HIS DARK MATERIALS

I'm just now reading the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman and am on the start of the third book and, wow, I haven't been this interested in the genre since Narnia. Like Narnia, the protagonists in His Dark Materials are kids, the story is set in fantastic places (and our world, too), and has biblical references in it. But this trilogy seems to be as blasphemous as Naria is zealous, and is no less ambitious than involving a plot to kill God Himself. No wonder Dong, who introduced me the first book, told me it's the anti-Harry Potter.

I'm at the part in the third book, The Amber Spyglass, where it's talking about a branch of the Church that practices preemptive absolution, wherein the practitioner would do penance way in advance for a sin yet to be committed, like murder, so when the time comes, he could do the dirty deed in a state of holy grace. Hehe, lupet, 'no?

Anyway, here's a trailer of The Golden Compass. It's the first book, and reads for the most part like an ordinary fantasy novel. I'm more excited about the second and third books, where we get to the meat of the story, and they're hopefully due December 2008 and 2009, respectively—that is if this trilogy follows the LotR pattern.




And here's my result from a daemon test I found in the movie's website. Daemons are talking animal companions and are kind of like Pokémons in the Golden Compass world, where everyone has one, which I'm guessing represent one's soul, or one's conscience.