When Pete, Sue, Ed and Loo Perversie are sold (well, to be fair, rented) to a scientists for child experimentation they had no idea that they would end up in a fantastic magical land ruled over by the despotic (and huge) Wide Witch, or allow the great Asthma to return and bring Spring with him.
A parody of a dearly-loved classic, the better one knows The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe the more the carefully crafted details will resonate. Though it's been a while since I've read the original (and the accompanying six books), I read it at an impressionable age and many times since, with unquestioning eyes. The Chronicles of Blarnia have certainly made the less sublte aspects of Mr Lewis's craft obvious, and Gerber's distortions have a decidedly adult turn that I found amusing but that render it inappropriate for younger readers. Ed, for example, discovers a penchant for truly huge women and is attracted to the vast Wide Witch almost against his will. His distress at discovering that Turkish Delight is neither "some exotic sexual practice" nor particularly delicious mirrors (at least in the latter half) my own disenchantment with the none-chocolate-covered variety at the same age.
I ear-marked about a dozen pages that I intended to quote, covering Gerbers word-play, plot holes in the original, the import followers ascribe to mundane events (in a scene strongly reminiscent of the shoe sequence from Monty Python and the Holy Grail), and incorporation of other literary classics (in one scene he manages Alice in Wonderland, A Wrinkle in Time and Harry Potter), among others. However many of them are too lengthy, or too intertwined with the rest of the plot to include.
Parody is difficult to pull off, and even more so when the attempt is sustained. I was so impressed by The Chronicles of Blarnia that I will fish out the Harry Potter parody he wrote (which is lying somewhere in a box of unread books) and try that too. - Alex
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