His Dark Materials (Golden Compass + More)

[Tequila Sunrise]

I just finished reading the trilogy, and don't have anyone to talk to about it so I want to know what you think. For anyone who hasn't read it, I highly recommend His Dark Materials for a well written and refreshing fantasy fiction. Despite the author's outspoken agenda, it has a positive ending without the usual saccharine note that fantasy books are prone to end with. It ends tragically, but not in the usual Shakespearean everyone-and-their-grandmother-dies-for-no-good-reason way. I don't know what it is about English writers, but they write the best fantasy!

[Kno]

Only read the first two books, a lot of ideas seem/are stolen, but it takes an unique spin on some of them. Particularly like the rebellion against the demiurge theme (and the moral ambiguity here, not sure how it will go in the third book), the corruption of the Church and the inner demon idea combined with the Fall of man (not so delighted with the demon-pets idea). And I feel to old for some parts of the book.

[varianor]

His Dark Materials was a very thought provoking series.

It raised a lot of questions in my mind. It's been about 2 years since I read it. In that time I keep coming back to the villain of the piece. I find her ineffably cruel and yet interesting. I wish that we knew more about the wheeling aliens, and the odder corners of his universe. For all that, I found the dust intriguing and had a lot of questions about how such a creation as the Subtle Knife could exist. Both practical ones and philosophical ones.

What did you like and dislike most?

For another novel in a similar vein (but not about adolescence), if you're into different views of what angels and Heaven and Hell might be, try Stephen Brust's To Reign in Hell.