The Chronicles of Narnia, The Problem of Susan

I read "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" when I was young, and of course was completely oblivious to the whole Christian agenda in it. This month I finally made time to read the entire series, and I'm very happy that I waited until I was equipped to understand everything they try to teach. It would've been so depressing to have read and loved all the seven books as a little girl, and then at the age of 33 to re-read them and discover all that religious crap in there.

A couple of the books are pretty good, though none of them managed to really move me. Their most exhausting feature is the fact that all the characters are a bunch of religious nags.
Their best quality is that, despite the Christian agenda, they don't suffer from slave morality. It's a Christianity evolved from the Greek traditions, not the Judaic ones. They don't turn the other cheek, they are proud without being vain, they know that they're entitled to certain things and they don't hesitate to fight for them. Oh, and they don't take any crap from Muslims.
The other thing I love is that Aslan is the way we all wish God would be. He is present. He shows up when you call out to him. He is scary, but you can nuzzle his fur, you can bury your face in his mane, and know that he will give you lion kisses and tell you what to do. He might punish you, but always in a way that allows you to keep your dignity, and he'll always tell you his reasons for it. He doesn't leave a cryptic book to try to interpret his will, he comes to you in a flash of light and tells you what to do. How nice of him.

Book seven, "The Last Battle", is to me the worst one. It starts fine with the struggles against the false Aslan, but then the whole storyline of the second coming and the voyage to heaven feels so forced and unnecessary, not to mention morbid. And then of course there's the evil trick C.S. Lewis decided to play on the character of Susan. Evil and mean and pathetic. Luckily, Neil Gaiman has written and answer to this book in his short story "The Problem of Susan", which I enjoyed reading immediately after "The Last Battle". One day I'll meet Mr. Gaiman at some book signing or something and thank him for "American Gods" and "The Problem of Susan".