I loved the first book, liked the second a lot, and was pretty disappointed with the third. I did see a lot of “beating over the head with atheism”–or at least a lot of “religion is evil, all of it” beating. I’ve been a Pullman fan for a long time, and was sad that he let his views get so in the way of the story (as I saw it). I thought the characters suffered from that. Of course, I may have been influenced by being familiar with his political and religious views before reading the book…
It’s been awhile since I read them, but I had the impression that John Parry’s daemon took a while to show up. Did she appear right away? I thought Will would have met his daemon if he’d stayed in Lyra’s world longer.
It wasn’t clear when he found her. Will realised he had an inner dæmon when he lost it crossing the river to the world of the dead (Styx and Charon reference?); the dæmon appeared when he entered Lord Asriel’s world. Dunno, it just seemed inconsistent.
Both had their daemons “externalized” by similar rites of passage. John explained at some point that he’d gone through some ritual to become a shaman; the upshot of which was that it involved separating the person from daemon. That happened to Will by crossing over into the deadlands; so both of them turned up as external critters when they returned to more normal places.
I also found the series a huge disappointment. The Golden Compass is a magical book, and the Subtle Knife was a bit of a falling off but still pretty good. (Hey, I thought at the time, it’s the middle volume of the trilogy – it’s bound to feel a little flat.)
The Amber Spyglass however ruined the whole series for me. I felt like all the wonderful life and humanity of Lyra was squeezed out of her so that she could be used as a playing piece in Pullman’s little metaphysical game. Which pretty much wrecked his whole thesis for me – The Republic of Heaven came across as just as sterile and soul-destroying as the religious orthodoxy he was attacking. Feh.
On a side note: jjimm, the next time I buy you a book, you better not wait til it wins a major literary prize before you deign to read it, you ‘Shipping News’-giver.
It’s been awhile since I read the books, but I thoroughly enjoyed them. And, like Drastic and lola, I didn’t read the books as being about atheism at all. Instead, they are profoundly mystical and I was struck by certain similarities between their themes and various tenets of early Gnosticism.
In HDM, God is portrayed as illegitimate. This was also the belief of the early Gnostics who posited that the god of the Old Testament who created the universe is not the true god but, rather, a lesser being with delusions of grandeur. As such, all of creation has been cut off from the divine yet still contains a divine spark (Dust?) of the true god that will allow our spiritual natures to return if only we can obtain true knowledge (gnosis).
I may be reading too much into these parallels and my understanding of Gnosticism is limited, but I doubt the similarities are entirely coincidental.
I thought the first was really wonderfully told, but the revelations in the third were a bit too mystical and random (made up) for me. For instance the ‘we can leave one gate open’ bit seemed contrived. And it gets more mystical: the first book mostly makes the magical stuff make sense, but then you go ‘WTF? Having sex stops the dust working the compass? Why?’
Rebelling against heaven is a nice idea, but it didn’t quite come across to me. And the afterlife seemed very weird.
But the first book showed a lot of promise. I loved the university, and the iron bears, and everything…
There are always readers who are insecure enough to be very upset if someone doesn’t agree with them. I’ve also seen a fair bit of vitriol directed towards anyone who says of the HP books “Oh, they were nice enough for kid’s stuff, but I don’t see why everyone is so excited about them”.
Maybe insecure readers get worse when they read children’s fantasy instead of their usual ‘grown-up, important’ stuff.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think less of anyone who didn’t instantly fall in love with these books. It’d be pretty boring if all we did was stand around saying “Yup, these books were great. Yes indeedy.”
I absolutely loved the first one, loved the second one (though not quite as much) and the third one… well, let me elaborate. The entire sequence of the journey to the land of the dead and the dead coming out of the ground was really good to me. As I would have expected, since that was the point of the whole thing. Other than that my reactions ranged from mild distaste (the world with the artificial roads seemed really stupid to me for some reason) to outright annoyance (his almost hysterical fear of organized religion, what the hell Mary had to do with any of this – maybe I’m missing something, but why was she there and how did she “play the serpent”?). And let’s get something straight here: Will and Lyra DID NOT HAVE SEX. Not in my world, at least. It preserves my sanity to believe so.
Also, Serafina Pekkala is the coolest name in the world.
From my perspective, Mary ‘played the serpent’ when she talked about her romantic interlude in Italy. It seemed pretty clear from Lyra’s POV during that conversation that it was one of the turning points in her realizing that Will wasn’t actually just a good friend any more. YMMV.
As far as the books go, I too felt that the first two were rather better than the third. The rather blatant ‘message’ of the final book actually left me somewhat bemused, as it seems a pretty good argument for living life according to the Gospels: ‘Love one another as I have loved you’, anyone?
There was a piece towards the end of The Subtle Knife where she felt a clarity of purpose whenever she was with him - she wanted to tell him, but she got distracted. I reckon that was the first time.
I was too dumb to realise that romance was the temptation. Doh.
Hi jjimm – you did a great job of explicating your feelings on completing the trilogy … and I share many of your observations. As did everyone else - esp kung fu lola, Drastic and (even) Legomancer, IMHO.
Looking back, I think this book seemed to try to cover too much material all at once – I’m not quite sure the mulefa needed to be in the story - other than showing that humans are not the only Divine creations?
I really enjoyed the series overall but it was a letdown for me too. I discussed this here in a mini-hijack within a thread on Stephen King’s worst books.
Bumping this thread as last night I finished the last book and… WOW.
I could not sleep after I put the book down, I was so moved. The day after I am still sad and depressed and slightly sick with loss at having finished the book.
I was not expecting such a heart-rending end to the trilogy, completely absorbed in the innocent adventure of two children, and then suddenly, in the space of two chapters they are in love and then suffering the agony of knowing they have to part and never see each other again.
Meh, I found the whole series just a bit dense and turgid – had trouble imagining a 13-14 year-old reading it. Although, come to think of it, I was about that age when I read Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and that Hideous Strength, and they make HDM seem positively spritely.
Like many people, I enjoyed the first book the most, thought the second one was OK, and was utterly disappointed by the third book. My reaction basically came down to :
What the hell? The whole course of creation reverses itself because of two kids snogging in the woods? How lame is that?
A few other things about the last book that irritated me.
Pullman spends a gazillion slow-moving pages building up to the fight between angels and men. When it finally comes, it just serves as a backdrop for our two annoyingly stalwart kids to stumble through. Not only do we not find out who wins, but we don’t care. Even Lord Asrael wanders off from the fight to handle some personal matters. Pretty disappointing as far as Ragnarok goes…
Finally, the whole contrived thing about Will and Lyra not being able to share worlds * and * not being able to occasionally commute back and forth for the occasional nasty weekend. Not only did this come out of nowhere (and for no apparent reason), but Pullman actually had an angel say that they could take care of the shadow (shade? whatever) caused by Will making the last cuts through to his own and Lyra’s universe. So if angels can take care of individual shadows, why not just have one stop by once in a while when Will and Lyra want to visit? They saved the frigging universe (well – they did something real important, even if I couldn’t quite figure out what it was) – it doesn’t seem like a lot to ask in return.
