In the sixteenth chapter of The Amber Spyglass, Lord Asriel is the biggest douchebag ever, and Mrs. Coulter might redeem herself? Oh, and shit is so real that it is impossible to tell how real shit has gotten. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read The Amber Spyglass.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE INTENTION CRAFT
Before I begin, look at this week’s wonderful banner! A subtle change from the week before, but different nonetheless. The banner is actually cropped from this full image, which is might gorgeous if you ask me.
If you’ve been wondering why the banners change every week, this is actually clue #4 (and the final clue) in the contest I’m running with BridgeToTheStars.net. There’s a changing anagram hidden in each of the four banners located here, and if you can locate and decipher them, you have until August 21 to submit them to BTTS and win a copy of The Amber Spyglass signed by Philip Pullman. UM AWESOME.
Additionally, you are invited to join other fellow His Dark Materials fans to discuss all of the wonderful spoilers for this week’s review over in the forum at BridgeToTheStars. I’ll join you all once I finish the book because HOLY COW SPOILERS.
Shall we?
HOLY SHIT I CANNOT PROCESS ALL OF THIS INFORMATION AT ONCE.
This is one of the longest chapters in all of The Amber Spyglass, and good god, Pullman lays it on thick. Most significant of all is that we are given a chapter that is largely from Mrs. Coulter’s point of view and, while I’m now closer than ever to believing she may actually care about her daughter, I STILL CAN’T TELL WHERE SHE STANDS. hoooowwwww is the even possible MY BRAIN HURTS.
Even right from the get go, I can’t think of a reason why Mrs. Coulter would fake her reaction to being imprisoned by Lord Asriel. Her screams that open the chapter don’t seem fake in the slightest. She truly believed she was keeping Lyra safe in her own way, and Lord Asriel contributed to her being taken away.
Can we just talk about what an awful person Lord Asriel is? I don’t care what war he’s fighting. He’s terrible:
“Lyra? Frankly, I don’t care,” he said, his voice quiet and hoarse. “The wretched child should have stayed where she was put, and done what she was told. I can’t waste any more time or resources on her; if she refuses to be helped, let her deal with the consequences.”
DOES IOREK HAVE THE POWER TO OPEN UP THE EARTH SO IT CAN EAT LORD ASRIEL? No, I don’t care, FUCK YOU LORD ASRIEL. You murdered her best friend. “Refuses to be helped”? Oh, I wish I could smack characters through the pages of this book, because I would knock you right the fuck off your little chair.  And then have Iorek Byrnison eat your heart out LITERALLY.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. A part of me is totally fascinated that Pullman took the trope of the mysterious father figure and completely toppled it, especially since it appears he used that same trope with Will, but never revealed anything damaging about that character. I mean, he was harsh to Lyra in The Golden Compass, but until the end, I totally expected that Lyra would slowly earn his respect and they’d fight the Magisterium ~together~. Now, we’ve reached the final book of this trilogy, and I utterly despise him. And as much as I do dislike him, I am interested to see how he’ll factor into the final battle against Authority. He’s intriguing to me because he’s a terrible person who appears to be on the right moral side. How will these two factors be rectified?
What makes me think that I’ve gotten Mrs. Coulter a bit wrong in this book is how genuine her defense of Lyra is. It serves her no purpose that I can see at all, though it is entirely possible that, yet again, I’ve simply been fooled by Mrs. Coulter’s charms. But she’s….not all that charming in chapter sixteen. She’s furious, angry, unrestrained in her terror, and openly honest about how much she values the daughter she mistakenly never parented herself. I found it kind of revolting that this is what Lord Asriel finds most insulting about Lyra’s affect on her mother:
“Well, I admit: the child must have some gift I’ve never seen myself. But if all it does is turn you into a doting mother, it’s a pretty thing, drab, puny little gift.”
