What to Read Next Based on Your Favorite Narnia Book

If you love The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, read The Neverending Story, by Michael Ende
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe is quintessential Narnia. It’s the story, and the images, that people most associate with the text: talking animals, the White Witch, fauns, and a land where it’s always winter and never Christmas. It also introduces the pattern of children from our world visiting Narnia, the most consistent element of the series (absent only from The Horse and His Boy).
The Neverending Story is about another boy, Bastian Balthazar Bux, who hides away from bullies with nothing but a mysterious book to keep himself company. He becomes increasingly entranced with the story, until eventually he finds himself sucked into Fantastica, the land within its pages. Much like the Pevensies in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, Bastian is an outsider from our world: a child who suddenly finds himself in possession of considerable power, and in danger to match. Much like Narnia itself, Fantastica is an unendingly wondrous land, full of people and places that burn themselves into your imagination. And for you movie watchers, the movie only covers the first half of the story!

If you love Prince Caspian, read The Goose Girl, by Shannon Hale
Prince Caspian is like the Game of Thrones of the Narnia books, all displaced rulers and a world in ruin. Caspian, the rightful heir to the Narnian throne, has to run away from his evil uncle, who tries to murder him after the birth of his own son. In the wilderness he runs into the Pevensies, earth-children and former rulers of Narnia, who help him get back his rightful place.
Hale’s Goose Girl tells the story of another displaced leader. First, the Princess Ani loses her own place in the order of succession when her parents declare her baby brother to be the next king of their land. Then, after she’s engaged to the crown prince of a neighboring kingdom, she’s nearly murdered and eventually supplanted by her former lady-in-waiting. With nothing for her at home, and nowhere to go in this strange new country, Ani uses her gift of animal-speaking to get a job tending geese. But even there she isn’t safe, as the usurpers of her throne, traitors to her home country, still consider the missing Princess a threat to their plotting.

If you love The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, read Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine
This is my favorite Narnia book. There’s no real villain in this one, no evil witch or uncle to overturn. Instead there is a mission, and a quest to the end of the world. The fun of this book is discovering each new island in the sea along with the crew of the titular ship, the Dawn Treader. It’s like getting multiple mini-fantasy stories in one book, and you never know what you’re going to find.
While Ella Enchanted doesn’t follow the same linear journey structure, it has similar power to make you feel like you’ve discovered something new every chapter. Over the course of the book Ella, a girl cursed with the “gift” of disobedience, goes to boarding school, visits the elves, tames trolls, socializes with giants, and attends royal balls. Every society is fully realized, and every character emotionally resonant, no matter how brief their time with Ella is. It’s a funny, warm, whirlwind tour of a fantasy land.

If you love The Silver Chair, read Bone Gap, by Laura Ruby
In this book, Aslan charges the formerly whiny Eustace—the Pevensies’ cousin, first seen in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader—and his classmate Jill with the task of finding the missing king of Narnia (this country has trouble holding on to its rulers for very long), a quest that eventually takes them into a quite scary underworld. This is Narnia’s version of a classic trope found in classic mythology and fairy tales including the story of Orpheus, the Twelve Dancing Princesses, and the Persephone myth.
In Bone Gap, a novel loosely inspired by the story of Persephone, a girl disappears one day from the small town that gives the book its title. The story moves back and forth between Roza, taken and held captive, Finn, who feels responsible for losing her, and Petey, a beekeeper and one of my favorite characters in recent YA lit. It’s a rich, vibrant story that shows a mundane world where magic and evil leak in through the cracks. In this book, you could imagine slipping into Narnia one day, and slipping out again just as easily.

If you love The Horse and His Boy, read The Girl of Fire and Thorns, by Rae Carson
Even as a kid there was something about the depiction of the Calormenes of Calormen, the southernmost country on the Narnian continent, that made me uncomfortable. At some point I realized this something was racism, and not particularly subtle racism at that. With magical Narnia to the far north representing heaven, and white, medieval Archenland representing earth in the middle, Lewis created the southern, strongly Arabian, “barbaric” Calormen to represent hell. I mean…that name!
Instead, try The Girl of Fire and Thorns. The country of Joya d’Arena, an imaginary Kingdom influenced by Middle Eastern, Spanish, and North African culture, isn’t portrayed as an exotic location. It’s the norm, richly described, and, in an interesting twist, it’s the white, pale foreigners who are seen by the characters as frightening others. Combine that with a smart, powerful heroine and some political thrills, and you’ve got an instant recommendation from me.

If you love The Magician’s Nephew, read I Am Morgan le Fay, by Nancy Springer
I originally read the Narnia books in the in-world chronological order instead of publication order, so I didn’t really appreciate the nice work Lewis was doing, hinting at the creation of Narnia and the origins of the White Witch. Rereading was a fun treat, giving me a chance to discover all the hints of the Narnia I knew and loved to come.
For a major King Arthur nerd like me, I Am Morgan le Fay offers similar thrills, telling the story of a beloved baddie before they became that bad. When I came across it for the first time in high school I was already obsessed with the good king’s sister/nemesis after reading the rather more adult The Mists of Avalon (my email address was fata morgana, the Italian name for the witch). Despite the comparative lack of sexy parts, I liked this interpretation of young Morgan’s journey from loving sister to vengeful witch, laden with a sense of doom and destiny.

If you love The Last Battle, read His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman
I always had trouble with the notoriously difficult final chapter of the series, and not just because the Narnias inside of Narnians was very confusing to me when I was eight. Along with a violent, confusing plot in which everyone you love dies in kind of horrifying ways, it’s the epitome of all the racist, sexist, problematic aspects of Lewis’s writing.
Philip Pullman had an even stronger reaction to Narnia, going so far as to write a series dedicated to celebrating the parts of life he saw Lewis condemning; namely, adult sexuality, women, atheism, and people of color. The result is a sometimes heavy-handed but ultimately stunning trilogy filled with some of the most gorgeous worlds and brutal emotional knocks I have ever read. The Last Battle left me feeling a little left out and disappointed, but The Amber Spyglass, in one small intimate scene, left me devastated in the best possible way.