The last book was racist? How so? I don't believe that Lewis was making any reference to the Calormenes as a whole as being bloodthirsty or evil. In fact, their captain in that book didn't seem to have any faith in Tash at all; he was just in it for the military and financial gains. The soldier with the truest faith was the one who made it through in the end. I don't think the comparison with Lord of the Rings really holds; not only did Lewis and Tolkien have completely different motives, and indeed audiences, for writing their works as a whole (Tolkien despised allegory, for instance
), those specific scenes seem to be created for different purposes. Lord of the Rings is far more on an epic scale; Tolkien fought in World War I himself, and I think in the case of the Southrons, he was trying to convey the idea that the soldiers who fight in wars don't necessarily know or care much about the objectives of their masters, and their own ideas may often be deluded or twisted from the truth. In the case of Lewis, keeping in line with his whole idea of faith, I think he was trying to convey that those who intentionally commit evil acts in the name of a higher power earn evil in return, while those who live their lives in a good and noble fashion receive their reward at the end. I always thought that Aslan's line to the good Calormene soldier, in which he says, "Whenever you did good acts in the name of Tash, you were actually doing them for me; whenever someone commits evil in my name, they are really doing so for Tash," was a very unique concept; it helped to tie a lot of that last book together.
For me, what made that book so special is that I think it is the greatest suggestion of what heaven could be like that I have ever read. A place where you meet all of the good people you've ever known, all of the great figures of the past. A place like this world, but so much more real and true that it's almost impossible to imagine. That image has remained with me for 11 years; I think it's truly a wonderful way to end the story.
I greatly enjoyed Voyage of the Dawn Treader myself; the idea of going out and exploring to the ends of the Earth, and finding all kinds of fantastic things along the way, appealed to me as a child, and in a very real sense, it still does for me now.