That is like…thinly-veiled misogyny, as far as I’m concerned. I consider any possible conversion of Mrs. Coulter into a “doting mother” to be a success, especially given how she’s treated Lyra in the past. It seems to me that the very concept of such a thing is abhorrent to Lord Asriel, but I’m not at all surprised by it. Why wouldn’t a man so self-centered as him think this way? I mean, just after this, he taunts Mrs. Coulter with the idea of being humiliated and gagged and any sort of possible respect I had for him is pretty much absent. Dude, you are a complete asshole what are you doing.
The vast portion of sixteen hinges on dialogue, and I love when an author can make long stretches of talking be so gripping and engrossing. It helps that most of what we’re given is a form of exposition, which could have been tedious, but I’m glad that so many questions are just outright answered instead of just hinted at. (Not that there aren’t those, but you get what I mean.) And I think it helps even more that after all of this talking, there’s the Intention Craft to deal with. Which we will, in a bit.
There’s a lot of updating to get Lord Asriel up to speed on what Lyra and Will are doing, which is now a bizarre thing to read, given that we now know how much Lord Asriel truly does not care about either of these kids. He has a general idea that he needs Will and the knife, but they’re nothing but disposable pawns to him. Including his daughter. I can’t even believe I’m typing that. Lord Asriel is the Lord Douche. There. I said it.
Mrs. Coulter, on the other hand, continues to be frank and honest. For once. She flat out tells Lord Asriel who in the Magisterium has an alethiometer, how quick the man is, and about how long they have until Lyra and Will are located. We know for a fact that she is not lying or using her charm to tell Lord Asriel a half-truth. Yet the entire dynamic between these two adults is simply strange. They trade half-masked insults at one another; Asriel refuses to avoid constantly mentioning that Mrs. Coulter is never to be trusted; Mrs. Coulter herself mocks Asriel’s fake nobility and attempts to silence her. While there’s a part of me that can’t believe these two could ever stand each other for more than five minutes, let alone enough time to conceive a child, I also feel Iorek’s words to Lyra suddenly have a new parallel: These two deserve each other. I’m more sympathetic to Mrs. Coulter, but these are both people who use others, manipulate them, have a little taste for courtesy and honor, and who are desperate to do whatever they want, no matter the consequences. They are perfect in that sense, though it might be hard to see that amidst all of the revulsion in their words.
I never thought we’d reach a point in this trilogy where Mrs. Coulter would offer to be a spy, but the cat’s out of the bag. Hell, I couldn’t think of a better person, to be honest. Who else can trick others in the way she can? But she lays out a different reason for wanting to do it, instead of a desire to stay alive, which is what I expected. She tells Lord Asriel (in what feels like a rebuke of his insult earlier about her being a mother) that she will turn against the Church because they want to murder Lyra.
Yes, I realize that it has taken Mrs. Coulter experiencing something like this to finally have a change of heart, and there’s a whole history of being oppressive and awful behind her. If you’ll recall, I didn’t really believe her “change” earlier in the book because she never spelled out what she’d done wrong while supporting the Magisterium. As she begins to explain to the party watching her how she knew she needed to set herself against the Church once she found out who Lyra was (the second Eve, WHICH I STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND), she pauses briefly, and I can only imagine what is going on in her head. They don’t believe, she must be thinking. Why give up decades of allegiance to a church for a daughter I’ve never loved?
This is why:
“I have been the worst mother in the world. I let my only child be taken away from me when she was a tiny infant, because I didn’t care about her; I was concerned only with my own advancement. I didn’t think of her for years, and if I did, it was only to regret the embarrassment of her birth.
“But then the Church began to take an interest in Dust and in children, and something stirred in my heart, and I remembered that I was a mother and Lyra was…my child.
“And because there was a threat, I saved her from it. Three times now I’ve stepped in to pluck her out of danger.”
