Book Review: Perelandra
Perelandra is the second book in C.S. Lewis' space trilogy. As I indicated in my last review, I often find Lewis' fiction works to be tedious. He spends forever in descriptions and other lengthy passages that don't contribute much to moving the plot along. Being essentially impatient, I struggle with that.
This book is much the same. Thankfully, he doesn't spend much time at all on the issue of language. His protagonist in the last book, Ransom, is the protagonist in this book as well. The language skills he developed on Malacandra (Mars) are applied here on Perelandra (Venus), and not much more is said of it. This makes me very happy!
However, to make up for this deficiency in word study, he overcompensates with descriptiveness. He spends pages and pages describing the flora and fauna and wildlife of the ocean-world of Perelandra. Maybe you're able to envision this and savor his imagination, and if so, more power to you. But it tired me quickly and I was grateful to be able to skim over some of these sections to get to the good bits again.
And there are plenty of good bits. Perelandra is essentially the story of a prelapsarian world. In ordinary language, it's a world that has not fallen into sin yet. It retains the essential goodness and perfection that the Bible leads us to understand our own world once possessed - prior to Adam & Eve & the bit with the fruit in Eden. Ransom finds himself once again hurled through space to the planet Venus, where he encounters the equivalent of the Biblical Eve.
But Perelandra is not earth, and the Biblical rules as we understand them don't necessarily apply on Venus. While Venus has not fallen into sin, it still exists after the Incarnation of the Son of God on earth, and Lewis imagines that changes certain things. The story centers around the temptation of Eve and Ransom's struggle to prevent a repeat of the Garden of Eden on a pristine world.
Similar to Out of the Silent Planet, Lewis does a great job at imagining how a modern man would describe and react to situations analogous to Biblical situations. How would we describe angels, for instance? Would we consider them as inter-dimensional beings rather than just focusing on their otherness in physicality or lack thereof?
Again, this is worth the read, though you may find that it requires you to push yourself through sections of it. I think it's worth it. If you happen to enjoy Lewis' endless descriptions, then you will find this book to be all the more worthwhile.
You want some "fast" reading? Stuff that gets on with it? Dean Koontz is very quick with the action, although I'm not sure you're looking for his type of work.
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I know he's quite popular, but I haven't read any of his books. At least not yet. Thanks for the recommendation though - it's something I'll keep in mind the next time I need some more exciting reading!
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