Ah, r/hisdarkmaterials—where intellectual literary analysis meets fangirling over sentient animal companions. It’s less of a subreddit and more of a gathering place for people who can’t decide whether they’re here for philosophical debates about Dust or to cry over Lee Scoresby for the 10th time.

Every other post is either a “Look at this fan art of my daemon!” or a “Can someone explain quantum entanglement in relation to the Subtle Knife?” Because why enjoy the series casually when you can overthink it until it hurts?

And the debates? Oh, they’re brutal. “Was Asriel a hero or a madman?” “Is Lyra actually the new Eve, or is she just vibing with Pan?” These threads have more plot twists than the actual trilogy, and at least one commenter always insists they’ve uncovered “what Pullman really meant.”

The memes? Top-tier chaos. “Me when my daemon settles as a housecat instead of something cool like a hawk.” Or “James McAvoy’s Asriel giving off strong ‘power-hungry dad who doesn’t pay child support’ vibes.” You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll question your own spiritual alignment.

So yeah, r/hisdarkmaterials—where every thread is a mix of existential dread, daemonic fan art, and philosophical hot takes. Dust yourselves off and keep theorising, scholars. The Mulefa are counting on you.

I’ve never understood this and the prequel book doesn’t answer this or maybe I missed it. Any ideas, theories or even facts?

Question. What are some book/series similar to His Dark Materials & co. that you would recommend?

I forgot all about the remake of this series, and I'd like to watch it. However, I'm not willing to buy a Crave subscription, 10$ to watch 720p with ads is gross. Does anyone have any leads on where I can watch this for free or cheap? I've already taken a look at apple & prime, but they charge 3-5$ an episode, which is also gross.

Now, I am not referencing the end of the Northern Lights in which Mrs. Coulter refuses to go into Cittagazze with him. I know her true intention was to search for Lyra and protect her. But afterwards when she finally did go in, what stopped her from joining Asriel's cause? The Magisterium wanted to kill Lyra and Asriel wanted to kill the Authority which at least in the original trilogy was the root cause of whatever evil the Magisterium committed. Yet Coulter resisted Asriel to the point he took her captive.

Is there anything I'm forgetting or misunderstanding? As far as I recall they were on opposing sides right till the point she up and left the Magisterium. So what was the problem?

Before I start, let me emphasize that the HDM series has been my favorite for over 15 years. I felt like the first book broke me - I’d never experienced such a rush before, and I remember struggling against tears and a wave of goosebumps as I read the last sentence. I will forever cherish that book in particular, and it will remain a defining piece in my early life.

I consider Pullman a brilliant, masterful storyteller and world builder.

However, certain details revolving around a certain theme have cropped up too many times in relation to Pullman and his works. It’s made me start wondering about him.

TRIGGER WARNING and SPOILERS

Suggestions of pedophilia or perversion towards children were present in HDM.

• the scene with Lord Boreal in the car, where he notices Lyra’s bare legs and forces her to crawl over his lap

• the priest in the Amber Spyglass who clearly wanted to get Will drunk and molest or rape him

Okay. I get it. It’s part of his world-building. Pullman rightfully wanted to include sexual abuse committed by the Catholic Church against children. Boreal was a multi-dimensional icky character, and the uneasy feeling he gave Lyra added to that.

If this troublesome pattern I’ve noticed in Pullman had ended there, I would have believed that’s all there is to it.

But it didn’t.

• In La Belle Sauvage, we have the rape scene of Alice, a fifteen year old girl with a yet unsettled daemon. Many, including myself, have denounced this scene as unnecessary to the story, demeaning and casual.

• We also have some weird insinuation that Malcom will be used as “bait” for an older priest, although this is never followed up on.

The latter could still be argued as a consistent detail in Pullman’s world-building: the Church is teeming with pedophiles and perverted older men.

I have a lot less leniency towards the former, though. It’s where I started to question Pullman.

