Prince Caspian

I read [b:The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe 100915 The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #2) C.S. Lewis https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1353029077s/100915.jpg 4790821] as a child, but never went on to read the whole series. I finally decided to try this one yesterday out of mild curiosity, and I quite enjoyed it. It's an amiable fantasy tale with nothing really disagreeable about it, I like the way it starts, this time none of the children behave badly, and there's a conventional villain instead of the bizarre White Witch. But it's a slight book that seems to be over quickly, and the story could be summarized quickly and simply.It makes another little adventure for the Pevensie children, but a very much briefer adventure than their previous one, and they don't really have anything important to do in it. The forces of the bad king are basically overcome by Aslan, who could have done that at any time he chose, with or without the Pevensies.Revealing himself initially only to Lucy seems like pointless teasing.It also seems rather odd of Aslan to assert that Narnia can be ruled only by a human, although its native inhabitants aren't human. The Narnia books are known to be written from a Christian point of view; are they also written from an imperialist point of view?I might have given this book three stars but for its slightness and the way Aslan sweeps in and makes the struggles of the other characters seem irrelevant.At the end, Aslan tells Peter and Susan they're now too old to return to Narnia. Why? Because these are supposed to be children's books? Seems pretty arbitrary. Especially as they all grew well into adulthood in Narnia during the previous book.