Me too. Your list is exactly the set of things that made me love this book the best. I just *hungered* for more about the Golden age. And I clung to all the pieces I could get--Susan and Edmund in HHB and the stretch in Caspian set in the ruins of Cair Paravel are by far the parts of the series I've reread the most.
And I love the characters in this book and their journey *so much*. I love the way they collaborate, and I love the way they all start suspicious of each other and secretly have the same objective. It's also got some of my favorite landscapes in the series, although again, Caspian comes close on that front. It's been years since I've read HHB, and I've still got really clear visuals of almost all the scenery from the book.
Even as a kid, though, I was pretty dubious about the fact that someone raised entirely on Calormene food would spend so much time thinking that finally he was having a good proper wholesome meal when allowed to eat toast with butter instead of olive oil for the first time in his life.
I think I made an Oz comparison in a previous post, but I really do think they have a lot in common WRT the way the worldbuilding happens. Both Baum and Lewis seem to have written each book in their respective series on the assumption that it would be the last, and in both cases it's really easy to see the author's process in building out the world as a result. Tolkien designed a world and then set books in it, and it's always clear that there's more going on in the world than you've seen yet, but that Tolkien knows it all and has written its grammar. Both Lewis and Baum wrote books and came up with more parts of the world as the characters encountered them.
I like to think that HHB is the point when Lewis realized what the shape of the series would be and sat down and did some longer-term planning. It certainly FEELS like it is. I don't think Baum ever did that--he hated Oz but was pretty much resigned to the fact that they were the only books he wrote that sold well and whipped one out whenever he was low on funds.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-21 02:44 (UTC)And I love the characters in this book and their journey *so much*. I love the way they collaborate, and I love the way they all start suspicious of each other and secretly have the same objective. It's also got some of my favorite landscapes in the series, although again, Caspian comes close on that front. It's been years since I've read HHB, and I've still got really clear visuals of almost all the scenery from the book.
Even as a kid, though, I was pretty dubious about the fact that someone raised entirely on Calormene food would spend so much time thinking that finally he was having a good proper wholesome meal when allowed to eat toast with butter instead of olive oil for the first time in his life.
I think I made an Oz comparison in a previous post, but I really do think they have a lot in common WRT the way the worldbuilding happens. Both Baum and Lewis seem to have written each book in their respective series on the assumption that it would be the last, and in both cases it's really easy to see the author's process in building out the world as a result. Tolkien designed a world and then set books in it, and it's always clear that there's more going on in the world than you've seen yet, but that Tolkien knows it all and has written its grammar. Both Lewis and Baum wrote books and came up with more parts of the world as the characters encountered them.
I like to think that HHB is the point when Lewis realized what the shape of the series would be and sat down and did some longer-term planning. It certainly FEELS like it is. I don't think Baum ever did that--he hated Oz but was pretty much resigned to the fact that they were the only books he wrote that sold well and whipped one out whenever he was low on funds.