Heresy

The Amber Spyglass is the longest of the books, by far.  Technically, it's maybe the weakest: long passages where not much happens, an anti-climactic ending, some plot holes (How did Lord Asriel amass his army in about a week, let alone build his fortress and develop all those Intention Craft prototypes?) and weird detours (Um, the hair bomb?).  It makes up for that by being completely, awesomely bombastic, even compared to its two prequels.  Let's see: God is dead, let's kill the pretender; gay angels; the Christians are completely evil and want to steal free will; eternal life is a big fat lie, or actually an enormous prison camp; the only way to save the world is for two pre-teens to get it on, says the ex-nun.  Does that cover it?  Oh, there's a monk who's gotten some sort of special dispensation to do whatever he wants, so he can assassinate a little girl. 

One of the things Pullman set out to do, in writing these books, was to attack, in a way, C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia.  Point by point, he pretty much nails it: Iorek Byrnison, for instance, seems to be a response to the fluffy talking animals that populate Narnia.  In place of Lewis's unswerving orthodoxy, we have an unremittingly evil church.  Pullman's big problem, though, according to an interview he did with Salon (which I can't find now because Salon's search engine sucks), was Lewis's misogyny.  Pullman argues that, for Lewis, girls are only acceptable as long as they're basically boys.  Post-pubescent girls are liable, like Susan Pevensie in The Last Battle, to be too concerned with make-up and boys.  Susan's punishment is to be locked out of the Kingdom of Heaven.  In The Amber Spyglass, Lyra gets to be a girl and, while she suffers a similar punishment -- she and Will are exiled from each other --, she gets to build her own Heaven on Earth. 

I don't think that Pullman completely succeeds in shutting misogyny from his book, however.  What is really going on with Mrs Coulter?  Portrayed as wicked through the first two books, she seems to sort of possibly redeem herself at the end, but it's an uncomfortable redemption: she all of a sudden discovers maternal love.   What's interesting is that Lord Asriel, who is doing things every bit as dubious from beginning to end, and is if anything worse to his daughter than Mrs Coulter is (Who thinks he wouldn't have sacrificed her at the end of The Golden Compass, had Roger not fortuitously shown up?), escapes Pullman's ire.

Comments

[Ca$hier]

Hello! Very nicely done. Good stuff. I will be back!