Prompt – A book with a made-up language
Medium – Book
About the Book – Ransom, a Professor of languages at the University of Cambridge, is on a walking holiday when he is kidnapped by an old school friend and flown to Mars (or Malacandra). When he is there, he manages to escape from his captors and make his way across the planets. On the way, he meets the Hrossa, the Sorn and the Pfifltriggi people, who all help him to get to the great and powerful Oyarsa, servant of Maleldil. Being a professor of languages, Ransom manages to pick up the language of the planet and is able to communicate with the creatures that he meets, as well as observing the creatures and starting to understand the beauty of their world and what they believe.
My Rating – 7/10. This book was written in 1938, prior to C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia (some of my favourite books). It has, in some ways, similar features to the Narnia books – a human is transported to a new and ‘magical’ land, there are weird and wonderful creatures in this land, and a being (Maleldil), who is a representation of Christ. I did find this book less readable than the Narnia stories – I guess part of that is because this book isn’t meant for children! But also, the description of the planet did, at some points, run to paragraphs, which could get quite tiring to concentrate on.
The book also had surprisingly little action in the second half, but nevertheless, I found it a fascinating read. I’m not usually a massive fan of Sci-Fi, but this book kept me reading (if not necessarily gripped) all the way through. It has some nice parallels to the Narnia stories, which I enjoyed spotting. It is definitely a book ‘of its time’ – at one point one of the ‘baddies’ starts talking to the inhabitants of Malcandra in a tone, I suppose, a person of the time would expect to talk to a native tribe in. It’s fairly insulting, but the use of the tone is presented as very stupid and is not looked on favourably by the author, the main character or the angel-like being Oyarsa. It is not a book that I feel the same attraction to as the Narnia stories, but a fairly good romp, which I would recommend to Sci-Fi lovers.
Would I read it again? Probably not – I think it is going on the pile to give to my dad at some point!
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