Which Narnia Cover is the Best?: The Silver Chair / The Horse and His Boy
The journey continues to find the best Chronicles of Narnia book cover of all time! In this video episode, we are looking at covers for The Silver Chair and The Horse and His Boy. Thanks for voting, NarniaWebbers!
Watch the video: https://youtu.be/T6wrtHF1Hsg
Remaining schedule:
- March 19 @ 11:00am EST
- The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
- Prince Caspian
- March 26 @ 11:00am EST
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
- Non-English covers
- April 2 @ 11:00am EST
- Final Four!
Podcast: Play in new window | Embed
I’m pretty “meh” on most of the HHB covers, but I like SC covers with the black knight. But then I’m an armour fanatic, so I’m partial.
Two of my favourites are going up against each other next week: the 50th anniversary PC with Caspian riding Destrier through a dark forest and the VDT cover with the Dawn Treader sailing away from the “camera” through the Silver Sea.
Number 7 is weird in that it’s not an actual scene from the story, but it’s kind of intriguing. The gnomes and the evil shape of the chair kind of evoke traditional images of Hell. So does the rocky border. If I hadn’t read the book though, I don’t know if it’d catch my eye enough for me to look at it long enough to notice that. An OK cover.
I like what you guys said about Shasta and Bree looking really out of character in Number 2.
The legs on the serpent in Number 5 bug me. I guess it’s supposed to be the Lady of the Green Kirtle mid-transformation, but it looks like a giant caterpillar.
I actually really like Number 3, which is interesting since I don’t normally like the Narnia covers by that particular artist, but something about it just looks cool to me. It’s true though that it’s another not-an-actual-scene-from-the-story cover, so I can understand why it didn’t make it far.
Although I’d probably have voted for Number 4, if given the choice, I’m good with Number 6 winning. I agree with Gymfan that it’s good to have the silver chair itself on the cover. (Otherwise, someone who hasn’t read the book might think the publishing accidentally put the image for a totally different book on this one.) I don’t love the way Rilian looks (I wish he looked more emotional) but I do think it’s a very intriguing image. If I were a newcomer to the story, I’d look at it and be like, “who’s this guy and why does he hate chairs so much?” And I know some people, like Glumpuddle, don’t like spoilery covers, but I’d argue that it doesn’t give away some significant things, mainly whether the character on it is good or bad. (To be honest, I don’t really mind spoilery covers much. Maybe if it showed someone dying, I’d be annoyed to have that given away. With The Silver Chair, there’s so much that happens, that by the time I get to the climax, I feel like I’ve stopped wondering about the cover. I also read pretty fast. I could probably read The Silver Chair in one day if it were a free day, so it’s not like I’d be lying awake at night, hypothesizing about what the cover image could be.) It’s also true that it’s somewhat claustrophobic, but as much as I love the giant bridges in the backgrounds of Numbers 3 and 4, being claustrophobic strikes me as appropriate for a Silver Chair cover.
I’ve come to realize there aren’t many covers for The Silver Chair or The Horse and his Boy that I love, and that’s especially true for The Horse and his Boy. Most of them just show Shasta riding on Bree, which is fine but not that interesting if you haven’t read the book. I think it’s telling that this round came down to two different Silver Chair covers while the last one came down to a Magician’s Nephew cover vs. a Last Battle one. Covers for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader also tend to be pretty generic IMO, but some of the Prince Caspian ones are interesting, so I think I’ll be more emotionally invested in the next video. I don’t mean that to sound like I’m criticizing this one BTW! The podcasters did a great job with it. I just think I’ll have more of an opinion about some of the covers in the next round.
Those (50th anniversary PC and Silver Sea VDT) are excellent!
Spoilers notwithstanding, I still like the art for covers 3 and 4 for SC. (Probably just the fact that it’s a knight!)
And this year, Voyage of the Dawn Treader will be celebrating it’s 70th anniversary. Hard to believe it was published that long ago. Interesting to see which of the covers for Prince Caspian and Voyage of the Dawn Treader will make it.