If Lewis’ first book in the trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet reminded me strongly of works by authors such as H.G. Wells or Isaac Asimov, the next book in the series, Perelandra reminds me strongly of another one of Lewis’ works, The Screwtape Letters for reasons that quickly become obvious upon reading.

Our protagonist is once again the philologist Ransom, quite possibily a caricature of Tolkein. Instead of being kidnaped and carried to Mars, this time Ransom is willingly carried supernaturally to the planet of Venus. Again, Lewis uses vivid landscape descriptions to depict a planet that lies underneath a permanent cloud cover and has no solid land, save one island in a sea filled with floating land masses. Here, Ransom encounters several alien animals and one single humanoid, a woman. Ransom also soon discovers that one of his enemies from the previous book has followed him to the planet.

From here, the book takes a sharp left turn from a science fiction novel and takes on the form of a religious or philisophical discussion. The lone woman turns out to be the “Eve” of her planet, the first creation and the mother of her race. Ransom also learns that his old enemy is possessed by none other than the old Serpent himself. The whole planet of Venus unfolds as another Garden of Eden, another creation about to begin its own story. Ransom has a first person view of the opening chapters of Genesis as the Un-man tempts the woman to stay overnight on the island, the one thing she has been commanded not to do. From here, the story opens into a powerful dialogue as Ransom intervenes and engages the Un-man, giving the reader the most challenging part of all three books.

The part that fascinated me the most at this point was the tactics and schemes that the Un-man imposed. Much like the writer in The Screwtape Letters, we find that the devil is far more clever and insidious that we can possibly imagine and that he knows so well how to get to us. Ransom finds himself a wits end as he continually parries away argument after endless argument by the Un-man and from here the book takes a twist that I totally did not expect. (Without ruining the story, I’ll just say that Ransom believed strongly in the verse about resisting the devil.)

Lewis is at his best in this book during the verbal fencing between the devil and Ransom as Lewis sets up theory after theory that was presented by the scientific and philosophical community of his time, using Ransom to refute them. The book delves deeply into the concept of obedience and also the concept of redemption. For me, this book was the most “philsophical” of the three books and therefore was the slowest of the three to read, because there was much to chew on. I would also say it’s the book of the three that would most require a re-read, because I’m sure there’s a lot that I missed in the first pass.