Following after an earlier post by lambert.

Ok, so I read the trilogy - more thoughts maybe later.

For now:

The writing gets better as the trilogy progresses. Perhaps it seems tighter in the first book because the story line is much simpler.

However, in none of the books are the characters actually “characters”. They are all, what’s the Jungian phrase… archetypes. Even in the last story, the most richly realized, the characters are more complex archetypes, not more complex characters.

God doesn’t die, as there is no God in the story.

I did like the ending. It’s so easy to write “they lived happily ever after” and so often disrespectful of the story itself. This story does not end happily ever after, but neither does it leave one with a sense of depressing finality.

For a story with an agenda, it was very well done. Ok, it was well done by any measure.

Even so, the story doesn’t point the finger of blame at human beings, instead opting to blame an ancient angel. Not much different than blaming God, except for the creator part. I guess at some level, blaming ourselves for our evils is old hat, no longer fruitful.

The church is not the source of evil. Neither is the state. We are.

I would like a daemon, I think. Another being who knows your innermost thoughts, and shares them. Although Mrs. Coulter clearly shows that two evil spirits are worse than one. Quite possibly two of any of us might be two much for the world. :)

I look forward to Nicole Kidman’s portrayal of Coulter. It will be fun to see her pull a real character out of the archetype that Pullman wrote.

Pullman did a good job dealing with the many worlds hypothesis. I think to get a full understanding of the story Pullman tells, you probably have to be somewhat familiar with Paradise Lost, which I have never read in its entirety.

I liked his linkage of dark matter to consciouness. I have often wondered if consciousness is an artifact of complexity or an element of the multiverse. I am not alone in that wondering, of course.

I wonder how he would have included dark energy, had he known of it when he wrote the story?

Jake