C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia are among the best selling books ever. With over 100 million copies sold, what new could possibly be said about them?

In his recent book Planet Narnia, Lewis scholar Michael Ward makes the seemingly preposterous claim that "Lewis secretly based the Chronicles of Narnia on the seven heavens of the medieval cosmos." Ward offers a concise essay on the theme in the January/February issue of Books and Culture entitled "C.S. Lewis and the Star of Bethlehem." His thesis, simply put, is that each of the volumes in the Narnia series corresponds to the seven "planets" of the medieval cosmos--Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. And that this symbolic correspondence, everywhere present but nowhere explicit, determines the cosmological and Christological significance of each volume.

According to Alan Jacobs, author of The Narnian, such a claim causes the sensible reader to erect "a castle of scepticism." Or, as Tom Shippey put it in his review ("Planetary Influences"): "If the 'Narniad' has had a hundred million readers . . . what are the odds on the hundred-million-and-first suddenly stumbling on the truth?"

Does Ward pull it off? Against all odds, the emerging consensus seems to be yes.