Rating: 
Summary: Zero stars - Stick with the original
Review: 'Out of the Silent Planet' is excellent, and the only decent book in the trilogy. It stands alone, so don't feel the need to read the other two books. 'Perelandra' is bad, and 'That Hideous Strength' is worse.This book is trash.
Rating: 
Summary: A Climatic end to C.S.Lewis's Space Trilogy
Review: 'Out of the Silent Planet' was set on Mars, 'Perelandra' on Venus, so it is almost inevitable that 'That Hideous Strength' is set on Earth. Having journeyed through the Heavens, Ransom is now involved with a group of people, most of them Christians, in dealing with a demonically influenced organisation which has plans to eridicate the human race. Although Ransom is no longer the main character in this story, the others who take centre stage, notably the Studdocks, more than make up for this. The storyline is pacy with the occasional twist, and the characters, whilst some may not be three dimensional, certainly grab your attention. Definetly worth reading
Rating:
Summary: Progressives gone wild
Review: A great, fun "fairy tale" with lots of meaning-
Long live Merlin!
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic! Pushes the envelope of great fiction!
Review: A truly stunning book! Interesting how this book seems to be getting either 5 stars or 1 star. Like the story itself, there is polarization, no middle ground. This satirical comedy blends brilliant characters with an accelerating plot. The BEST thing is the true-life charecterization of the "bad guys" and the "good guys". Modern 2-D writers paint the bad guys as blatent, psycopathic killers from the get-go. Lewis' bad guys are killers in disguise: socially acceptable, educated sophisticates who have literally duped themselves and they all distrust and despise each other. The good guys (i.e., "fat Mrs. Dimble saying her prayers") are human, but trying really hard to do right. The second-best thing is all the spiritual/biblical parallels and symbols. It makes a powerful backdrop for Christians and a nagging echo, with a ring of truth, for atheists (or what Lewis called, "materialists"). The third-best thing was comedy. This was the funniest book I've ever read, but it's really not a comedy, no matter how you slice it. I can't remember the last time a mere book brought laughter to the point of tears and loss of bodily function (real-Merlin-fake Merlin and the banquet speeches at Belbury). Read 'em and weep.
Rating: 
Summary: Too Many Words, Clive, Too Many Words
Review: After reading or rereading the first two excellent books in C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy-- Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra -- it is almost impossible to keep from reading this book, its conclusion. Unfortunately, while the first two grow better with each rereading, this one grows more tedious. Mind you if you have never read it, do so. I am just suggesting that it is the weakest link. Lewis needs no praise and will not be diminished by any adverse criticism from me. He is intelligent, insightful, psychologically acute, imaginative, clever, urban, witty and literate, and everyone knows it. It is just that in this book he does it all a bit too much. This is the story of an impeding battle between the forces of good and evil. But what a cast of characters: archangelic beings, macrobes, a contraceptive subterranean lunar race, the Fisher King who is also Pendragon, a seeress of the House of Tudor, Merlin, magic out of Numinor the true West, a fortune inherited from an Indian Christian mystic, a Scottish skeptic, a menagerie of animals, earthly avatars of heavenly spirits, an institute the figurative and literal Head of which is a decapitated or rather decorporated mad scientist through which unearthly powers speak, and Withers the dithering deputy director who is so vague and obscurantist that one wonders how people in the evil institute (with the ironic acronymic name of NICE) even manage to put on their pants in the morning never mind engineer the extinction of the whole human race and the conquest of the entire universe. Add to all these of course the merely human elements of brutal police, ambitious and pretentious academics, narrow minded politicians and scientists. Lewis seems to want to pull it all together in one volume; he has everything here except moderation. And when the denouement comes, less than a handful of the evil are really in on it all, and almost none of the good forces are really needed. It is all very anticlimactic. There is a clever description of the politics of a small college, and a good recognition scene where Pendragon discovers himself to Merlin, and an initialllly enjoying citation of the maundering style of Withers (which CS seems to have so delighted in that he persisted in presenting it all through the text until it eventually becomes vastly annoying). Lots of insights too on every one of his favorite topics and pointed criticism on all his pet peeves, but do they all really need to be gathered here together? As in Perelandra this is an explicitly and essentially Christian book, possibly making the work of less appeal to readers who do not share that faith. And his attitude to the feminine, perhaps acceptable in his own day, is just too patronizing today. As I say, do read it, but it is by far the weakest of the three books.
Rating:
Summary: Completely Uninteresting
Review: After reading the first five chapters I was simply too bored to continue. IMHO, a terrible book.
Rating:
Summary: A Stew with some choice bits of meat.
Review: All right, there are problems with this book. Lewis' NICE conquers not only England, but the entire world, while the world hardly seems to notice or care. Lewis never has been able to describe any organization that included more than a pub-full of members convincingly. His "international conspiracy" comes off a bit like Spectre without the pirhanhas or pretty girls. He tries McPhee out in the role of house skeptic and house clown, but he doesn't really work in either. And Lewis can't seem to make up his mind if he wants his good guys to practice Christian miracles or pagan magic; where in the Bible do angels possess people? (Comes of hanging around Charles Williams, I guess.) So why do I keep on reading the book? Partly because, like a stew, I can push the ingrediants I don't like to the side. And partly because the book contains some tasty little stylistic and conceptual tidbits, like the proper names, which Lewis fills out with some classic parody, the fun of bringing Merlin back to modern England, and the contrast between the tramp and the magician in the climactic scene. But as Lewis said of Macdonald, the preaching, which would be a defect in other books, is what really saves this one, in my opinion. That Hideous Strength shows a remarkable understanding of the mechanisms of human depravity and redemption. The book is far better on this score than George orwell's antiutopian classic, 1984. Moreover, there are some wonderfully prophetic and insightful passages. The book has, in my opinion, aged extremely well, as technology and the New Age movement have taken the old dream of man as God to new levels in recent years. Was NICE a prophecy of what computer and biotech geniuses are going to do with the human mind in the 21st Century? We'll wait and see.
Rating:
Summary: Slow start but finishes strongly
Review: As a fairy tale, this book starts off rather slowly (as many fairy tales do), but the action eventually picks up and the ending is good. Besides the story line, this book presents a more right brained approach to the things Lewis wrote about in THE ABOLITION OF MAN, as well as a depiction of the groups he talks about in his essay "The Inner Ring", the 6th chapter of his book THE WEIGHT OF GLORY. Lewis manages bring in several other mythologies into his own story, including Numinor (from his friend J.R.R. Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS) and Merlin (from the Arthurian saga). If you can patiently work your way through the start of this novel, the body and ending of it will reward your efforts.
Rating:
Summary: Very, very Lewis
Review: As a story, That Hideous Strength is of a lesser calibre than Out of the Silent Planet or Perelandra, the other books in the Cosmic Trilogy. As an allogory and as an exploration of ultimate Truth, however, That Hideous Strength is a wonderful book; it is theology dressed up as a story and, so long as one acknowledges this, it is a deeply satisfying book
Rating:
Summary: Ranks with the best of good versus evil fiction
Review: As author of Project 314, I have a deep appreciation for the way that Lewis pits good vs. evil. In his space trilogy, Lewis ranks with Stephen King (The Stand), and Tolkien's ring series in the way that he reaches deeply into his imagination to allegorize the moral dilemma of man. From a scientific standpoint he is ahead of his time. Imagine Lewis' amazement at the way we keep bodies alive today!
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