Review of "His Dark Materials Trilogy"

    This series just feels like one big book so I decided to just lump them all together and mention some of the salient points. I also want to avoid the plot and just get into some of the ideas that i enjoyed.

    I'm not too into fantasy like I was when I was in high school but the cool thing about this series is that it crosses over into sci-fi territory rather quickly. There are multiple dimensions, discussions on dark matter, universe expanding intelligences, texans with zeppelins, and devices that
can tell the future. These balance out the fact that animals can talk or the presence of witches. It is all very reminiscent of The Chronicles of Narnia series by CS Lewis which tugs at my childhood a bit.

    

    I've heard that this series got some pretty heavy criticism by religious people due to its anti religious rhetoric. Needless to say I loved that! The Authority (god)  and the church are quickly identified as tyrannical zealots who stifle scientific progress and personal freedom. The real world is not all black and white like this but Pullman managed to amplify the bits that most people find abhorrent about religion. 

    On the other side of all that, there are characters that sort of fit into the "new age" slot where there are shamans, "pagan magic" and the i ching actually plays an important role in the plot as a way to speak to ethereal beings about the future. The new agey ideas are depicted as being opposed to both the Church and to the scientific establishments. Though religion certainly gets a beating, science gets it's fair share. At least one scientist cares only about increasing his standing in the scientific establishment, taking grant money to fund research which compromises his integrity while also stifling the explorations of his more curious (and legitimate scientist) colleague. Another major character, Lord Azriel, is shown to be mostly an unsympathetic dick who cares only about reaching beyond his human grasp at all costs (including killing children) abusing science in a way which also disregards the human concerns of other characters. He's kind of a Faustian type character, which I would usually enjoy as I can appreciate that kind of fiery ambition, though it costs him his humanity as per usual.  Azriel turns things around a bit but I don't want to ruin the plot too much. 

     I should say that every character is flawed in their own way, which causes a lot of twists for the reader. It's refreshing to get away from a pure "good vs evil narrative." This concept is best embodied by the character's confusion over what should be done about "Dust" which we find out(BIG SPOILER) is dark matter/consciousness. The church is afraid of dust, Azriel wants to exploit it, the children know that it's there, but don't quite understand it. The characters don't know if dust is good or bad which makes it both. It's a fascinating metaphor which does a lot of work and could be pried and picked over.   The books are not really an indictment of science or religion in my opinion. Instead, they warn against the costs of losing one's curiosity and wonder about the world we actually live in. 

    All in all, it was a surprising read, I enjoyed reading basically a humanistic take on Narnia. Another thing that surprised me was that the cosmology of the whole thing paralleled the tv series Supernatural. Also, I may just be noticing this because of my whole vegan thing, but there was soooo much meat eating in these books, described in great deal. It was almost like no one ate plants ever. In fact, the one vegan character was an evil monk who, in the spirit of self denial, ate only bread and fruit and was described as "gaunt." Not so subtle hints there. Not a big deal, i just found it humorous.