Book # 27 The Chronicles of Narnia (Part 7 of 7) - The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis

So far I have enjoyed all of the Narnia books and with the last one I was hoping that the series would end on high note and bring a satisfying conclusion to the story. The Last Battle met all of my expectations and was thought provoking and entertaining.... except for one small detail in the end.

The story starts in Narnia hundreds of years after the previous book. A talking ape finds a discarded lion skin and dresses his donkey up in it and begins to tell people that it is Aslan. Using the false Aslan, the ape causes all kinds of problems and starts to wreck havoc in Narnia. The current king of Narnia, his unicorn, Eustace and Jill all band together and try to reveal that this Aslan is an impostor. Then it starts to get weird. Part Book of Revelations and part "end of 2001: A Space Odyssey" weird. And then a bunch of characters from previous books show up... except one. And that is the part that bugged me, and apparently quite a few other people too... like J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman (who wrote a short story that continues that character's story) and Phillip Pullman (who seemed to have partially written His Dark Materials as a counterpoint).  I guess I can't really say much more without giving it away... but it does seem like a cold hearted minor plot point thrown in by Lewis.

Anyway... Overall I enjoyed it and liked how it bookends nicely with The Magician's Nephew and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe which basically take themes from Genesis and the New Testament since The Last Battle pretty much takes the Rapture and Anti-Christ from Revelations.  This book and the series as a whole get an A and make it into my top 50.