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I read the trilogy several years ago and hated it, but that may well have been because I read it right after reading that essay where Philip Pullman offers his moronic critique of Narnia. Decided to give it another shot lately, and it's indeed less odious than I recall. For example, I hated Lyra even worse than Holden Caulfield the first time through, but her brattiness didn't grate half as much this time. But a couple of things still baffle and/or enrage me:
*Does it strike anyone else as odd that the two main characters "grow up" and discover who they are as people right at the beginning of adolescence? I know that for most of history, that was considered the beginning of adulthood, but I can't think of a period in life when I was less comfortable with or certain of my own identity than my middle school years. What precisely is supposed to have changed so significantly and dramatically, aside from their suddenly wanting to bone each other? It's plain that both characters are perfectly capable of independent decision and rebellion from the get-go, so the idea of a "second temptation" makes no sense. Two twelve-year-olds decide they like each other and aren't interested in celibacy, and that somehow effects the flow of Dust throughout all universes and ensures the future of consciousness.
*On that note, for an anti-theist, self-determinist series it has a lot of things that are destined to happen and apparently in the control of higher powers. Sometimes (as with the alethiometer and other such objects) it's explained as Dust or rebel angels, which raises questions by itself, but whatever. But Lyra is "meant" to be a second Eve--by who? Who chooses Will to be the wielder of the knife? Does the thing have a mind, or is it another case of nebulous destiny?
*I get that the part where they liberate the underworld is meant to be something like a parody of Jesus, but if God/The Authority has the power to automatically reroute the soul of everything conscious that dies in every single universe into his deranged prison camp, shouldn't he easily be capable of quashing any uprising? That's the kind of feat you'd expect from a real omnipotent being, not some upstart angel pretender as he's supposed to be.
*The Church. What exactly motivates them? They're cartoonishly, two-dimensionally evil, automatically oriented against everything good and right regardless of whether they have any sensible reason for it. The worst is the part where the crazy assassin priest thinks that the mulefa's habit of riding around on seed-pods is "ungodly and satanic." No reason why; it's just obligatory that, since said behavior is essential for the health of their ecosystem, the Church and its representatives be opposed to it. Ditto the sleazy Russian priest from the Amber Spyglass, who does nothing for the plot and whose only conceivable raison d'etre is to hammer home the point that JESUS MAKES YOU NASTY, OILY AND EVIL OMG!!!! Or am I missing something?
*Metatron (I still think of Transformers and snicker every time I see that name, but I get that it's an apocrypha reference) has been de facto emperor of the multiverse for millennia, correct? He controls everything in God's name, has absolute power and can do whatever he wants, right? And he says himself that he was quite the horny little bugger when he was mortal. So why the hell has he never done what pretty much every other despot in history has done, and abused his power to get himself some tail? It can't be religious guilt; he controls all the religions, he knows it's a farce. So he of course leaves his shining angelic member in a cage for aeons, and when a hot chick who he knows to be a pathological liar shows up with a flimsy story to lure him away during the most important battle of all time, he acts like Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's: "Oh, we takea pictures Miss-a Gorightry? Oh, me likee very muchee, haw haw haw."
*More church illogic: they want to perform gruesome experiments on children to turn them into mindless zombies for whatever reason, so what do they do? They publicly kidnap them in the middle of one of the world's most populous cities, then haul them thousands of miles north into an expensive base in an inhospitable climate to do the procedures. For "secrecy," apparently. I repeat, They couldn't have just set up an orphanage in Africa, where nobody gives a damn what happens, and used local kids instead of that wild, convoluted scheme that involves the maximum amount of conspicuousness possible? Dammit, anybody who spends centuries under the thumb of these morons deserves to be oppressed.
*Don't even get me started on the armored bears. Tactically worthless.
Um, other than that they were WONDERFUL books, etc...
*Does it strike anyone else as odd that the two main characters "grow up" and discover who they are as people right at the beginning of adolescence? I know that for most of history, that was considered the beginning of adulthood, but I can't think of a period in life when I was less comfortable with or certain of my own identity than my middle school years. What precisely is supposed to have changed so significantly and dramatically, aside from their suddenly wanting to bone each other? It's plain that both characters are perfectly capable of independent decision and rebellion from the get-go, so the idea of a "second temptation" makes no sense. Two twelve-year-olds decide they like each other and aren't interested in celibacy, and that somehow effects the flow of Dust throughout all universes and ensures the future of consciousness.
*On that note, for an anti-theist, self-determinist series it has a lot of things that are destined to happen and apparently in the control of higher powers. Sometimes (as with the alethiometer and other such objects) it's explained as Dust or rebel angels, which raises questions by itself, but whatever. But Lyra is "meant" to be a second Eve--by who? Who chooses Will to be the wielder of the knife? Does the thing have a mind, or is it another case of nebulous destiny?
*I get that the part where they liberate the underworld is meant to be something like a parody of Jesus, but if God/The Authority has the power to automatically reroute the soul of everything conscious that dies in every single universe into his deranged prison camp, shouldn't he easily be capable of quashing any uprising? That's the kind of feat you'd expect from a real omnipotent being, not some upstart angel pretender as he's supposed to be.
*The Church. What exactly motivates them? They're cartoonishly, two-dimensionally evil, automatically oriented against everything good and right regardless of whether they have any sensible reason for it. The worst is the part where the crazy assassin priest thinks that the mulefa's habit of riding around on seed-pods is "ungodly and satanic." No reason why; it's just obligatory that, since said behavior is essential for the health of their ecosystem, the Church and its representatives be opposed to it. Ditto the sleazy Russian priest from the Amber Spyglass, who does nothing for the plot and whose only conceivable raison d'etre is to hammer home the point that JESUS MAKES YOU NASTY, OILY AND EVIL OMG!!!! Or am I missing something?
*Metatron (I still think of Transformers and snicker every time I see that name, but I get that it's an apocrypha reference) has been de facto emperor of the multiverse for millennia, correct? He controls everything in God's name, has absolute power and can do whatever he wants, right? And he says himself that he was quite the horny little bugger when he was mortal. So why the hell has he never done what pretty much every other despot in history has done, and abused his power to get himself some tail? It can't be religious guilt; he controls all the religions, he knows it's a farce. So he of course leaves his shining angelic member in a cage for aeons, and when a hot chick who he knows to be a pathological liar shows up with a flimsy story to lure him away during the most important battle of all time, he acts like Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's: "Oh, we takea pictures Miss-a Gorightry? Oh, me likee very muchee, haw haw haw."
*More church illogic: they want to perform gruesome experiments on children to turn them into mindless zombies for whatever reason, so what do they do? They publicly kidnap them in the middle of one of the world's most populous cities, then haul them thousands of miles north into an expensive base in an inhospitable climate to do the procedures. For "secrecy," apparently. I repeat,
They couldn't have just set up an orphanage in Africa, where nobody gives a damn what happens, and used local kids instead of that wild, convoluted scheme that involves the maximum amount of conspicuousness possible? Dammit, anybody who spends centuries under the thumb of these morons deserves to be oppressed.*Don't even get me started on the armored bears. Tactically worthless.
Um, other than that they were WONDERFUL books, etc...
). Hell, it's not like I was expecting a lot. I do enjoy the alternate angle (compared to other books in the genre, I mean) that in a kids/young adult book the good guys are trying to kill God. That's pretty cool.
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