Yet it wasn’t even until she saw the Church’s determination in murdering her own child that Mrs. Coulter finally decided it was time for her to stop. It’s not lost on me that Mrs. Coulter herself has contributed to the deaths of (probably) hundreds of children through her work at Bolvangar. Yet it took the Church making it personal for her to switch her allegiance. It’s hard for me to necessarily feel pity for Mrs. Coulter when she describes the joy she felt when she finally got to be affectionate with Lyra, albeit it while she was asleep, because I can’t ignore her past. Hell, she is her past, and it’s going to be hard for me (and others) to separate the two. I don’t always think that’s a fair thing to ascribe to someone, but this woman’s actions are so intensely heinous and detrimental to the story, so it’s not as easy to simply put them aside and say, “OH, EVERYTHING’S FINE NOW.”
Lord Asriel believes she’s lying, though. I’m not ready to say that Mrs. Coulter is clearly on the right said, acting purely out of interest of saving Lyra, but I’m also not at all ready to be on Lord Asriel’s side either. Mrs. Coulter has a lot of work to do before anyone (including myself) is ready to give her their trust. I suppose there’s just a part of me that wants what she is saying to be true. I don’t want this all to be an elaborate hoax.
For all of the dialogue and emotion we get, I was pleasantly surprised that the second half of chapter sixteen is almost entirely visual, with long passages without a single line of dialogue. Pullman gives us a detailed, engrossing, and overwhelming look at the fortress that Lord Asriel has constructed, something I’d been desperate to learn more about. I certainly don’t understand the logistics of how anyone can fight the Authority or angels or any of this, but I’m now getting it in my head that whatever battle is coming upon us (AND YOU BETTER NOT CONVENIENTLY SKIP OVER IT, PULLMAN) is going to be absolutely ridiculous. Lord Asriel leads the entire party, including Mrs. Coulter, to see something called the “intention craft.” Which…god, I kind of hate that name? I mean, that’s what it is. But it’s just so silly to me! It’s a good thing it’s amazing, but I’m getting way ahead of myself.
On the way to see this craft, Pullman finally confirms something I suspected a while ago: that the Authority is in every universe, and that some being or creature is at odds with the authority, oppressed by the Authority’s servants. In this case, Mrs. Coulter finds out that in the Gallivespian universe, the human believers in the Authority actively try to exterminate the Gallivespians, considering them “diabolic.” It stands to reason that Lord Asriel was able to find countless races or cultures or species that felt the same way, explaining why there is such a varied group here at the fortress. (How did he contact them without the subtle knife? I don’t understand that.)
It’s no surprise to us that God is not who he says he is, so I forgot that not that many people know the Authority is not the creator, merely an angel who deemed himself to be “God.” It’s another sign that a lot of how Mrs. Coulter reacts appears to be genuine and real. She seems believably shocked to learn this, but that’s when Pullman finally tells us why Lord Asriel has chosen this world, this place, and this war to fight.
“He led us here because this world is empty. Empty of conscious life, that is. We are not colonists, Mrs. Coulter. We haven’t come to conquer, but to build.”
WHAT THE HOLY HELL. How can a world be empty? Even Cittágazze has some life in it, so how could this one be devoid of everything? And what the hell are they going to build here?
“Mrs. Coulter, I am a king, but it’s my proudest task to join Lord Asriel in setting up a world where there are no kingdoms at all. No kings, no bishops, no priests. The Kingdom of Heaven has been known by that name since the Authority first set himself above the rest of the angels. And we want no part of it. This world is different. We intend to be free citizens of the Republic of Heaven.”
WHAT?!?!?!?!?!!? THEY ARE GOING TO REBUILD A WORLD WITHOUT GOD i can barely stand this. Oh, this is just so terribly exciting. They are building a fortress for defensive purposes. So the battle won’t be in the Kingdom of Heaven; these are just preparations for an inevitable invasion. (I think? I mean, they could still be launching some sort of offensive attack.) And it seems they’re sparing no expense to develop weapons and fortifications that are inconceivable in any other context. As the party makes their way to the armory, it’s clear to me that Lord Asriel is commanding the production of weapons in sizes I didn’t even think were possible. There are hammers being used here “the sizes of houses.” HOUSES. Sheets of iron the size of tree trunks. I don’t even know what they’re trying to build of that size, but we do finally learn what the name of this chapter means.
