Quote:
Originally Posted by Galadriel
I thoroughly disliked Pullman's book. The writing was good but I felt the characters were flat and cliched. I don't think he's one to talk about anyone's book being 'fancy spun candy with no substance to it'. His own work, to me, seemed like utter drivel. It was incredibly childish, IMHO.
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You know, that's what I thought at first - that his characters were rather flat and childishly-written. But then I found that it's almost like Pullman did that on purpose, so that you can read it on different levels - you can see or not see, in a sense.
I only read the books because my sister was reading them, and I did not expect the characters to be anything but childishly done and flat (since they are the kind my sister usually resonates to the most - as you can tell I do not approve of her reading list, but at least she reads something), but then I realised that if I don't read it with the assumption that they are flat they wouldn't be.
I mean, I'm not crazy about the series
, but I liked it better than, say, the inevitable example of Harry Potter - much
much better, in fact.
And I have to praise Pullman for the breadth of his knowledge and references - science, linguistics (both within English and in other languages), culture, and etc - in addition to the epic plot.
I know it's not the best way of putting it in words, but I usually measure books in breadth and depth. A book that is both deep and broad is something I really really like. There are books that are one but not the other, that I sometimes like. And there are those that are neither - which I don't know how anyone could like. Romances tend to be deep but narrower. Adventure stories (like, in this case, His Dark Materials) tend to be broad but seldom are as deep. And then it's a question of ballance and what you care about.
Books like Tolkien's are pretty rare. You can dig in any direction and you unearth more and more and more.