I finished reading Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials
If you’ve read these books, I’d be interested in your thoughts. There is so much to discuss!
- How is Dust different from the Ancient One?
- Did Metatron betray the Ancient One?
- Is that better or worse than Asriel betraying him? Why?
- When the Ancient One dies, which side is responsible?
- Why would the church want to rid the universes of Dust?
- How do you see Dust in our world today?
- Is Mrs. Coulter ever redeemed?
- Do you think she is better or worse than Lord Asriel in her character and actions? Why?
- And, of course, if you had a daemon, what would yours be and why?
The questions and the discussion this book generates just lead to even more questions and discussion. Any book that makes me think like this one has is a book I can unquestionably recommend.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow! Great questions! I believe the Metatron does betray the Ancient One and that his side is responsible for his death. I do believe that Mrs. Coulter was redeemed in the end but that she was definately worse than Lord Asriel. While he never told Lyra that he was her father, at least he seemed to care and provide for her. I would want my daemon to be a panther. I LOVED these books and I’m very glad that anoth blogger that I read regularly does too!
I’ve read all of The Golden Compass and got a little bored halfway through The Subtle Knife. I need to pick it back up though, because I’m sure it will end up being an excellent book. I loved the first one, for sure. I even took my son to see the movie and we had a great discussion afterwards about the symbolism in the movie and what the author was hoping to accomplish with the book. Loved the book and the movie was pretty good too.
Have not read them yet. My husband loves them, and owns all three, and keeps insisting that I read them.
I am in the middle of another book, but maybe after that I will pick up the Golden Compass.
We love the series here at Trash Towers. Haven’t read it in about 18 months so am a bit rusty as to the details but don’t feel Mrs Coulter was ever really redeemed given the breadth of her previous actions.
Think my daemon would be a koala or a med/large size dog or maybe a sloth – there is a lot of scope for sleeping there!
I was at B&N yesterday and almost bought this just so I could discuss it with you, but I was too broke/cheap
Leslie
Uh oh — you need a spoiler alert! I’m only partway thru 2nd book just now. At this point (my idea may change when I read more), it seems that “Dust” is the cold interstellar matter that is hard to detect. With lots of it, our universe will eventually collapse and could expand again. Without it, the universe will expand forever. One may want to believe in the second theory and in the big bang theory which could have God as creator. OTOH, the expanding-collapsing-expanding-collapsing universe could be seen as one which has no beginning, thus removing the need for a “creator”.