From the Bookshelf: His Dark Materials
Jan. 15th, 2009 06:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerAt the annual used book sale my local library puts on, I spotted a boxed set (if of "regular"-sized paperbacks) of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" series. Three dollars for the whole thing seemed a fine price, so I bought it, but with the awareness that most of what I knew about the books were that they had wound up lumped in with that large-scale effort to connect to the success of the Harry Potter series and that they seemed controversial in certain circles for being an irreligious fantasy.
Once I'd started reading the books, though, I found myself pretty well absorbed. Beyond the mere fact of "The Golden Compass" opening in (but soon moving beyond) an English "academic" setting, they didn't seem to have a whole lot to do with Harry Potter, but it seemed good and proper to me that they were their own entity. (I may betray having experienced Harry Potter in a very large part through one thick slice of fandom, though, in thinking that you couldn't really read the "His Dark Materials" books with an eye for pairing people off... of course, I shouldn't underestimate the resourcefulness of some people.) I wondered a bit if a lot of the "experienced" people on the side of the protagonists had a sort of curt quality to them, and also wondered if this could somehow be linked to what I'd heard about the books' attitude; as far as "friendly" characters went, though, the unique and most interesting part of the books for me right from the start were the "daemons": a "built-in" confidant in animal form seems the sort of thing you could put a lot of speculation into. Beyond that, though, I suppose that as an SF reader I did appreciate the books giving an air of being scientifically aware.
As for the books taking on religion, I did find myself at times contemplating that common plaint of those who make a big deal of being offended, that "there's no other side shown"... but, far too often, that does seem intent on suppressing the side that offended them in the first place. (Thoughts of the "bad guy sympathisers" in certain other fandoms came to mind.) On one level, I wondered a little about whether there can be "materialist" "fantasy," which these books don't quite seem to be; on another, I considered the possibility that some of the most publicised views on religion become excellent arguments against it in the eyes of some. To close on a less laboured note, it was sort of interesting to gain a sharper awareness of three-part stories where the middle third have the protagonist separated from most of the allies they gathered in the first third (although not to utter isolation)... Tolkien did it first among my examples, of course, but The Empire Strikes Back also came to mind.
Once I'd started reading the books, though, I found myself pretty well absorbed. Beyond the mere fact of "The Golden Compass" opening in (but soon moving beyond) an English "academic" setting, they didn't seem to have a whole lot to do with Harry Potter, but it seemed good and proper to me that they were their own entity. (I may betray having experienced Harry Potter in a very large part through one thick slice of fandom, though, in thinking that you couldn't really read the "His Dark Materials" books with an eye for pairing people off... of course, I shouldn't underestimate the resourcefulness of some people.) I wondered a bit if a lot of the "experienced" people on the side of the protagonists had a sort of curt quality to them, and also wondered if this could somehow be linked to what I'd heard about the books' attitude; as far as "friendly" characters went, though, the unique and most interesting part of the books for me right from the start were the "daemons": a "built-in" confidant in animal form seems the sort of thing you could put a lot of speculation into. Beyond that, though, I suppose that as an SF reader I did appreciate the books giving an air of being scientifically aware.
As for the books taking on religion, I did find myself at times contemplating that common plaint of those who make a big deal of being offended, that "there's no other side shown"... but, far too often, that does seem intent on suppressing the side that offended them in the first place. (Thoughts of the "bad guy sympathisers" in certain other fandoms came to mind.) On one level, I wondered a little about whether there can be "materialist" "fantasy," which these books don't quite seem to be; on another, I considered the possibility that some of the most publicised views on religion become excellent arguments against it in the eyes of some. To close on a less laboured note, it was sort of interesting to gain a sharper awareness of three-part stories where the middle third have the protagonist separated from most of the allies they gathered in the first third (although not to utter isolation)... Tolkien did it first among my examples, of course, but The Empire Strikes Back also came to mind.