The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is the first book I really remember reading. The Last Battle is the first book I really remember hating. I think child-me actually threw it across the room, and I'm not sure if I've done that with any book since. I can still remember the sensation of revulsion and disgust, and reading it again, just now, my opinion has not changed.

This is a deeply, deeply terrible book.

Let's start with that vicious, pernicious ending: the one where the reward for being a friend of Narnia was to die horribly in a train crash, and to have it presented as the best possible thing for them. This life-hating rubbish is actually dangerous, in my opinion.

And then there's Susan, poor Susan, who is left behind for trying to move on and for whom no-one seems to give a shit. Interested in lipsticks and stockings, because it's terrible to be an adult woman - though not if that woman is entirely asexual, as for instance Polly seems to be (no husband or children for her!). The contempt she is held in, the disregard, by her own family, even! I always thought Lucy was a self-righteous little prig and this confirms it. If Aslan will reserve the magic of Narnia for little kids and then boot them when they begin to develop, he can hardly be surprised when those children grow up and look for new countries to be at home in.

That's what this book leaves me with. The image of Susan, left alone to identify the bodies of all her family, siblings and parents and friends, mangled in goodness only knows what way by the train crash that killed them. And this is supposed to be a good thing. The happy ending, where everyone gets what they deserve.

Thirty years later, this dreadful piece of crap still fills me with absolute rage. Mean-spirited, vengeful, death-glorifying, uncompassionate tripe, prettily coated in poisoned sugar.