I'm afraid that in the third book Pullman has something terribly important
that he wants to tell children / young adults - "something about the body",
as Virginia Woolf put it - and the ending is somewhat bent towards
delivering that message. Not that I think he's wrong, but the energy (qua
eternal delight) of the series' opening is rather lost in the process. It
isn't so much that the themes and strands of the work become too dissipated,
as that Urizen starts to take over from - I suppose - Los, with the result
that at the very point where that "something about the body" becomes most
urgent we are at our most physically and emotionally distanced from the
narrative - which is also why the continuity errors, to put it in trekkie
terms, start to stand out more. In the first book you're too involved in the
white heat of Lyra and the author's "visionary intensity" to notice such
things...
--> Nobody knows the trouble you've seen / walking from your desk to the
staff canteen <--
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Howard" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 8:03 PM
Subject: Re: Earthsea/His Dark Materials
> I found the last book of Pullman's trilogy deeply disappointing. I
> wouldn't have given him any prizes for it. I felt an urge to tell him to
> go away and write it again, properly. The sentimentality of the ending
> had a particularly glutinous quality I'd not encountered since Sylvie
> and Bruno.
>
> The first book is amazing, though, and the second's not bad.
> --
> Peter
>
> http://www.hphoward.demon.co.uk/poetry/
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