No elsewhere?

[dolorosa_12]

This is the second of my January talking meme posts. I was asked to talk about the new Philip Pullman books in the Book of Dust trilogy, for nyctanthes.

The first such book — La Belle Sauvage, a prequel, in terms of content and chronology, to the original His Dark Materials trilogy — was very much to my taste. I was so relieved that it was published at all, and that it was well written, and showed off Pullman's strengths — a vivid sense of place, gorgeous prose that danced on the page, and a rolicking, page-turning plot. I was full of gratitude and emotion, and delighted in celebrating the book with all my friends I'd made through the Philip Pullman forum that was my first experience of online fandom.

Sadly, I did not enjoy The Secret Commonwealth, the second book in the new trilogy — the first one to pick up Lyra's story after she's reached adulthood (save the brief glimpse we got of her as a teenager in Lyra's Oxford). It did things I disliked to Lyra's character, and unfortunately made me reassess my previous opinion of Philip Pullman as one of the few male authors who were able to write female characters well. Oddly, I disliked the book more and more the more I thought about it after I had finished reading it. I had finished it off thinking it was solid, but not Pullman's best work, but the more and more I contemplated several narrative and characterisation choices (and discussed these elements in verbose Twitter DMs with McDougallSophia), the more I revised my initial opinion to something much more negative. It hasn't tainted my opinion of the original trilogy, which I still maintain is an absolutely extraordinary work of literature, but it does make me more cautious about reading every work that Pullman puts out into the universe and assuming it will be fantastic.

I've still got slots open for prompts for the January talking meme. You can leave prompts here.

Comments

[wheatear]

Yeah, I found it rather strange. If the secret commonwealth is stories and imagination then that didn't come across clearly to me because there were several things that happened in the book that were part of the secret commonwealth and the critique seemed to be more "these things are real, look at those crazy rationalists denying reality because they don't want to understand this fantastical world" which just makes no sense in a world like Lyra's. I felt like I didn't understand what was meant by "imagination" in the book. At one point it's described as a form of perception and, like... it's not? Then again I found myself more often siding with Lyra when she argued with Pan and I don't think I was supposed to.