The Chronicles of Narnia

By the end of this book, Narnia has just been created. Digory Kirke and his friend Polly Plummer, two London children from the year 1900, were drawn into events by Digory's Uncle Andrew, an amateur magician who tricked them into using magic rings to travel between worlds. Exploring another dead world called Charn, Digory accidentally woke an ancient and immensely powerful witch-queen, Jadis, who had long ago wiped out all life in her own world using a forbidden spell called the Deplorable Word. Jadis followed the children back to London and caused chaos before they managed to drag her, along with Uncle Andrew, a London cabman named Frank, and Frank's horse Strawberry, into the Wood Between the Worlds and from there into an empty void.

In that void, the group witnessed the lion Aslan singing the world of Narnia into existence, calling up stars, plants, and animals, and granting speech to some of the beasts. Jadis, terrified, hurled an iron bar at Aslan; it bounced off him and grew into a lamp-post. Aslan crowned Frank and his wife Helen (brought over from London) as the first King and Queen of Narnia. Because Digory was responsible for bringing Jadis into this new world, Aslan charged him with a task of atonement: traveling, with Polly's help, on the newly winged Strawberry to a walled garden to retrieve a protective apple.

In the garden, Digory found Jadis had already eaten one of the garden's apples to make herself immortal. She tried to tempt Digory into eating one himself, or into stealing one to selfishly heal his dying mother back on Earth, but he resisted and returned the apple to Aslan as instructed. Planted in Narnia's soil, the apple grew instantly into a large tree whose presence would guard the young country against Jadis's return for a very long time. Jadis herself fled toward the uninhabited north of Narnia, her fate and whereabouts left open at the book's close — she is immortal but, per Aslan, doomed to eventual misery, though nothing more specific about her is resolved.

Aslan allowed Digory to take one apple home, which healed his mother, and sent Digory, Polly, and Uncle Andrew back to London. Uncle Andrew gave up magic entirely. Digory buried the apple's core and the magic rings in his aunt's garden, and years later, after his family inherited a country house, the tree that grew from that core blew down in a storm; Digory, now an adult professor, had its timber made into a wardrobe. Open threads heading forward include Jadis's unresolved presence somewhere in Narnia's wilderness, the significance of the lamp-post that grew where the iron bar landed, and the wardrobe itself, kept in Professor Kirke's country house.

The Pevensie siblings — Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy — are English children who were sent to the countryside during the war and discovered the magical land of Narnia through an old wardrobe. Narnia had been held under an endless winter by the White Witch, who falsely claimed the throne. Lucy was the first to find Narnia and befriended the faun Mr. Tumnus; Edmund later fell under the Witch's influence after she tempted him with enchanted Turkish delight and the promise of being made a prince, and he betrayed his siblings' location to her.

All four children eventually entered Narnia together and were sheltered by Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, who told them of a prophecy: Narnia's long winter would end when two Sons of Adam and two Daughters of Eve sat on the four thrones at Cair Paravel, and that the true king of Narnia, the lion Aslan, was returning. Edmund slipped away to the Witch and told her of Aslan's return, putting his siblings and the Beavers in danger, but they escaped to meet Aslan at the Stone Table, gathering magical gifts from Father Christmas along the way.

The White Witch pursued her claim on Edmund's life under an ancient law called the Deep Magic, but Aslan offered himself in Edmund's place instead. The Witch killed Aslan at the Stone Table that night, only for him to rise again the next morning through a deeper, older magic that reverses death when an innocent sacrifices himself for a traitor. Aslan then freed the Witch's stone-prisoners and led the Narnian forces to victory in battle, personally killing the White Witch and ending her rule and the eternal winter.

The book closes with Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy crowned as Kings and Queens of Narnia at Cair Paravel. They rule together for many years and grow into adults — Peter as High King — while Aslan comes and goes as he pleases rather than staying. Then, while hunting the White Stag, the four grown monarchs stumble back through the wardrobe and find themselves children again in England, with no time having passed. The Professor believes their story. As a reader moving into the next book, you should know the Witch's tyranny and winter have been fully broken, Aslan is a living if intermittent presence in the land, the four Pevensies are remembered as Narnia's Kings and Queens, and Narnia is a world of talking beasts, fauns, dwarfs, and other peoples, free of the Witch at last.