Other authors?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

But both offer a profundity and heightened sense of sadness that transcends the bounds of fantasy, and is sorely missing in many of the other works mentioned in this thread.

I don't know. Pullman had me weeping helplessly like a child several times: the 'severed child' found clutching a pickled fish; what happens to Lyra not long afterwards; what Lyra has to do in order to enter The Land of the Dead; Lee Scoresby and his daemon Hester. I feel weepy just thinking about those scenes now...what I will be like in the cinema if they have these scenes, doesn't bear thinking about.

You just cannot write about people who have 'visible souls' in the form of sentient animals and their fates without stirring up emotions. I felt Pullman had tapped into something deep-rooted by showing how vulnerable life really is. Every death in Lyra's world is tinged with sadness, even the deaths of bad guys.

Not even Tolkien managed to wring such a response out of me - maybe if he had killed off dear Bilbo, but even that wouldn't come close....

And if you want the same kind of thing, wait until you get to the closing chapters of The House Of The Spirits...