I feel I can speak for the minority this early in the release since I am a man and and never read the book. If you are concerned you will be lost without reading the book before, you have nothing to fear. I comprehended every theme and concept in the movie that my friends that read the book caught. They said it was very accurate. I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the special effects and awesome fight sequences. Great movie for anyone!
This movie is not near as accurate to the book as the first movie was. However, a lot of these adaptations were needed because of the way the book starts, the plot starts with Peter and the others and works backwards to tell Caspian's history. This would be confusing and hard to do in a movie, so they did it in sequence. There's also several scenes that never happened, but they work in well with the book-based parts. I would strongly recommend this movie to anyone of any age. The actors that play humans do a remarkable job of bringing Lewis's characters to life. If you have an imaginative bone in your body, the CGC animals and dwarfs look exactly like the readers would imagine them. This is a great retelling of a classic story that has been adapted to the big screen without sacrificing much for the long time fans.