So I’ve galloped through The Golden Compass, drawn headlong into the worlds you’ve created and the story you’re telling. I’m nearing the end of The Subtle Knife, wholly caught up in the tale. I’m reading the part where Lee and Hester are holed up in the ravine, holding off the Imperial soldiers.
Then I turn the page and read:
[spoiler]He said, or thought, “Those poor men didn’t have to come to this, nor did we.”
She said, “We held 'em off. We held out. We’re a-helping Lyra.”
Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died.[/spoiler]
And now I’m sitting here, tears streaming down my face, and I can’t stop crying.
Mr. K and I have been listening to the audiobook and just heard that part last night.
It’s not just the fact of their deaths that’s so distressing, it’s the idea of oblivion, brightened up with the suggestion of eternal of hopelessness and despair that make their sacrifice so guldarn cheerful.
Yeah, thanks Mr. Pullman. You hold him, ETF and I’ll hit him.
Strangely, I think the most upsetting part of that for me is that she’s a hare. Something about this great, adventurous man having a hare for a daemon.
The whole thing about daemons is utterly fascinating, not least how the children’s change and what final form they take for the adults – and what that reveals about the characters.
I’m thinking, for instance, about Lord Boreal and his snake.
I lost it when he died and the Gyptians unknowingly gave his dried fish, the only thing he had left to cling to, to the dogs - and Lyra was furious at them, and placed a coin in his mouth with his daemon’s name on it for him to be buried with.
Yeah, I lost it at Lee and Hester’s last stand, too.
Good God, I should have checked with you guys before I even STARTED that damned series.
I started reading it aloud to my very sensitive, empathetic 8 year old son last year. About 30 pages in, I decided to read ahead. Holy crap!!! :eek: I had to explain to him that we weren’t ready for this book quite yet…
Lyra finding the little boy without his daemon, Marisa’s glee at abducting the children, the knife, poor Roger
Yep. Considering I went into hysterics as a kid when the dwarfs shot the horses in The Last Battle, I can’t even imagine what my reaction would have been to The Golden Compass.
My advice: Stop after the second book. Pretend he never finished the series. The Amber Spyglass does not live up to the promise of the first two volumes.
Well, I’ll be. Wikipedia says you’re right, wunderkammer, and now my last positive illusion has been shattered. Mr. Pullman is probably somewhere tenting his fingers and muttering “excellent.”
Huh, the third book was my favorite. Of course, I’ll freely admit that much of that had to do with the Wheeled elephants but the fore-and-aft rigged birds were good too.
The last book is unsatisfying, but more because Pullman tries to do too much rather than too little: there’s just too much crammed in there from the first two books in an attempt to resolve everything, and at times it can be sprawling, incoherent or hasty. I’m not as down on it as some readers, and you definitely need to complete the series, but it’s one of the few “epic fantasy trilogies” that actually needed to be longer. There was an excellent thread in here a couple of years back analysing the series’ strengths and weaknesses, but don’t search for it until you’ve read all the books.
