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H-I I wouldn't want to put you off reading HDM - its incredibly exciting & entertaining in parts - it only really starts to collapse with the third volume, but even that will sweep you along.
My problem is with the 'philosophy' that underlies it. Pullman is someone who has lived a nice, safe, middle class existence, & read a lot of 'clever' books, & so can play with ideas of 'good' & 'evil', as though they are intellectual toys. Tolkien, on the other hand, had seen true evil, knew true Good, & knew mankind for what we are, so he couldn't, honestly, play the game Pullman plays & reduce the human condition to a childish adventure story of 'youngsters' vs. Blake's 'Old Nobodaddy'.
Pullman does present some very complex, visionary ideas, from Milton & Blake especially, but he seems simply to have taken their philosophies at face value & 'dramatised' them without analysing the implications.
I know the ending of the story 'moves' many to tears, but I can't help feeling that too many who are moved in that way are moved for purely sentimental reasons, when the two young lovers are seperated forever - a kind of Romeo & Juliet ending - taken at face value. Problem is, Pullman's ending is much darker & more hopeless, & he offers only the meaningless platitude of creating a 'Republic of Heaven', which, as I said, means absolutely nothing if one thinks about it.
However, if you can leave on one side both the pretentiousness & the nihilism & just read it as a childrens adventure story, you may well be swept away by it. There are some very beautiful moments in it as well, I have to admit.
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