* No, I didn't mess up the title of the book; it's just that I'd probably draw on both
The Golden Compass and
The Subtle Knife in this post.
SPOILER WARNING!
I suppose the first time I've heard about Philip Pullman and His Dark Materials was on one of the Pottercast's episodes, the Leaky Cauldron's weekly podcast. Somebody mentioned something about other worlds and a girl on a journey. Yeah, that was a long time ago. I don't remember if I even linked it to The Golden Compass film of 2007.
I have all but forgotten it until this summer. I saw it in the bookshops on the Gatwick airport and in Dublin. I didn't buy it, though; those were the times of Twilight and getting the Meyer's series topped my booklist and filled my suitcase close to a bursting point. (Breaking Dawn is the size of a brick, after all). So Lyra's story had to wait until my January visit to Cologne.
I'm now through the first instalment, the Golden Compass (or Northern Lights as it was originally called). I've seen the film, of course, but I was surprised to find out that it didn't cover the whole of the first book at all. It stops after Lyra, Iorek and the gyptians saved the children from Bolvangar. And that's roughly three fourths into the book.
Frankly, I find what's going on from then on and into The Subtle Knife much more interesting.
Shortly after that, Lyra is captured alone in Svalbard (ruled by severe armoured bears) where she has to fend for herself. I know I've said I didn't like her much, but she's started to grow on me: her character develops and displays more nuances than the original, headstrong haughty child we started out with. But she's been a survivor all the way through and I guess she'll make it till the end of the series. What's a bit worrying is that there's been a prophesy about her for centuries, a prophesy known to witches which says that a child would come and have a profound change on all worlds and would have to do things in her innocence, without knowing their full significance. Such characters usually have to pay a big price for such doings in books, I hope she survives.
Anyway, I've had doubts not only about liking Lyra, but liking the series as a whole. While ploughing through The Golden Compass, I've had the sense of reading a science fiction book rather than a fantasy one for all the witches and talking bears and people with daemons. After all, everyone is preoccupied with dust coming from the sky, with the aurora revealing a city from another world, etc. The plot's becoming exceeding interesting, however. As far as I can gather from Lord Asriel's explanations, it seems that Dust is seen as the physical expression of original sin. Yes, the one in the Bible. It's attracted to adults and not to children, presumambly because they are still innocent. Dust is feared by the Church and all researchers in the field are persecuted.
Mrs Coulter also explains that if daemons are cut drom their humans while still children, Dust won't cling to them when they grow up and they would be happy and safe. But as Lyra discovers, all those who went through such an intercision either cannot survive the loss of their daemon, who is in fact a part of, if not their whole soul, or if they do, they are like sleepwlakers, without free will or sense of self. They can do as they are told and that's all. Incidentally, it's been satisfying to build more experience with daemons: they are not, as the name suggests, necessarily our secret, evil nature. They are part of people, part of their soul, when a human dies, his/her daemon disappears, and vice versa. They cannot be more that a few yards physically apart from each other. They share their thoughts and senses. If someone touches your daemon, you feel it.
I'm almost half-through The Subtle Knife, a book about Lyra's own journey in search for the nature of Dust -- a journey that leads her through other worlds, including into our own and more or less into our own time. So there's still a lot to discover about Dust (known as dark matter in our own world).
What I find curious is this: at a period when I'm coming across and been told about various spiritual writings on how the earth's energy and magnetic field is changing and thus causing changes in mankind, which will slowly lead to an altered consciousness and a move into another age, even another dimension, I start reading this novel, a book of fiction through and through, on paralel universes with windows between them, some people crossing from one to the other, etc. Coincidences are meaningful, right.
No doubt, I'll finish His Dark Materials soon, I find them compelling and I'm curious to see what explanation Puulman would pull through regarding Dust, sin and religion on the whole. I wonder if he would stick to universal moral values such as love and compassion or ...
