Replies

Interesting.

I read the first in the series, which most have agreed is well written. Parts of even it bothered me, though.

Couldn’t get more than a few dozen pages into the second book, as the subtext became increasingly more obvious.

What I find most intriguing is the fact that the lust for power to dominate others, presented by Pullman (at least according to this reviewer) as the ultimate good, is portrayed by Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings as the ultimate evil from which all others spring. The Ring itself is the embodiment of coercion and domination. In LOTR the good guys don’t force others to follow them even when it looks like doing so might be necessary to defeat absolute evil.

Darth Vader had a lust for power, as well. In the beginning, it was to use that power for the greater good. Given time, that power became all that mattered, until it controlled him. A parable for our times, surely.

The thing that boggled my mind about GC was that when we first meet Lord Azriel, he is clearly a bad guy: he tells Lyra "I'll break your arm" and "I'll hurt you so badly you'll wish you were dead," and says if she's caught in the waredrobe "You're on your own: I won't life a finger to save you."

Then later you find out he's Lyra's father, who in fact abandoned her at Jordan College and had no hand in providing for her, educating her, or raising her.

Yet despite all this, Lyra wants to accompany him to the North and even to give him the Aleithiometer (a most powerful tool) --- why? Why would she want to be with someone who treats her cruelly and abandons her? And even after he coldly murders her best friend Roger (her main reason of wanting to go to the North, after all, was to rescue Roger), she seems more attracted by his power than revulsed by his evil.

I mean, if Pullman were interested in liberating human beings from oppression, it's truly strange that he makes his youthful heroine a little girl who abjectly loves an evil, abusive man.

It's so twisted. Even the twists are twisted.