Moving on to The Secret Commonwealth:

• I REALLY started to question Pullman in this book.
• Malcom comes off as a stand-in for Pullman himself. It’s just a suspicion. He thoughts feel, as they did in LBS, like those of a much older, worn-down man. The fact that he is so mild-mannered and unassuming and yet infinitely capable strikes one rather as a Mary Sue, which authors typically use as a means of writing out their personal fantasies.
• Malcom is in love with Lyra. He’s obviously known her since she was an infant. He is 31 and she is 20, and he’s in love with her.
• The age gap is questionable but not necessarily…perverted. BUT. Pullman writes in length about how Malcom’s feelings for Lyra began when she was fifteen or sixteen. Pullman describes Malcom noticing the scent of her hair. When she was sixteen. He specifies that is wasn’t shampoo Malcom smelled, but specifically “young girl”. Starting to feel really weird now.
• These feelings from Malcom are quite clearly acceptable in the story world. Seen in a positive light. Other characters (like Alice) even encourage them.
• Then, there’s the constant mentions of Lyra’s appearance and the effect she has on older men. For example talking to the older Gyptian man on the boat, he tells her if it comes down to her looks, she could easily pull off being a witch (who are unearthly beautiful). Okay…
• You know what I’m going to say here. The rape scene of Lyra. Many have said it was necessary, to show she finally “found out” for “fucking around”.
• I guess? Why didn’t she have to “find out” by literally getting VIOLENTLY GANG-RAPED in the original series? Why wasn’t that necessary to illustrate the dangers she was much more cavalierly putting herself in in that series? Or like…in most series ever written?
• The detail of the scene was again gratuitous. If Pullman had to include this scene, I don’t think he had to describe her panties getting pulled to the side and fingers getting shoved inside her. I really don’t.
• At this point I had rather lost my patience and trust of Pullman. I know others saw this subtle description in a positive light, like “yay, finally someone mentions menstruation in a non-dramatic way in a book”. But for me, when I got to the part about Pullman describing Lyra sensing her period was coming, I felt icky. Like he decided he had the right to go there and talk about this intrinsically feminine phenomenon, just like he had the right to have his young female protagonist violently assaulted.

This isn’t all. A memory came back, from when I was obsessed with these books and Pullman and in my internet digging I came across his favorite short story: “The Beauties” by Anton Chekhov.

https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2011/dec/11/writers-pick-favourite-short-stories

http://www.online-literature.com/anton_chekhov/1251/#google_vignette

I encourage you to read it yourself. Beautiful writing, and on its own I wouldn’t necessarily question it, but with everything else from Pullman, I now view it in a different light. It describes (sometimes much older) men being taken by the beauty of sixteen and seventeen year-old girls, and staring at them and feeling they’re in love with them. Interesting.

Recently I saw that Pullman once refused to visit schools in the UK because he’d be required to register to a non-pedophile list. He was outraged by this. I don’t understand what’s to be outraged about wanting to protect children from predators.

https://archive.nytimes.com/artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/philip-pullman-protests-registry-to-protect-against-sex-offenders/

Interesting.

Finally, I haven’t read them, but others have said the Sally Lockhart series, meant for children/young adults, also contains themes of sexual abuse. Not sure about that but would be interested in others’ perspective on that series.

All in all, sad to say, but I’ve begun to view Pullman in a scrutinizing light. It’s even made me question his descriptions of Lyra experiencing her sexual awakening in TAS.

I mean it, where is Mary. This is a Catholic theocracy and there’s zero Mary! There should be a whole thing where Mary is always depicted with a daemon mid-change because hers would obviously have never settled. There’s also no paintings of martyred saints where their daemon is vanishing as it’s called away, but I’ve already complained about that.

It's consistently shown that going too far from a daemon is very painful, so in this hypothetical scenario, what if a person despised their own daemon to the point that they feel that they are better off without a daemon. What permanent form would that person's daemon would take then?

