Pan and Kirjava on the Oxford bench, turning into dust ✨️

Over a decade later, and I'm finally reading the books again! I remember a lot of major events, but there's some random stuff I don't - like the first scene, where Lyra's father brings in the supposed head of essentially her soulmate's father, which sent me reeling. I had to take a moment to remember that John and Will are meant to meet before his actual death! It made me wonder some stuff though:

1. Whose decapitated head was that actually?
2. Who all, if anyone, knew that Stanislaus Grumman was John Parry/Jopari?
3. It's said that Stanislaus was at the college for a period of time - were he and Lyra ever there at the same time, and did they ever meet?
4. What happened to the supposed Stanislaus' decapitated head? Was it disposed of/buried, or is there a chance the college preserved it?

Thanks in advance! It's so cool to see how things were tying into the overall story literally from the beginning. John Parry is an awesome character, and one of the few I wish we had seen more of.

So I actually watched The Golden Compass all the time when I was young and as soon as I heard about this show I jumped on the chance to watch it. Idk how I didn’t hear about it sooner. I’m currently on episode 5 of season 1.

I was thinking about daemons in general and how some people have much larger or predatorial ones than others. Then I was like, wow, imagine living in that world and getting in an altercation with a person who has a significantly more predatory daemon than you do; I’d bet people try their best to avoid conflict with people like that!

I mean, imagine a weird hypothetical scenario where your partner cheats on you, you discover exactly who the homewrecker is, and it turns out you can’t do anything to them otherwise their large daemon will tear you to shreds. Crazy stuff!

Also, as a side note, what do the flairs on this subreddit mean?? They seem to be a bunch of acronyms I don’t understand

so, i received the book of dust la belle sauvage as a gift, and without knowing the order i read it, now i discovered that it is not the right order. what do i do i reread in the order of post or read in story order? do you think it changes a lot or does it make no difference?

I was just watching Who Wants to be a Millionaire and the question was asking which author wrote a scene where someone eats madeleine cake and it triggers a childhood memory.

It immediately reminded me of the marzipan scene in The Golden Compass where Mary is telling the young people about how tasting marzipan instantly reminded her of her ex lover and led to her losing her faith:

And at half past nine in the evening at that restaurant table in Portugal,” Mary continued, “someone gave me a piece of marzipan and it all came back. And I thought: am I really going to spend the rest of my life without ever feeling that again? I thought: I want to go to China. It’s full of treasures and strangeness and mystery and joy. I thought, Will anyone be better off if I go straight back to the hotel and say my prayers and confess to the priest and promise never to fall into temptation again? Will anyone be the better for making me miserable?

“And the answer came back—no. No one will. There’s no one to fret, no one to condemn, no one to bless me for being a good girl, no one to punish me for being wicked. Heaven was empty. I didn’t know whether God had died, or whether there never had been a God at all. Either way I felt free and lonely and I didn’t know whether I was happy or unhappy, but something very strange had happened. And all that huge change came about as I had the marzipan in my mouth, before I’d even swallowed it. A taste—a memory—a landslide...

I looked up the Proust scene from In Search of Lost Time to see if it may have inspired Pullman and I do see similarities:

No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. ... Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.

Then I looked up "Philip Pullman Proust" and the first result said "Philip Pullman has said that Marcel Proust is one of the greatest writers of all time".

What do you think?

So the nuns at Godstow Priory are of the Order of St Rosamund. St Rosamund is an actual saint in the catholic church:

Rosamund found fulfilment in her profession as a mother and wife. When the children had outgrown the family home and her husband had died, she lived as a hermit in a hermitage near Vernion on the Seine until her death around the year 1100. In the former calendar: Walpurga von Heidenheim (Walpurgisnacht): Weather rule: ‘Rain on Walpurgisnacht has always brought a good year.’ - ‘Around St Walpurgis, the sap runs into the birches.’ (According to old pagan beliefs, witches and wizards would meet on this night on the Blocksberg in the Harz Mountains. Walpurgis Night was immortalised in literature by Johann Wolfgang Goethe in his drama ‘Faust’, among others. - According to old popular belief, noise and all kinds of mischief were supposed to drive the evil spirits out of stables and fields on Walpurgis Night).

so I can't find the reason they actually made her a saint, what miracle she performed to get this honour, but it's a little funny that an order of celibate nuns was named after a woman that was definitely married and had a handful of children. And that this saint related to rain, too.

So, we know money has been paid from a trust set up by Wills dad into his mother's account since before he went missing, but then it says that when Will was seven, his mother changed accounts, because of the "bad people" "were tracking her down by means of her credit card numbers". "On Monday they went to the bank and closed her account, and opened another somewhere else, just to be sure".

Since this would have been years after his dad left, I'm just curious how, when he is twelve, he finds out about the money being paid in all these years. How did they know of the change of accounts? I'm probably being super dumb here, my brain is just refusing to work lol

I'm only on S1E6 and haven't read the books, but so far it seems like the Daemons have zero survival instinct.

