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Message: <blockquote data-quote="S'mon" data-source="post: 2029058" data-attributes="member: 463">OK, have to vent a little (kinda vague spoilers for His Dark Materials):I just finished reading "The Amber Spyglass", last of the His Dark Materials trilogy.  To say that the ending annoyed me would be an understatement.  I now understand a lot of the criticism.  In the Narnia books, when the children unquestioningly accept whatever Aslan tells them (ie unquestioning obedience to Aslan means you're a good person, unquestioning obedience to Tash means you're a bad person), this at least accords with the message of the series.  But HDM is all about coming of age and _questioning_ authority, yet whereas unquestioning obedience to the Church (the baddies) is presented as bad, the children-becoming-teens _never_ question the motivations & means of the rebels (goodies), even when these are clearly detrimental to the children's own interests & seem highly morally questionable in themselves.  In fact the Church 'baddies' if anything display far more guilt and moral-struggle than the rebels, with their easy certainties.  I kept waiting for the children as they reached adolescence to display a little of that independence of thought  the trilogy lauds.  They never do.  When the Satan-figure (ie goody, here) angel tells them at the end how they have to do X, there's no alternative, even though X will condemn them to a lifetime of sadness, they accept her instructions with cowlike docility even though it seems bloody obvious that the alternatives they present are perfectly reasonable, given a little help from the angel (which they've more than earned).  For someone raised on adolescent sword & sorcery heroes like Moorcock's I was left grinding my teeth in frustration.  It reminded me of how unquestioning faith in religion & religious leaders was replaced in the 20th century by unquestioning faith in science & scientists, who always 'know best' - like with DDT or mad cow disease, eh.Ho-hum. I'm an atheist and a humanist, pretty much, but this just left me angry.</blockquote>

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