I couldn't even get through season 2 of His Dark Materials because I hate coulter so much. And I hate that fucking monkey. Like I feel bad for it cause she obviously abuses the shit out of it. I noticed it's the only daemon in the show that doesn't speak at all. Like wtf did she do to that lil guy? Its terrified of her. Watching it try to make a little stand for itself after she almost let it get attacked by the spector was sad. I hate that monkey and I felt sad. Like I still feel sad for it and it's a cgi monkey I hate. But I don't feel bad for coulter. Lee was right. She's just trash. Idk if I even want to finish the story. I know she doesn't even die on screen. For anyone that's also an intense coulter hater, should I even keep watching? Is it worth it? So far it's not.

This thought randomly struck me and OMG. Coulter, Asriel, and Lyra have such a bizarre family dynamic in the book, very similar to this real American political family. I can’t unsee it now.

We know that daemons settling is the marker of puberty in the HDM world, but does that normally happen before or after a girl gets her first period? In TAS, Lyra's period was never mentioned so we can assume that she didn't get it. It is not like periods do not exist in her world either - Lyra does get one in TSC although I don't remember very well, so please refresh my memory.

I have looked for the answer to this and didn't find it I only watched the series so probably anyone that has read the books will be able to answer me

I was confused on what Father Gomez meant by "speeding things up" with Fra Pavel I felt like there was not only sexual connotation in what he was saying but also on his interaction with him Was he just talking about violence ? It reminds me of an episode where it is mentioned Fra Pavel has "filthy predilections" , wich could mean he's gay and because that is known in the Magestirum Father Gomez was sexual with him to speed him up ?

Also , I've seen many posts talking about the logic behind not being able to leave a window open , but nobody seemed to question this If the problem is leaving the window open why not simply close it right after going through it ?

How did the angel that killed Father Gomez die ? Was his deamon venomous ?

Thanks to anyone that has the answers

I watched the HBO show when it first came, so it's been a while since I've seen season one.

However, I was watching some old clips (specifically of the episodes taking place in Bolvangar), and I realised that none of the people who work there, like Sister Clara or Dr Cooper, have their dæmons with them. Yes, I understand they were severed, but in the book they still had them there to keep up the act of them being connected.

Surely, the staff not having their dæmons there would've freaked the children out and alerted them to the fact that something was wrong? We know being separated from your dæmon isn't a new thing, so the kids at Bolvangar probably would've realised it might have something to do with that.

Did I miss something? It just doesn't make sense on why they wouldn't have their dæmons there, even if just for show. That's what they did in the book, at least.

2 years ago I got a Pan and Kirjava tattoo that did not turn out the way I expected and I had lasered off. Today Kyra and Love Struck Tattoo made my dreams come true ❤️

Warning! Very long post ahead

Hey everyone! First thing first - English is not my main language, and i haven't read the books in English, so im sorry about any mistake i might make, both in grammar and terminology.

So, when I read the books I was very fascinated by the clouded mountain, mainly because im jewish (not very religious, but enough to recognise a lot of the religious lore) and never heard about such thing, so i decided to look it up and found... Nothing, no mountain at all

But when i googled abiut the chariot, ive found some mentions about the chariot of cherubs (mythical creatures with human faces, and body of animals, which were also assigned to keep adam and eve out of heaven) from the Solomon's temple, and they carried god from place to place.

So basically the clouded mountain is a lot of weird angles squished toghter to create a kingdom.

The first time ive seen this mention was actually from when i learned about... Metatron!

Metatron as an angel was first mentioned in the hakalot literature, (hakalot means palace, aka heaven) and also caller the literature of palace and the chariot (sounds familiar?) and it talks about accessions and heaven.

In one of those stories Rabi Yishmal was accending thru "chariot watching", and then he met metatron, that was sent to guide him thru the divine worlds (yes, worlds, plural. I found it very exciting that religios text doesn't contradict my favourite book).

So, what was my point? I dont really know, I just wanted to show you how nuts Philip Pullman work is, and how much he learnt about religion in order to write his books

Even though im not really religious and most of the knowledge came from internet and other people, feel free to ask me anything and i will do my best to help!

TLDR: Philip pullman is amazing

Thank you for reading! Sorry for wasting your time (:

Around two-three years ago I got lucky and was able to go to a one-night, professional recording of La Belle Sauvage as a stage play at my local cinema. Did anyone manage to also see this, or even see it live?