When their human runs, they don't run so someone can just grab and crush them... is this explained? or is it just to not complicate the plot?

In the La Belle Sauvage book, I specifically remember this scene where Lord Asriel is dancing with baby Lyra in his arms under the moonlight..or so my mind is convincing me that's what happened anyway.

I haven't read the book in a good couple years but I'd really love to read the quotes for that part again if I could, I visually pictured this scene in my head really well. Something about Lyra's dad actually playing with his little girl really meant something to my heart.

Is bolvanger pronounced with the 'ng' like fungi or like playing?

He sounds just like Corey Burton but I can't find the voice credit from the audiobook cast and it's driving me nuts. :) Does anyone know?

Did anyone else find Gerard Bonneville very similar to Leo Bonhart from The Witcher series?

Anybody see them? My area has too much light pollution to see clearly but I got a picture of purple-ish sky

Iori for short, still runs away when I get to close but warming up to me soon...

Hi,

Looking for costume suggestions/ideas please (:

Long time fan of the book series (since about year 3? not read them for a good few years tho) + I remember falling in love with Lyra when I first read the series. I know there are plenty of wonderful male characters in the series, but I think I'd like to dress up as a genderbent Lyra for Halloween!

Any tips/suggestions (for the costume) are appreciated, especially from anyone that's dressed up as Lyra before (especially if you're also a guy). My favourite book in the series was through the amber spyglass, >!but simply due to the presence of the mufela!< , so any version of Lyra would be cool to cosplay

I don't think many people will get it? But if I carry around a pine marten/ermine I think some people will get it? It won't matter though bc I'll know

I will probably have green hair 😅 but that's fine. Lyra seems like she'd have fun with that sort of thing if she ever had a normal teenagerhood in this realm

https://preview.redd.it/yxcybk2pbqtd1.png?width=980&format=png&auto=webp&s=f7413b20c441eedaf5fc3f1daa35e690b103c321

Free reign to the idea that Hilda and HDM take place in the same multiverse.

So I just finished the series (and absolutely adored it) and was wondering if I should pick the books up considering this is what I’m hoping to get from them:

More Mary. When she was introduced I felt like she’d easily become one of my favourites, if not my favourite character of the series. However, throughout a good chunk of both seasons 2 and 3, you barely saw her. There were so many shots of her walking across worlds with little to no other substance aside from when Lyra was present. I really want more of Mary. Do the books do her character justice?

More world-building: There’s so many worlds out there to discover! Do we dive deeper into them in the books. Perhaps more about the Kingdom of Heaven/The Authority/Metatron? Maybe further explanation on daemon/human relationships?

More Lyra + Will heartache: The ending of the series hurt, bad. I want that but even more if possible from the books. Side note, fuck the universe for requiring them two to split up.

The Book of Dust: I’d hopefully finds the books interesting enough to continue the series in “The Book of Dust”. Do these books reference events of His Dark Materials, or is the story fairly independent of them? Also, if I may ask for a spoiler, please let me know if the bench (which I hope is in the books as it is in the movies) is referenced in these, as in, Lyra once again goes to the bench as per her promise to do so every year.

Anyone else agree with me?

He can directly ask Xaphania and fellow angels for advice without having to keep an Alethiometer and an alethiometrist.

Hey guys, I was doing research into the etymology of "texture" and found some interesting notes that helped me better understand why it's called the SUBTLE knife.

The proto-indo-european root teks- means "to weave, fabricate, or make." This gives us textile, technology, texture, architect, etc. However, it also gives us subtle.

Subtle is "sub" (under) + tle. The "tle" comes from -tilis, from tela "web, net, warp of a fabric."

"According to Watkins, the notion is of the "thread passing under the warp" as the finest thread." So the knife is literally cutting under the fabric of reality. There are more interesting notes in this link if you'd like to read further.

Hope you all find this interesting too. I never quite got as a kid why it was subtle but now I can see that the knife was named incredibly aptly.

!This is based on the series, not the books. Series was great, the ending (as in the second to last episode) was great. However the final episode was such a major disappointment and seemingly contradicts previous themes in the series. Specifically the ending where Will and Lyra need to split up shortly after finally finding each other.!<

! 1. One of the themes of the series, mentioned explicitly in both Asrial's battle speech, and Mary's serpent speech, is not to be penitent or holy waiting for some afterlife but to live life to the fullest. But Lyra and Will are denied this right by being forced to split up. !<

! 2. Throughout the series, people keep repeating this idea "We can't tell Lyra what to do, if we tell her, she'll fail". What happens when Lyra finally fulfills the prophecy and falls in love with Will? They immediately start telling her what to do. They demand that she has to take specific action against her wishes. !<

! 3. Another theme of the series is that of free will, of humans reaching their creative potential on their own. That they shouldn't be told what to do by some holy beings. Yet that's apparently what happens throughout the entire series. Except instead of the "authority" telling people what to do, it's the rebel angels telling them what to do. They talk to lyra through the alethiometre, they talk to Mary and lead here where to go and tell her to go home. Humanity doesn't free itself, it trades one master for another. !<