Again, there’s no real basis for me to visualize this craft, so I’d love any examples of fan art to help me out. In my head, it sort of looks like an insect with a cockpit, basically. But this absurd, mysterious machine seems to be Lord Asriel’s greatest weapon. He climbs inside of it to demonstrate it for everyone, and Mrs. Coulter watches as it moves impossibly: it seems to disappear, then reappear in another location, moving in ways that defy any knowledge of physics, making no sound at all. When enemy ships and a raiding party are lured into the mountain base by decoys, Asriel gets the chance to demonstrate what the intention craft can do: a light flashes, and almost instantaneously, a shell explodes. In just a matter of minutes, the intention craft destroys every part of the raiding party. Soundlessly.
And it’s here that Mrs. Coulter is inspired by the display to give Lord Asriel a final manipulation before the end of the chapter, one that exploits his pride and his desire to show off. So she asks him to explain how this machine work. When he replies that your intentions control it, I actually laughed out loud. REALLY. And then he shows Mrs. Coulter that it is controlled by your dæmon as well. So it is LITERALLY A CRAFT OF INTENTIONS. How do you even THINK of something like that??? It’s interesting to me that it’s yet another thing used by Asriel that has to do with the link between a dæmon and a human, and I’m sure it’s a part of the larger theme of this trilogy concerning human knowledge. For now…I’m pretty content just saying this is really awesome.
Oh, right. Mrs. Coulter.
And she pushed hard, so that he fell out of the machine.
In the same moment she slipped the helmet on her head, and the golden monkey snatched up the leather handle.
OH MY GOD WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!?!?! For a second, I started to get upset, worried that this whole chapter was a ploy by Mrs. Coulter to escape, that everything she had said was a lie. But Pullman almost immediately switches over to Lord Asriel’s perspective, and he essentially knew all along that this was bound to happen. He stops King Ogunwe from pursuit or sending anyone after her, knowing that she really is going to go after Lyra. Sending Lord Roke instead, he properly guesses that Mrs. Coulter is going to deceive the Church, spy on them for Lord Asriel and lead them straight to Lyra’s location.
They laughed, and moved back into the workshops, where a later, more advanced model of the intention craft was awaiting their inspection.
WHY DOES THIS SEEM SO SINISTER. oh god this book.
This chapter is also the first (possibly only; I can't recall) time that Mrs. Coulter's daemon talks. And the audiobook really handles it well; it's a sibilant, wheezy voice like nothing any of the other characters sound like.
Yes! Even though I've read this book before, my reaction was "Woah, woah, woah. The monkey can talk?" I had to go back and read it three times just to make sure I wasn't misreading. Pbhyq vg or vaqvpngvir bs n punatr va Zef Pbhygre vs ure zbaxrl qnrzba vf npgvat fbeg bs abezny?
I like your idea 🙂
I was pretty sure he talked once in the cave at the beginning, but as I don't have a copy of the book with me, I could be wrong.
I also don't have my book with me, but IIRC it was that Mrs. Coulter and the monkey talked to one another, but we didn't hear his words. This is the first time we "hear" his voice.
I think you're right…. I just checked back, and I couldn't find him actually having a line of dialogue. Creepy ape……
OH GOD. He did talk! I didn't even catch it!!!
He's still not named, though, which is interesting.
He's only named in the radio play adaptation, as Ozymandias.
Right, I was saying that even when he speaks in the book – which is already a new thing – he's still not named in the book. Pullman never gave him a name, which I find to be an interesting choice, since often even minor characters have names for their daemons.
Mrs. Coulter is such a fascinating character. I've read the books as an adult maybe 3-4 times now and I think I am finally starting to understand her. She strikes me as someone who, for most of her life, has been in conflict with her nature. She is deceitful, ambitious, proud, cruel, and (as her history with Asriel indicates) sexual, all of which she has been taught by the Church are things that a person, particularly a woman, should not be. She has shut herself off from the manifestation of her nature, the golden monkey daemon, and both of them have been warped by this self-denial. This is also where her interest in sin/daemons/intercision comes from.