Also, if you have any questions around the play, ask me and I'll try my best to answer them. I still remember it very vividly!

I was looking on the wiki on Asriel's page and found this:

https://preview.redd.it/p8pqglkom20e1.jpg?width=900&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1109d84120867a6c19c2e576cee932471f724589

It's obviously meant to be from the film, but I swear the first film ended before they got to Asriel's (it's been two years since I've watched it) so when was this taken? I didn't even think they'd started production on the second movie, let alone filming.

The fact that Phoebe Waller-Bridge plays John Parry's daemon was such a nice touch. She literally only has one line but I caught that it was her immediately and having watched Fleabag for the first time recently it just got me in the feels

Be warned… This is going to be a long post! I Maybe it’s more for Goodreads than Reddit? But I’d love to have a conversation about the books with you.
I finished His Dark Materials for the first time this week, and feel the need to clarify my feelings about it, and share some of my thoughts with long-time enthusiastic Pullman readers. I will bring up a lot of negative aspects in my post, but not because I want to hate on the books – long story short: I actually love them overall and they have left a mark in my reader’s journey and probably always will – but because I crave for debate about what I consider to be big issues with these books. And I almost think that the issues and debatable choices in the book contribute to my peculiar interest for them.

Also… I am French, so excuse the likely grammar and wording mistakes!

I love to read other people’s journey with books/authors, so allow me to share mine with Pullman. I was born in 1995, and read the first 2 Sally Lockhart books as a kid, not even knowing he had an other series he was very famous for! I discovered “His Dark Materials” (it’s actually called “A la croisée des mondes” in French “At the crossroads of worlds”) with the 2007 movie, and read the first two books just after. Didn’t read the third.

The years went by, and two times I picked up the books from the beginning (good to practice my English to re-read in original version), and I always stumbled on the 2^(nd) book, or the beginning of the 3^(rd) book, losing interest. That’s annoying, and I’ve always wanted to finish reading the series.

A few weeks ago, I read them again (always starting from the beginning, somehow I love re-reading a story I know pretty well, and it wouldn’t interest me to jump straight in the 3^(rd) volume after years), and although I noticed some of the things that I had a problem with as my reading progressed, and although the pacing of my reading slowed down during the first half of the Amber Spyglass, I finished His Dark Materials!

So… Why all the love/hate relationship with the books?

I feel like Northern Lights/Golden Compass is a masterpiece of storytelling. I am not a huge fantasy fan, so it’s not that much the genre that the way the plot is built, the story is told, that I find incredibly masterful in Northern Lights. For me it goes along with the first Harry Potter book in its ability to create a world, characterize its protagonists, and deliver a rich hero’s journey – and the prose is certainly richer. I love how it truly feels like a journey to the end of the world- as if Lyra was on a Flat Earth, somehow, and travelling to the edge, with more complex and violent environments and conflicts as she goes along. I love the characters, every step of the story: the posh life with Mrs Coulter, Iorek speaking about his armor and his drinking, the tricking of Iofur. There are some truly out-of-nowhere wonders, like when a nurse in Bolvangar is decribed as able to put bandages but unable to tell a story, or something like that. The dialogue, the prose, the descriptions of settings (such an in Chapter 3, about Lyra at Jordan) are masterful. There are very few plot problems with the book, and most don’t matter much. I like the foreshadowing (that Pullman thought about later probably) with Grumann or Lord Boreal. Dust. Anyway, it’s one of the best novels I know, period.

I really like The Subtle Knife, some parts are just as good, but it starts to have big issues, that I don’t see raised so much in conversations.
The Good first:

I love the boldness of starting the novel with a new character, in another world, in suburbian Britain, where you can’t make the connections with the first book immediately. I remember 12 years old me being really disturbed by it, but now I think it’s a brilliant way to give the series its identity. Most children books follow a similar plot pattern book after book, that’s even a characteristic of children series, from Narnia to A Series of Unfortunate Events. The first book, as brilliant as it is, Is perfect in a “typical hero’s journey fantasy” type of book. I like how Pullman now tries something else.
The introduction of Our World in the book is of course one of its wonders.
The vibe of Cittagaze is so well described that I feel like I have visited it a few times in my life.
All of the scenes with Mary are wonderful. She’s a character alive on the page from the moment she appears.

