Till We Have Faces|17343|Till We Have Faces|C.S. Lewis|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1381692105s/17343.jpg|2072983].

Along with my enjoyment of Lewis's exploration of Jane's character, I loved his accurate portrayal of University PhD's at the beginning. My professors would talk similarly about their colleagues (never mentioning names, of course).

I also loved the old, but relevant, comments on "Fake News." Very timely. :)

Finally, it was absolutely brilliant. I will be digesting this book for years and will probably need another couple of reads to really get it. There's so much to think and talk about and write about. Definitely one of his best in my opinion. Read it and tell me what you think.

[Exit pursued by bear] ( )