The cave was a turning point for her. I think she was motivated by true concern when she kidnapped Lyra, but also by the desire to prevent whatever "fall" Lyra is fated to take part in. She couldn't bear the thought of killing her daughter, but by keeping the girl incapacitated she would escape temptation. Mrs. Coulter was in an in-between state in the cave, both defying the Church by protecting Lyra and acting in accordance with the Church's interests by drugging her. When the battle broke out and it became apparent that the Church's victory would mean their deaths, she finally breaks her allegiance with the Church and the repression it represents. I think that's what that manic expression Will noticed on her face was all about. I don't think it's a coincidence that we hear the monkey speak only after that event.
This chapter is one of the reasons I wanted a movie version.
Pullman is fantastically descriptive, and I've got a good imagination, but holy shit I want to see Lord Asriel's fortress on the big screen.
SHIT IS GETTING SO REAL AAH!!!
Also, hello! I'm back from my 5 week internetless excavation in England (which was AMAZING and I miss it and I want to go back), actually, I've been back for a week now and I've only JUST caught up with all the reviews.
And I'm so happy that I get to still read a large chunk of the Amber Spyglass with you guys! I's forgotten how many chapters this book has! (seriously, there are like a million.
And finally I get to say again: YOU, MY DEAR SIR, ARE NOT PREPARED.
Welcome back! Did you find anything? (Sorry if that's a silly question, I know nothing.)
I forgot how long TAS was, too! I can't believe we're not even halfway through.
Thanks! 🙂 Yeah, we found a lot of stuff. Mainly lots and lots of animal bone, some pottery, Anglo-Saxon coins, metal objects, and (most excitingly) GOLD!! A beautifully decorated piece of gold that's about the size of half a thumbnail.
(Here's an overview of our 5 best finds of the season, if you're interested. 🙂 http://bamburghresearchproject.wordpress.com/2011… )
Those are really neat, and I've gotta say, I like the gold the best! That's amazing detail on something so tiny; the braiding is perfect. I hope you get a chance to go back!
Haha, oh believe me, I'm going back next year one way or another. I made so many amazing friends, I just have to see them again next year. 😀
AH, THAT SOUNDS SO AMAZING! And welcome back!!!
It is very amazing!!! 😀 And thanks! ^_^
Holy Shit! They finally found gold again after all these years?! And they're getting down to the A-S layers of the castle finally? Oh, I *have* to go back next year! Last time I went, it was all high-medieval stuff, apart from the Bowl Hole.
Yay, you should go! Also, you were at the Bowl Hole excavation?That's so cool! 😀
Do they not do the Bowl Hole anymore? It was open almost the whole summer I was there.
Nope, I think they finished it a few years ago.
Sadness! There's little in the world I love more than Anglo-Saxon skellies….
They are doing an excavation in Fishwick in the month of August, after the BRP. It's an 18th-century church + churchyard, and under the church are Norman ánd Anglo-Saxon foundations. I dug there for a week too and we found lots of human remains! So you could go to that site too!
Well, this has gone quite off-topic. 😛
It's boggling my mind how OLD those things are. That's awesome.
Aaand now I have to post this.
[youtube J6hijsqO8H0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6hijsqO8H0 youtube]
All the upvotes for Eddie Izzard! 😀
I came back from five weeks in Italy and Israel (which was beyond an amazing trip!), and I was so happy to have so many reviews to read and see Mark's unpreparedness levels. To quote your banner, YOU EN'T PREPARED.
Also, I did an archaeological dig in Israel at a place called Tel Maresha, which was incredible.
Really, I thought Mrs Coulter's reaction to being imprisoned was a bit melodramatic. But then again, I'm perversely amused by her wailing and gnashing and rending; it's all part of her character! I think it was said a few chapters ago that she doesn't even know that she's lying anymore, it's just her nature now. I think she was acting that way because that was just the tack she chose to manipulate them, but there's also an underlying appreciation of Lyra beneath her act. The line's just blurry where the the affection stops and the manipulation begins.
