Louis Markos is an excellent writer (perhaps an even better speaker if you get the chance to hear him) and has fantastic insight into both Tolkien and Lewis. The structure of the book is easy to follow and is centered around the four cardinal and three theological virtues. For each virtue, Markos demonstrates with examples from Tolkien and Lewis’s stories how each writer develops these important and often forgotten virtues. Not only do these examples help him explore the theme of virtue, but his exploration of the virtues often helps the reader think more deeply about the part of the story he uses as the example. The book is probably most valuable for any reader high school age or older who has just finished reading Lord of the Rings and/or the Narnia stories, but even for one who has read them often over the course of 15 years I find the book refreshing and interesting. I highly recommend this book, and for fans of Lewis who want to go a bit deeper, I would definitely recommend Markos’ work, Restoring Beauty: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful in the Writings of C. S. Lewis.
