C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, of which Perelandra is the second volume, stands alongside such works as Albert Camus’s The Plague and George Orwell’s 1984 as a timely parable that has become timeless, beloved by succeeding generations as much for the sheer wonder of its storytelling as for the significance of the moral concerns.
Readers who fall in love with Lewis’s fantasy series The Chronicles of Namia as children unfailingly cherish his Space Trilogy as adults; it, too, brings to life strange and magical realms in which epic battles are fought between the forces of light and those of darkness. But in the many layers of its allegory, and the sophistication and piercing brilliance of its insights into the human condition, it occupies a place among the English language’s most extraordinary works for any age, and for all time.
Perelandra is a planet of pleasure, an unearthly, misty world of strange desires, sweet smells, and delicious tastes, where beasts are friendly and naked beauty is unashamed, a new Garden of Eden, where the story of the oldest temptation is enacted in an intriguingly new way. Here, in the second part of C. S. Lewis’s acclaimed Ransom Trilogy, Dr. Ransom’s adventures continue against the backdrop of a religious allegory that, while it may seem quaint in its treatment of women today, nonetheless shows the capability of science to be an evil force tempting a ruler away from the path that has produced a paradisiacal kingdom. Will Perelandra succumb to this malevolent being, who strives to create a new world order, or will it throw off the yoke of corruption and achieve a spiritual perfection as yet unknown to man?
Download and start listening now!
"May actually be the best book I have ever read. This is the second book in C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, and is beautiful both in story and in symbolism. Elwin Ransom (based on Lewis's good friend J.R.R. Tolkien) is sent on a mission by his friend (the) Oyarsa of Malacandra (Mars) to Perelandra (Venus)to protect a new Adam and Eve in a new garden of Eden from the corrupting forces brought to Perelandra by Professor Weston (one of the villains from the first book, Out of the Silent Planet). The beauty of this new world, or Earth as it should have been and was before the Fall is strikingly beautiful. It is a book in which fallen man protects purity and innocence from fallen man, a book of redemption, and a book that reminds us that there is hope for us imperfect human beings."
—
Aaron (5 out of 5 stars)