Yup, Lord Asriel was being misogynistic. CARING ABOUT YOUR CHILD MAKES YOU PITIFUL. Honestly, if Lyra could manage to make either one of them care about anything aside from themselves, it would be a miraculous gift. They really do deserve each other.
I see the intention craft as a glass cabin with asymmetrical insectile legs. With vague pipes and valves and whatnot (way to put it in the shadows, Pullman.) And bahahahaha Mrs Coulter shoved Lord Asriel out on his ass. We really do need this book on film to get the full effect of this chapter. 😀
I loved the line about how even Iorek might have to admit that these folks knew a few things about working metal.
I can barely contain the excitement this book causes me. It’s just so good. And I just have no words left.
So
[mod edit: gif with strobe effect; embed removed]
Holy seizure!
My eyes my eyes!
Very appropriate though 🙂
"In my head, it sort of looks like an insect with a cockpit, basically."
Me too.
The intention craft was really interesting to me. It mirrors some work being done currently, specifically with prosthetic limbs. Basically when you move your arm or whatever, you brain gives off a very specific signal that can be captured by EEG. So if you're playing a videogame while hooked up to this, you can eventually hit a point where you don't need to the controls to use the video game – it can just read your intention straight from your brain. Of course, you need special equipment to read those signals and it's not terribly comfortable. But they can extend from reading your brain chemistry to reading the signals from nerves throughout your body. So the end result is that you can build someone a prosthetic arm or leg over which they have exactly as much control as they had over their original arm or leg (the technology only works for amputees). It's a young field, and everything's still very expensive, but just one more neat example of Pullman drawing on actual science. Seriously, they have monkeys who can play video games just by staring at the screen, now.
As awesome and magnificent as Lord Asriel's Adamant tower is, it always kind of bugs me. Given the technology they have, something like that would take generations to build. Using our technology it would still take years. And he's been there for less than a month. (The events of The Subtle Knife took place over a week, so far we've had a few weeks in The Amber Spyglass). How did he manage to build this tower in such a short time? I'd be willing to believe that he'd found it, but King Ogunwe specifically says that there was no one in that world before they showed up and they're building everything. Given this timeline, it would really only be reasonable to believe that Asriel has a blueprint of what he wants to build at this point, and maybe the beginnings of a foundation or some pits that will eventually be dungeons dug. Unless he's magic or warps time or something.
I thought of the newer developments in prosthetics as well.
And YES! The strange timeline that just can't match up really bugs me about Asriel's whole project. I mean, maybe some of the contributors from other worlds he is working with are even more advanced than Asriel's world or our own, but even then…still…I can't quite buy it.
I remembered this being half-explained somewhere and it bothered me so I went to get my book. Ruta Skadi explains it like this in chapter 13 of TSK:
"Sisters, it is the greatest castle you can imagine: ramparts of basalt, rearing to the skies, with wide roads coming from every direction, and on them cargoes of gunpowder, of food, of armor plate. How has he done this? I think he must have been preparing this for a long time, for eons. He was preparing this before we were born, sisters, even though he is so much younger. . . . But how can that be? I don't know. I can't understand. I think he commands time, he makes it run fast or slow according to his will."
I'd forgotten about that passage. It's still not quite satisfying for me, but go Pullman for trying to explain how an enormous fortress popped into existence overnight.
I just like to think of it as the Angels realised what Asriel's intentions were before the events of the first book, when he was simply planning to make war, because they can hook into consciousness and read people's minds and stuff, as shown with the Cave in TSK, and so they got started contacting all the different worlds and bringing all the hundreds of different forces together and building a fortress up before Asriel had even ripped open his own universe.
This actually kind of works for me as an explanation, much more than Ruta Skadi's loose ideas.
I agree. In fact, the angels wouldn't even have to read Asriel's mind. They could talk to him. How do you think he found out about all this –on his own? Rebel Angels were always working with/for him. This is why his intentions could call people to him. The idea could have come from them, not just from Lord Asriel. After all, we know there were rebel angels eons ago, and those angels have presumably been wanting this to happen for all those eons.
