I was inspired to read this book following Classic’s review of The Rose Field (scathing though it was). I have appreciated the His Dark Materials trilogy for a while, although I find the criticism of a very Christian normative form of organised religion hits differently from an Islamic perspective. The ideas of a authoritarian church-state read differently from a religious perspective where faith and society are enmeshed alternatively.
I’ve not really been tempted to read the prequel books as I always find the liminal space occupied by prequels to be odd; very rarely successfully pulled off. We all know where the characters need to be to set up the main event, so it often comes across as setting up the chess board but stopping at the mid-game. The Wide Sargasso Sea added depth to a character that was one-note in the original, but others seem to struggle to find anything new to really add.
This one for me sits more in the “not sure it’s really adding anything” camp. It has been a while since I read the original trilogy but this one seems to do the classic baiting trick of prequels, threading in Easter eggs for the future, some moments bordering on a cheeky wink and a “You see that I did there?” sly grin. These Easter eggs wear a little thin and I’m not sure add anything, and even contradict, some of what we learn about Lyra’s world in the first trilogy. There’s certainly a lot more daemon touching than I remember was okay and the rules around them seem to be a lot more flexible.
Set about a decade before the events of the original trilogy, Lyra is still a baby, albeit a baby with a big destiny as is mentioned, hinted at, and then shoved down our throats throughout the story. Because she’s a baby, she and we are left in the hands of Malcolm Polstead, a weaker protagonist by comparison. The idea of a loss of innocence in adolescence is explored with Malcolm as well, but this seems to just boil down to “Lying is a bit grubby but sometimes useful.”
Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter are in this book about as much as in the Northern Lights which is a shame. I think I would have preferred a book about their courtship and Lord Asriel’s “self-defence” murder of her husband, or at the very least learning more about either one of them.
What did save this for me was reading (listening?) it as an audio book. I listened to the unabridged version with Michael Sheen, whose charisma shines through. That man could read the Doomsday Book and I’d be riveted. In this case I think he made a mediocre book tolerable.