Perhaps my favorite thing about the book, and I rarely see it mentioned, is Charles Latrom/Lord Boreal, and the plot points around him. His creepy interactions with Lyra are so, so well described, the house, his physical appearance, everything; I have rarely been that disgusted by a book character. Also the fact that she half recognizes him; I love that. I just think that his demise is not very well done, doesn’t make much sense. He dies stupidly when he is supposed to be smart (although enamoured with Mrs Coulter), and there’s no real reason why she’d want him dead.

The sequence of chapters with the theft of the alethimother, the Tower, and the second theft, is my favorite in the book, always has been.

Now, the problems:

- The rhythm is a bit clumsy, with the long Lee/Serafina chapters feeling like badly managed worldbuilding, while the plot with the kids is more focused and interesting. But that’s very subjective, I agree.

- I feel in some parts of book 2, and in many parts of book 3, that the tone is different. More imprecise. More childish sometimes. This would require a full essay as it’s hard to justify quickly, but that’s always been my impression. Parts of those 2 books (especially in the 3^(rd)) often feel like (dare I say it?) fanfiction written by decent admirers of the first book. To be more precise, I feel like things noticeably start to go awry in the last few Chapters of the Subtle Knife, when the kids are in the mountains. And I first had this feeling during Chapter 2, with Serafina on the boat. As If Pullman tries to tell a bigger story, and he doesn’t really know how to?

- This fanfiction feel comes a lot, also, from the characters. In book 2, Lyra is a shadow of the Lyra she was In book 1. (Pan too). This can be explained by the trauma she went through, alright, but still. She’s whimpy, always dependant on Will, less bold, etc. She often feels like an other character altogether, in her words and actions. Same goes for Lee Scoresby. He literaly has a talk with Serafina in book 1 about how he wants to be left out of this war stuff, and now he becomes active in it, and has a newfound love for Lyra that he barely knows. I know Serafina told him he’d have “no choice” but that’s a 180 degrees turn to say the least.

- More importantly, the plot starts to make no sense. Sometimes it’s just plainly dumb. Mrs Coulter manages to make the Spectres fly in the last chapter? There’s a guy in a tower just waiting there, and a thief remaining in it? Lord Boreal had known about windows for years- oh and he never tried to steal the Knife in Cittagaze when the Spectres are absent? He doesn’t kidnap the kids although he could, and yet invites Mrs Coulter for the first time (what better gift could he have given her)? Lord Asriel has built a fortress in a few days?
On this very last aspect, I know the witches mentioned time travel and all, and I first accepted this idea that Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter have to be considered as almost allegoretical figures, just like their daughter “Eve”, that transcend reason. But it doesn’t add up with the very pragmatical issues and limitations that they face in Amber Spyglass. So there’s a deep, deep inconsistency there.

I feel llke between each books Pullman lost of bit of the sense of the story he was writing.

Now… Amber Spyglass!
So many issues with this book. I think it’s quite clearly a miss, although I like some aspects of it. I see so many people here and on the Internet praising it, saying it’s their favorite, but I feel like it relies mostly on memories of the ending – which is beautiful indeed.
The book has interesting ideas, but the execution is quite awful.

First, the tone changes one more: from page one, Pullmans’s prose gets more flowery, heavily descriptive – and I like descriptive prose, like Pullman I am a Proust aficionado, but here it feels like he just tries so hard to show that we’re into serious literature that it’s bad. Same goes with the little quotes at the beginning of the chapters. It could work, but they are just so dull every single time that it just appears as a way to manifest literary references. It brings nothing to the table and makes the book feel pretentious.