As for how they could reach Asriel in Lyra's world: they are somehow able to navigate between worlds, right, as they do when Ruta Skadi follows them in the air.
There was an unspecified amount of time that passed between books one and two, though. When we first see Lyra in TSK, she's obviously been on her own in Cittagazze for a while.
She said she was wandering around in the fog for a few days before she found Cittagazze. And then…I'm not actually sure how long he spent there before meeting Will?
About how long it's been since she was in Lord Asriel's prison: "At my father's house on Svalbard," she said. "Days and days ago. I don't know."
About how long she was wandering in the fog: "Three days, four-I lost count. I never seen anyone. There's no one here. I looked almost everywhere."
I don't think it could be more than a week. What I can tell you is that the events of The Subtle Knife all take place over a week.
It was an unspecified amount of time during which Lyra didn't have access to much food but also hasn't appeared to suffer too much physically. So it really couldn't have been more than a few days. I still think it has been less than a month since the end of TGC. Even if it's been more, the timeline for the tower doesn't fit.
Can you just imagine Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter playing chess?? I think my brain would explode. It's like they know what the other one is going to do before they do it!
"Lord Asriel is Lord Douche! There. I said it."
Well, someone had to do it!
Someone on TV Tropes said that if Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter had actually been able to stand each other enough to work together, the series would be a few chapters long.
The original relationship between Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter — the one which resulted in Lyra's birth — must have been like some kind of fucked up, sexy game of chess. GOOD GOD, these two!
Hahaha, yes, exactly!
QBRF VBERX UNIR GUR CBJRE GB BCRA HC GUR RNEGU FB VG PNA RNG YBEQ NFEVRY?
Jryy, guvf’yy or sha sbe Znex gb ernq va uvaqfvtug.
To be on the safe side, it would be better to put the quote from Mark in rot13 too so it's not obvious what exactly you're responding to in the review that inspires spoilery talk.
Thus, I edited your comment to do so.
It’s not lost on me that Mrs. Coulter herself has contributed to the deaths of (probably) hundreds of children through her work at Bolvangar. Yet it took the Church making it personal for her to switch her allegiance.
But isn't that EXACTLY what happened with Snape? Snape was fine with murdering/torturing Muggles and Muggleborns RIGHT UNTIL Voldmort decided Lily Potter was a threat to him and then he made a massive Heel-Face Turn.
Lord Asriel is selfish! Like you said, Mark, what did he expect Lyra to do after he MURDERED her best friend?! If he seriously thought she'd stay put, then he's stupid, and I always thought he was aware of his daughter's character and her rebelliousness (which she inherits from BOTH of them, let's be frank!). He doesn't actually care at all about Lyra; at least Mrs Coulter feels SOMETHING.
Interesting parallel with Snape!
It is interesting, because I was thinking of the parallel between Snape and Asriel, actually, while reading Mark's review. Both are thoroughly unpleasant people who nevertheless happen to be on the side of Right. The way Snape treats students and especially Harry is not dissimilar to the attitude Asriel takes toward Lyra and Will.
It's interesting that both Asriel and Coulter share characteristics with Snape. No wonder people find them such fascinating characters!
Yes, you're right. There are parallels between Asriel and Snape, too! But I feel more sympathy towards Snape than I do Asriel, because at least we know how Snape became that way. It seems to me that Asriel has ALWAYS been like this, even when he was a young man.
I think I currently prefer Snape just a bit more, but I'll get back to you when I finish the book.
People just feel a bit more for Snape because of his whole unrequited love thing. Maybe that makes people pity him or say "aww" but really he was a horrible person, and had Lily not died he would have continued to be a Death Eater. He was completely unnecessarily evil to Harry (and others) and I feel no love for him whatsoever, despite acknowledging his bravery in turning spy against Voldemort. I think his intentions in that were not even those of a good person, just a person in love (seeking vengeance for Lily's death?) – not the same thing.
Tough call my Lord NimbusQuest. I think I'll never make up my mind on that.
