Is "subtle" a color?
Is either "Golden" or "Amber" a dark color? I would have said they were both light colors.
But anyway... I just finished re-reading the His Dark Materials trilogy, and inconsistent parallel construction in the titles isn't the only thing that's bothering me.
No, more importantly, I find the ending profoundly lacking. As if Mr. Pullman said to himself "well, this third book really is dragging on... I guess I'll just stop here, sort of at the ultimate peak of the climax, and maybe write sort of a placeholder wishy-washy ending. Not quite 'it was all a dream', but I'll just rely on some of that good old invisible machinery to deal with some of the problems, ignore some of the problems, and we'll just completely forget about the climactic fulfilling of prophecies, and we'll send all our characters back to to relatively mundane lives as if nothing ever really happened."
Seriously folks we're poised right on the brink-
God just died (well, maybe not EXACTLY God, but we kind of forgot about some open questions there)...
Our two supporting adult alternating hero/villain figures have sacrificed themselves to hurtle Snape (wait for it... watch Dogma if you're still confused...) into the Abyss which is eating the very consciousness and will of humanity itself (and we're still not exactly sure where THAT came from...)...
I think now is a great time to really focus on the magic of two young people realizing that they're in love. More in love than any two people have ever been in all of history. Then we'll hang out with the fucking mulefa for a bit, the holy assassin will basically trip on his shoelace and kill himself, and a new authority figure (lower case A, oh the irony) tells us that things will be okay as long as we STOP DOING ANYTHING INTERESTING. Because blindly doing what random people tell us to has been a big theme so far.
I seriously wanted to start scribbling on the back of an envelope, or maybe break out Excel, to argue with Xaphania (sp? Xanaphia? the books two feet away but I'm pretty lazy) about whether, after we've solved the nuclear weapons problem, it really matters if we mix Tang and hydrogen peroxide every now and then for our own enjoyment. Unfortunately no hard numbers on relative magnitude of Dust-sucking were given. Maybe I'll put together some charts and graphs anyway... then Cas and Jaden can help give them hilaree-uz captions.
So, long story short, nothing was resolved, none of the philosophical questions were dealt with, none of the religio-mythological tie-ins were carried through, all the tension that had built up was just thrown away, it didn't at all feel right in the spirit of the story so far. If we passed through the Kingdom, and this is the Republic, I would have liked to see Other Forms of Government of Heaven.
But anyway... I just finished re-reading the His Dark Materials trilogy, and inconsistent parallel construction in the titles isn't the only thing that's bothering me.
No, more importantly, I find the ending profoundly lacking. As if Mr. Pullman said to himself "well, this third book really is dragging on... I guess I'll just stop here, sort of at the ultimate peak of the climax, and maybe write sort of a placeholder wishy-washy ending. Not quite 'it was all a dream', but I'll just rely on some of that good old invisible machinery to deal with some of the problems, ignore some of the problems, and we'll just completely forget about the climactic fulfilling of prophecies, and we'll send all our characters back to to relatively mundane lives as if nothing ever really happened."
Seriously folks we're poised right on the brink-
God just died (well, maybe not EXACTLY God, but we kind of forgot about some open questions there)...
Our two supporting adult alternating hero/villain figures have sacrificed themselves to hurtle Snape (wait for it... watch Dogma if you're still confused...) into the Abyss which is eating the very consciousness and will of humanity itself (and we're still not exactly sure where THAT came from...)...
I think now is a great time to really focus on the magic of two young people realizing that they're in love. More in love than any two people have ever been in all of history. Then we'll hang out with the fucking mulefa for a bit, the holy assassin will basically trip on his shoelace and kill himself, and a new authority figure (lower case A, oh the irony) tells us that things will be okay as long as we STOP DOING ANYTHING INTERESTING. Because blindly doing what random people tell us to has been a big theme so far.
I seriously wanted to start scribbling on the back of an envelope, or maybe break out Excel, to argue with Xaphania (sp? Xanaphia? the books two feet away but I'm pretty lazy) about whether, after we've solved the nuclear weapons problem, it really matters if we mix Tang and hydrogen peroxide every now and then for our own enjoyment. Unfortunately no hard numbers on relative magnitude of Dust-sucking were given. Maybe I'll put together some charts and graphs anyway... then Cas and Jaden can help give them hilaree-uz captions.
So, long story short, nothing was resolved, none of the philosophical questions were dealt with, none of the religio-mythological tie-ins were carried through, all the tension that had built up was just thrown away, it didn't at all feel right in the spirit of the story so far. If we passed through the Kingdom, and this is the Republic, I would have liked to see Other Forms of Government of Heaven.