Funny you would post this, Folwren, as I too was thinking of Lewis and wanted to comment him. I'm re-reading Narnia right now, and I haven't read them for many years. And I must say I'm a bit disappointed. I try to tell myself that the Chronicles were written as a children's book, but it doesn't help much.
The first thing is the language. One of the things that I like with Tolkien's books is the language. It's not always easy to understand and it can be vague and sometimes tiring. But it fits the story so well! An epic tale like that needs a language as advanced as Tolkiens, and the fact that is seem a bit out of time makes it even more fitting. It might be that the Swedish translation of the Chronicles isn't as good as it should be (and the Swedish version is all I have), but I don't the language used by Lewis to be as intriguing or compelling as Tolkiens. This is a minor problem but still...
The next thing is the depth. This is one of the qualities that I find most interesting in LotR. Every song and tale has it's own history and background and every character has it's specific story. The world of ME is so deep that no-one has yet touched the bottom. Here we are, week after week, months after months, discussing this world and it's surroundings. This is unique for the world of Tolkien. When I read about Narnia it feels too shallow and one-dimensional. Of course there's both a moral and a religious message (a message that almost feels too obvious, no-one can miss the parallel), but that's not the problem. The problem is that everything is too simple. Everything solves itself without explaining how or why, or giving you anything to build your own theories of.
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Yes, they may appear, at first, childish and simple, but they're not. Like Tolkien's works, there are layers and layers that you can peel back and keep peeling back. In a different sense, perhaps. His world of Narnia is not necessarily as well developed, there are not multiple languages, and yet there is history there, and, even more important than that, there is an underlying truth and value that we as indivuals can learn from.
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Maybe I'm not a good enough peeler, but those underlying truths and values (that of course is important) does not produce enough layers for me.
I must admit that I haven't read any other books by C.S. Lewis that the 7 about Narnia so I won't say anything about him as an author. And I do remember that they were written for children and I did enjoy them as a child. But as an adult (or at least a bit older
) I don't find them as interesting as Tolkien. He is still nr. 1 for me, except when it comes to creating characters that I can relate to. For characters I put Eddings at the throne, but I've already written that in my previous post in this thread...
Hope I made some sort of sense. It's not as easy as it seems to explain one's thoughts like this
