From: dspeters at mcpl.lib.wi.us <dspeters>
Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 16:26:54 -0500

Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! I have read and re-read and re-read the segment in SUBTLE KNIFE in which Lee Scoresby dies, and I cry every time. Thomas Stream commented that he was "intrigued to see the response the death of Lee Scoresby had on a number of respondents..." I think what struck a chord for me was the relationship between Lee and his daemon, Hester, and the way they responded to each other with the knowledge that their lifelong bond was about to be broken. Hester and Lee had always had a sort of different relationship than most human?emon relationships. There is no mistaking the love that Lyra and Pantalaimon have for each other, with the constant contact between them and the panic that they feel when they are almost separated at Bolvanger. Hester, however, represents the tougher, grittier side of Lee's personality. They hardly ever touch each other, and Hester is often the one pushing Lee to be tougher--especially in the final standoff. Then, in that battle, as Lee reloads his weapon, "he felt something so rare his heart nearly failed; he felt Hester's face pressed to his own, and it was wet with tears." That line was just heart-wrenching to me. Lee and Hester (and the reader) accept that Lee is in a hopeless situation; it is much harder to accept the knowledge that he will be separated from Hester forever. I absolutely loved the first two HDM books, and I eagerly waited for the arrival of the AMBER SPYGLASS. However, I was disappointed with the last book. I kept trying to tell myself that I was disappointed because I wasn't willing to let Philip Pullman tell the story the way he wanted to, instead of the way that I anticipated it, but there's more to it than that. I agree with everything that Jo Matzner said about the book being anticlimactic. I was especially puzzled with the ghosts of Lee Scoresby and John Parry, who warn the children of the special bomb developed by the Consistorial Court, and tell the children what they must do to avert the disaster. How do they know about all this, while all the ghosts around them in the land of the dead are submerged in gloom and have no clue what is going on in the other worlds? I also felt that some of the details in the mulefa's world were left at loose ends. I kept waiting for the significance of the tualapi--the giant birds that sometimes attack the mulefa. I was sure that there was going to have to be some kind of resolution between the mulefa and the tualapi--maybe that the tualapi also had a vital role in the maintenance of the trees, a role that the mulefa had yet to discover (there I go again, trying to write my own ending). Maybe I missed it, but it seemed that nothing was ever resolved there, and it made me wonder why the tualapi were even included. There were other troubling loose ends, but I don't want to write an epic in pickiness. I know that loose ends can occur in fantasy worlds, especially ones as complex as Pullman's. However, what makes a good fantasy a great fantasy is a world in which the reader is totally immersed, and that is hard for the reader to do when details are left hanging. The first two books are great because the complexities of the worlds are so complete. I still highly recommend the series, despite the concluding volume being a good one, not a great one, in my eyes.

Diane Peterson Marathon County Public Library
Received on Thu 10 May 2001 04:26:54 PM CDT