His Dark Materials | Twilight | Emotional state

[bironic]

One of the local Little Free Libraries had a copy of The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman and that finally motivated me to start reading His Dark Materials after all these years. People were super into them around the time we were going to Harry Potter aca-cons and of course there've been a million fannish AUs but I never got around to trying the

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[timespirt]

After seeing the movie The Golden Compass and not being satisfied I bought the three book in one adaption. I got through the first part of it and then I put it down for a while. From the movie I knew there was stuff missing and I wanted to know more.

I was reading on Amazon that the new Harry Potter book was a big disappointment. It was not written by JK Rowling but was adapted with her blessing. People were not happy and said it read like a bad written fanfiction story. They all downloaded the Kindle edition.

[bironic]

I saw a couple of reactions to that effect on Twitter, but I'm staying away from as much as I can so I can read the book uninfluenced. I picked it up today and expect to read it soon!

[timespirt]

Let me know what you think. I don't want to add it to my collection if it isn't any good.

[shadowfireflame]

Yay, I'm glad you're enjoying His Dark Materials! I love the idea of daemons so much, little external depictions of souls that can be snuggled and loved. Very sweet, and so horrifying when evil people try to forcibly separate the two.

I'm very curious as to your thoughts once you've finished the series! :)

[bironic]

>>little external depictions of souls that can be snuggled and loved

Yes, reading about the snuggling is scratching an itch in my currently animal-free life! Hee. I'm not sure yet what to make of the daemons as physical manifestations of souls -- or that Asriel is rebelling against the Church but isn't atheist so much as anti-establishment, so he's not out to prove the non-existence of a deity, but instead out to kill the deity. I don't remember seeing something like that before. The narrative doesn't seem to be saying (so far) that metaphysics is really physics, or Dust is dark matter, and all theology is actually secular, but perhaps instead that all are equivalent? We'll see.

Sorry, that's probably more than you were looking for! I'm working through it as I go. I'm only a few chapters into the second book right now.

[shadowfireflame]

No, I love your thoughts!!! I'm curious to see what you think after you've finished the series!

I always had fun thinking about what my daemon would be, but the idea that they could actually be severed and you could lose that connection is so viscerally horrifying. I never quite understood the Dust part of the books (maybe it represents innocence?) but I did always love the daemons element.

[flywoman]

Ah, well, Asriel as Lucifer rather than an atheist made perfect sense to me.

Welcome to the party! There's an interesting House fic series out there set in the Daemonverse, if you're interested.

[bironic]

Ah, yeah, that sounds familiar - I may have read part of it.

>>Asriel as Lucifer rather than an atheist made perfect sense to me

In typing out some of the comments to this post, it finally clicked that it wasn't a coincidence that Asriel/Azriel was named after an angel. And the narrative name-checked Lucifer's failed rebellion right there in book one. I think what threw me until the last day or so was that I'd been expecting Christopher Hitchens and got John Milton - criticism from within the system, where the theology itself isn't doubted but the institutionalization of the religion is. There's a lot of fury but it's directed at an entity depicted as real and whose existence most/all of the characters don't doubt.