!4. Another theme is the rejection of following rules in order to get to heaven. If you're good you go to heaven, if you're bad you to go to hell. People ought to just live their lives. But at the end we have the rebel angel saying that ONLY if people are compassionate enough they will produce enough dust to keep one door open, the door in the underworld. So in other words people still NEED to act in a specific way for a reward after death. The only thing that's changed is that the rules are vaguer and that the need is collective not individual.!<

!5. The ending and need to split up is contrived because it introduces new story elements to justify its ending. Namely:!<

!A - How much "dust" is good enough. Dust is never quantified. We know that Dust leaving is bad, we know that Lyra falling in love helps the level of dust. But to reach some magic level of dust they need to close all the doors. BUT they can keep one door open because compassionate people create dust? It's all a bunch of nonsense. !<

!B - People separate from their own worlds will die. Yes, Will father says that he's had a bad time of it. But he doesn't look older than he should be. Doesn't look weak. He's just a weird mystic which is a spiritual change not a physical. No other person, like Carlo, or the main cast seems to suffer from visiting worlds that are not their own. The only people who suffer are those split from their demons. !<

!C - The idea of dust escaping through world doors and every world door creating a spectre is new. Until the final battle spectres were only seen in the crossroads world, suggesting the curse was specific to the guilt of guild not to the actions of the guild. We didn't see spectres elsewhere, and their presence in the battle suggests they are minions of Metatron. If every door creates spectres why weren't they seen elsewhere. No person who has stepped through a world door had mention dust escaping through them before; I find it hard to believe Asrial wouldn't have observed a world door with his equipment. !<

!D - The idea that Angels can close world doors and that the knife prevents them from doing so. !<

!6. The idea that the prophecy being fulfilled was a good outcome, justifies everything that directly led to the prophecy taking place specifically Roger's murder. Marissa's role and specific talents used in the climax of the war also suggest her path up until then (her crimes against children) were part of the prophecy and therefore good. !<

!7. One of the main requirements of the ending is that the knife be destroyed. But what's to prevent another knife being forged on one of the other worlds? Further the knife is a product of human creativity, they weren't told to create it by the authority. Why is an object of human creativity evil, and why does it need to be destroyed at the behest of the rebel angels? Human creativity bad, angel's demands good, again= against the themes of the story. !<

!8. There's also nothing to prevent someone falling in Asiral's footsteps and opening a door without a knife. With technology like the Intention Craft, any person with a demon could create a door whenever they wanted to. Freeing people intellectually from regressive authority would enable MORE people to create doorways, not less. !<

!9. The cynical side of me suspects also that Lyra was denied a "happy ending" because a character having an ending is not conducive to book sequels. The show specifically mentions further adventures with Lyra & Pan in future. !<

TLDR: The ending contradicts the book series major themes, and introduces new elements at the very end in order to contrive a bitter sweet ending.

!You know what ending would have been bitter sweet but would have allowed Lyra and Will to have love? Require them to go through all the worlds and close the doors the knife opened. They would have been forced out of paradise, would have had years of work ahead of them, but would have had each other and also would have had opportunities for new adventures (Book sequels). Maybe the requirement was only on Will. It was his burden to bear. But as Lyra says, they do things together, so she goes with him and maybe she could also find some purpose in moving between worlds. She's a great orator, and maybe can spread her ideas from one world to the next. !<

I check every few weeks to see if a release date has been revealed or any tidbit of information about when to expect the third book.

Does anyone have any info? I don't think a 2024 release is happening, it surely it has to come out next year, right? Hopefully early next year?

I just finished watching 'his dark materials' tv series and idk if there are any spin off tv shows or movies? I looked it up and Google is no help, I'm pretty sure there's no sequel to the show I just watched, but it won't show me any spin-off movies or shows. I apologize in advance bc you guys probably only discuss book lore in here but idk where else to ask

Very eagerly awaiting BOD3. 😁 Monthly Twitter screenshot. https://x.com/PhilipPullman/status/1837054272850038819

I think I'm hate-reading at this point. I can't put the book down or dnf it but I am so discontented over the inconsistency.

I have scrolled for a little while trying to find explanations or echo chambers for my feelings.

It's the little things that I think a better editing process would have been helpful that are throwing me WAY off. Mozart being mentioned was insane to me. Parallel universes do not mean the same historical figures and HDM definitely did not set that up.

I'm in the chapter "The Furnace Man" and the line "It is nothing I know about. I don't know what spirit is." about knocked me out of my chair. Does Lyra have amnesia? She's the only human in the universe that knows EXACTLY what spirit is.

It's these small things that I hope can be better executed in the 3rd book. Or an editor that can remind Pullman "Mozart and movie stars don't exist in Lyra's world".

Am I alone in the smallest things being a bigger issue than some of the major inconsistencies of the in-world plot?