The New York Review of Books: Dust & Daemons
This is an enjoyable, scholarly but not opaque survey of fantasy literature, in the guise of a review of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series (a trilogy with, so far, four books).
I just finished the first of them. I’m not sure what to expect from the other two (ordered from my local library). Surely there was some way to make the adults realistically unlikable while allowing them some actual dimension: the two adults who feature more prominently are so simplistically drawn, I kept waiting for some more detail, something about them. Even after the big secret about them was sprung, they remained unknowable. And their whole final scene together just never came together for me at all.
What really makes me wonder about this is why anyone would recommend it as a stopgap for the next Harry Potter book. The differences outweigh the similarities, from what I can gather.
table{width:400px}=. |_. parents | alive and unpleasant | dead but caring |
|_. environment | Fictionalized university | blockhead relatives |
|_. superpower | innate ability to use the alethiometer | innate wizarding gifts |
|_. magical creatures | daemons | various pets of Hagrid’s |
|_. improving theme/subtext | the end of the book surprised me with an Original Sin element | the Potter books are based on more simple values of love and loyalty overcoming hate and evil |
|_. friends | one and we see what happens to him | two close, others peripherally so |
I want to read the other two book before I finish this survey article, in case it gives away too much of the story (I’m already led to understand the third book is nowhere near as good as the first two: gives me a lot to look forward to).
nb: this table was laid out with MT-Textile with nary an angle bracket.