[QUOTE=Case Sensitive]
I think Asriel’s characterisation was rather flawed, too: I mentioned his murder of Roger in the other thread, but at the end of The Northern Lights he tells Mrs Coulter he’s off to destroy Dust rather than preserve it: it’s fudged a little later by his telling Mrs Coulter that he wanted to persuade her to come with him, yet that seems inconsistent considering that at the time he didn’t seem to give a rat’s arse whether she came or not.
And why his constant hostility towards Lyra? OK, all he knew at the outset was that she was both his daughter and a stroppy lying brat, but surely by the time she’d busted up the operation at Bolvangar and then tricked Iorek Byrnison back on to his throne he’d have had more respect for her.
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A major problem with Asriel is that Pullman can’t decide what sort of bastard he is. By making Lyra very likeable (and he does accomplish that; the characterizations of Lyra, Will, and Iorek are his best work), he automatically arouses the reader’s ire toward Asriel; the murder of Roger is bad enough, but Asriel’s constant belittling of her, his constant mocking of her abilities, his downright cruelty, make him a bad thematic choice to lead the supposedly heroic rebellion against the Authority. I cheered inside when Lyra told Asriel off near the end of Golden Compass; and every time Asriel belittled her in Spyglass, I couldn’t help thinking, “Try saying that in front of Iorek Byrnison, cocksucker. You’ll get to do it once. Once. And the only reason you’ll survive saying it the first time is that Iorek will want to explain to you why he’s killing you so you realize just what a jackass you are.”
(What Amber Spyglass needs, actually, is more Iorek. I agree that it should have been split into two volumes, and that would have created more space for Iorek as a better adult figure for Lyra. Not a father figure; he’s too wise to try to be that for her, not because he doesn’t love her, but because he knows that Lyra must grow up as a human, not a bear, and he could not permit her passionate but inexperienced love for him to stunt her maturity.)
Anyway…Asriel. And Mrs. Coulter, for that matter. Pullman’s problem was that he made them both far too unsympathetic, as that undercuts them as heroes in their battle against the Authority. I didn’t believe for a moment that Mrs. Coulter had truly changed–by which I mean that I accept that it’s true for purposes of the story, but it’s impossible to reconcile the vision of Mrs. Coulter from Compass and the first half of Spyglass with the one suddenly in love with her daughter in the latter half of AS. I have to fanwank it; the Mrs. Coulter from the latter half of of AS is a counterpart from another reality who has gotten lost in between worlds. And I don’t like this fanwank; it’sfar too arbitrary. As we’ve said a few times already, AS needs a major rewrite and probably a splitting in two and extension.
Another thing that would have been nice would have been someone acknowledging that Lord Asriel’s rebellion was, in essence, no better than the Authority’s tyranny. Asriel’s escape starts with the completely unjust murder of an innocent, and I don’t believe that any enterprise that begins so can remain uncorrupted. (And, of course, Asriel and Coulter are corrupt from the get-go. Did Pullman expect us to forget that Mrs. Coulter was behind the excision process, and ultimately responsible for the heartbreaking suffering of Tony Makairos? That she tortured Serafina Pekkala’s sister witch? Or did HE forget?)
Like I said in the OP: the third book is rushed. It needed a better editor.
