[Teaser] The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials)
- Thread starter Krug
- Start date
How much information do you want?
Non-spoiler version:
It's about a 12 year old girl living in an alternate Oxford, who sets out on a long journey to save a kidnapped friend of hers, and in the process gets involved in an epic story that will determine the fate of all the parallel Earths, of Heaven, and of the afterlife. Or of the universe, for short.
Spoiler Version:
Non-spoiler version:
It's about a 12 year old girl living in an alternate Oxford, who sets out on a long journey to save a kidnapped friend of hers, and in the process gets involved in an epic story that will determine the fate of all the parallel Earths, of Heaven, and of the afterlife. Or of the universe, for short.
Spoiler Version:
It's a story about a little girl who gets involved in the struggle to overthrow Heaven. In the process, "God" (explicitly identified as the Judeo-Christian deity) - who is in fact only the first of angels, and imposter, and a senile wretch by this point in time - is taken off life support, the afterlife - in which human souls are allowed to pile into a dreary underworld where they're ignored (and occasionally tormented by harpy-like creatures) until their personalities dissolve and they fade away - is dismantled, and the "great circle of souls" (for lack of a better term) in which the souls of the dead rejoin the universe and provide the raw material for new life is restored. Along the way, she falls in love, meets talking bears, flying witches, and encounters all sorts of other weird crap.
Crothian said:
They range from excellent to pretty good. (rated purely on the strength of the wrting and the story) The first one is best. The second drags on a bit, and the third one seems to introduce an awful lot of new things in a big rush, but is definitely more interesting if not as well written.
Personally, I think that Pullman's prejudiced, in a pretty ugly way, and if he'd chosen a different theme (or had the balls to speak about other religions besides Christianity in the book, since he claims he's speaking about organized religion in general, but uses awfully specific examples...) he'd get labeled a bigot and a racist instead of getting glowing reviews...
trancejeremy
Adventurer
F5 said:
When was the last time you saw anything at all even remotely like that? I think the Last Temptation of Christ had a few picket lines, but that was 20 years ago. Consideirng the large number of anti-Christian movies Hollywood has put out since then, ranging from full out attacks (things like Saved! or Kingdom of Heaven) to just crazy/evil super devout christian characters (like Doom or King Arthur), none of which generated anything at all. These days, all you get is a press release from that Catholic League guy at most.
Darth Shoju
First Post
trancejeremy said:
I'd largely agree with you, but I recall Kevin Smith saying he got death threats for making Dogma (and there was definitely some public demonstrations against it.)
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
Krug said:
I would say that the first one is best, the second one introduces some really neat ideas but flubs it a little bit at the end, and the third one felt too much like a polemic for me to take the story seriously.
I strongly dislike Pullmans principles and stated objectives for personal reasons, but I wanted to read the books first-hand rather than rely upon other peoples opinions, and I'm glad I did. The first one was a particularly good story IMO.
Cheers
Berandor
lunatic
I thought the third one was a let-down, as well, but I personally enjoyed the approach the author took. And it's very much not just the ending that is religiously controversial, but the whole idea of the (novel's) Church's plans.
I liked the books well enough, especially books 1 and 2, and will give them to my niece for her confirmation.
I liked the books well enough, especially books 1 and 2, and will give them to my niece for her confirmation.
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