more His Dark Materials natter.

[rm]

Eventually I will shut up about these books, if only because I'm almost done with them. But it's write about this, or write about the cat that I can't see the location of that's been howling outside somewhere close enough to my window that I can hear it all night. It's disturbing, and cats being cats, it's hard to tell if the thing is in heat or lost or what.

I don't cry when I read books. Ocassionally I'll tear up for a mment, but that's really it. I save my crying for movies. but these books have just gutted me time and time again, and I've had to put this last one down sobbing and clutching myself more than once. It's just awful and overwhelming, and among the author's many strange gifts (and a few writing ticks / universe inconsistencies that annoy me) is his ability to write people who are well suited for each other because they are both forceful, as opposed to codependent (not that these books aren't rife with deeply fucked up relationships, believe me, without one deeply fucked up relationship in the book, we wouldn't have the books, but still teh type of fucked up s atypical of what I am used to seeing in literature in general and children't literature in particular). He has a very complex sense of loyalty and betrayal and it's unsettling, even to me.

For those of you who don't care, or don't wish to be spoiled or whatever:


Okay, pet peeve -- Lord Asriel is Asriel Belacqua. Lord Boreal is Carlo Boreal. Would someone please help me out with the naming conventions in this universe? Please? This truly has been driving me batshit.

I'm not done yet, but I know more or less what happens at the end and that lots of people are all about the Lyra/Will true love angle. Um.... does no one else think they're the same person but different world versions there of? Think about that business with him perceiving Mrs. Coulter as his mother. Think about their physical natures and their relationships with the truth. They have the same skills for different ends when they are in their own worlds, and different skills for the same end when they are together -- of course there's this whole mysitcal union of Art angle too, but mostly I want to say, I'm not seeing the true love factor everyone is obsessed with, or I see it, but I just don't care or think it's that important or something. It's way more complex and fucked up than that.

Speaking of complex and fucked up. Asriel and Marisa. What can even be said? I never really found much sympathy for Mrs. Coulter but I came to admire her in a grudging way and be curious about her. Also I love that her title (Mrs.) and her name (Marisa) sound the same. Asriel is the most well drawn enigma of a character I've ever seen. The author gives us so little and yet he's as tangible if not more so, than anything else in the books.

Ouch. Physics is hard. I don't do well with physics.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Gay cranky angels! Balthamos before he decides to be nice has to be one of the funniest things I've ever read.

Everything related to the dead is incredibly upsetting. The abandonment of Pan was devastating, and really made me forget all about the fact that "subburbs of teh dead" has to be one of the funniest chapter titles ever.

But speaking of teh dead -- so if they go up into one world they join all living things and disappear. Why don't they do that in teh world of Asriel's battle?

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[rm.livejournal.com]

I've finished the thing now, and I still think this, even as everyone else is debating the "did they or didn't they?" question (which I think is valid, but don't seem preoccupied with it as it reflects on the larger ideas of the book, which is annoying). I mean the whole thing is so much about coming into the self, and the reunification of the self, and all these issues of split nature.

Fuck this soul mtes shit, same person.