The plot holes and ludicrous plot points are so enormous it’s impossible to ignore :

Mrs Coulter travels very far away with Lyra in 10mn, and it takes ages for Will to catch up?

The ghosts don’t die in the Republic of Heavens but die everywhere else?

There’s literaly a house of God on a cloud that Mrs Coulter visits?

 Iorek pops up just… because?

 John Faa and co make a sudden come back out of the blue in the mulefa’s world for no reason or plausibility, only because Pullman felt legitimetaly that those characters were awkwardly left in Bolvangar?

The Gallivespians are cool characters, but what use were they for, really, and how the hell can they know Lord Asriel and co as the worlds have been open “officially” only a few weeks ago?

What use was Asriel’s fortress in the end?

 Despite what Mary read, Dust isn’t Angels in the end, right ?

And what about killing the Authority? I like the actual death scene, but what does it change for the world? What was the point of all this? What did Lyra change?

What was the point of this whole quest? To free the dead (there was no mention of this in the first 2 books) and to close the windows (no mention before the last 40 pages)?

I could remember other stuff I guess… But let’s end with the biggest: what the hell was this business with the bomb using Lyra’s hair? That’s probably the worst thing of the trilogy. Both in idea and execution. It’s confused, confusing, useless. I laughed out loud when John Parry’s ghost cuts some of Lyra’s hair.

Also, about the tone inconsistencies, I feel like the daemons get a bad rep in the books. The first book insists so much about the beautiful and necessary bond between human and daemon; and now Lyra splits up with her deamon and it’s only hard! She should be almost dead (in the land of the dead), dead and in deep pain. There’s a cold when she meets up with Pan again… Maybe the bond is a bit broken, after all… Also I absolutely didn’t like Will and Mary having an exterior deamon in the end, it makes no sense to me and contradict a lot of what was set up in book 2. What the hell was that ?

Oh, and don’t get me started on Mrs Coulter caring about Lyra more than everything. It’s not the woman we met in the first 2 books. The book weren’t plotted in advance, and it makes for some beautiful surprises and evolutions, but also with a lot of mess; as if Pullman started each book of the trilogy as a sequel only in name, trying a new literary experience every time, that doesn’t have to really fit up with the other volumes.

In TAS, I did love the mulefa bits, the temptation scene, the harpies screaming “Liar” and the bench in the (Eden ?) Gardens idea. I also love Lyra seeing the female scholar from book 1 at the end again, and thinking she seems interesting – whereas she thought before the “Mrs Coulter” kind of person were the real thing.

So for me, His Dark Materials is a weird beast. I feel like Northern Lights has been written by a very experimented writer, who knows how to make a story rich and smart, moving through themes and deep idea elegantly, without losing the sense of thrill. And then, as the story goes on, it loses a lot of its qualities, and make mistakes more akin to the one a rookie writer would make: being too explicit, too referencial, making it up as he goes, bringing a lot of clumsy plot elements because why not (we haven’t talked about the intention craft…).

Actually, in the preface of my edition of the book, Pullman seems aware of some of this. He comments that, sometimes, he’s let the themes and his ideas take upon the story, and that this makes for the weaker parts of the book. That’s exactly, in a nutshell, what I think fails in His Dark Materials. That, and the dumb plot points and plot holes of course.

Overall, I love the first third of the book, deeply like the second, and am annoyed with most of the third; and I am fascinated by the ensemble.

(I am now reading the short stories, and will begin Book of Dust some time soon! Also, I’d like to get myself initiated to Milton and Blake to understand better the intertextual aspects of HDM. Would love to hear some people who read all 3 authors to comment on this, or to be redirected to essays written by others)

I would love to talk some of the points with you, and especially with people who really love The Amber Spyglass as a whole, and who can explain to me why they see things so differently.

Thanks for reading, if you managed to!

that Ionides mentions in TSC?

I don't know how to explain it, but I can't tolerate Lin-Manuel Miranda. I really feel like punching his face, in general.

Can you tell me if he's an important character? I almost don't want to watch the show because of him. He's why I keep stopping and I always get pulled out of the immersion.