The Last Battle, the final instalment of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles, is an unusual children’s book.
The plot involves all the main characters being killed, some in a train crash and others in battle, and the whole "Narnian world" coming to an end. It is literally apocalyptic.
And at the centre of the fall of Narnia is the diabolical character of Shift, a talking ape. The story opens with Shift content to just control and coerce his "friend" Puzzle, a naïve and easily manipulated donkey. But a chance discovery of a lion skin gives Shift an enterprising idea – to dress Puzzle up as a lion and present him to fellow Narnians as the return of the Great Lion, Aslan. Puzzle hates the idea but Shift convinces him:
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