Why doesn't anyone make a comparison with Regulus?
I was going to put a lot of things about such a comparison, but then I'd have to compare him to someone and that's what I can't decide. Who do you think would fit best?
I don't think we get as much info on Regulus' defection as we do with Snape. Regulus is only mentioned in two (?) books, and Snape gets to develop through all 7. It's harder for me to compare Asriel to Regulus, simply from lack of source material.
That's true, but I still think he's a very interesting Slytherin. I want JK to put something more about him on Pottermore at least. Usually secondary characters tend to be more interesting than the main characters.
We have less information about just why Regulus defected. Was it because he discovered Voldemort was making Horcruxes and was finally revolted? Or was it Voldemort's treatment of Kreacher? I hope we do get an explanation from Pottermore.
I know, and that's what I want to find out. Besides, I like Regulus more than Snape and I believe he deserves his story known. At least for Kreacher's sake.
Lord Asriel, you suck. You suck so much. You really are trying to compete with Ozai for Worst Dad Ever 'honors', aren't you? I'm pretty sure that when you come off as much less sympathetic than a woman who used to sever children from their daemons and lets her own daemon rip the wings off a bat for funsies, you're Doing It Wrong. Look at your life. Look at your choices. He really is Lord Douche, and that's flat-out misogyny there. Grrr. He fails.
I can't forgive Mrs. Coulter, I don't think. Not for the shit she's done. But – this chapter in particular makes me love her anyway, because she's so fascinating. I personally find her much more interesting than Asriel, for all that people talked early on in the trilogy about how Asriel was so interesting despite being a jerk. I mean, not to say he's boring, but I like Mrs. Coulter more. It's similar to my adoration for Azula, or any other villain I love because they're interesting. AND THEN SHE STEALS HIS INTENTION CRAFT LIKE A BOSS. Love it. Rock on!
While there’s a part of me that can’t believe these two could ever stand each other for more than five minutes, let alone enough time to conceive a child
Personally – and this is just my interpretation – I think that some of their current venom towards each other stems at least partly from that messy history together. I think that they were probably very passionate with each other at first, but the way things played out in the end, caused it all to sour and twist and now it's been translated into what we see before us, with all those years of resentment and bitterness spilling over.
I'm pretty sure that when you come off as much less sympathetic than a woman who used to sever children from their daemons and lets her own daemon rip the wings off a bat for funsies, you're Doing It Wrong.
LOL LOL LOL TRUTH FOREVER. <3
I also think that their sexual chemistry is responsible for just WHY they're so bitter and angry with each other. It can't be expressed in the way it should be so it becomes warped and twisted, like you say.
I think that they were probably very passionate with each other at first, but the way things played out in the end, caused it all to sour and twist and now it's been translated into what we see before us, with all those years of resentment and bitterness spilling over.
No doubt. It reminds me of this old Law & Order episode about a twisted, angry couple (I don't remember the details, alas!), and it ends with a dialogue exchange as the laywers are leaving the office for the night. Kincaid, I think, comments on she can't believe those two people were ever in love. McCoy says something on the lines of, "Very much so. Where do you think all the hate comes from?"
Is that the one where one of them blew up their townhouse to prevent the other from getting it? And why do I know this? That's also like The War of the Roses. I think Mrs Coulter or Lord Asriel would fit in perfectly in either story.
Ooh, it might be. Was it from the Kincaid era? I'm pretty sure it was in that block. Season 3 or 4, maybe?
Why do we know this? (Because TNT plays L&O 24/7, is why. It's the background noise of my life.)
I thought it was later, but it would have been funny for him to say that to her considering they were having an affair.
Damn L&O marathons on TNT. That's probably why I have no idea when it aired — they all run together!
I agree, I don't like Mrs Coulter, but she's much more fun to hate than Lord Asriel. He's just too cold and distant in the story, and his goals are so immense that it's hard to connect to him, whereas Mrs Coulter is much more actively menacing. I think the Ozai/Azula comparison is very apt!
Personally – and this is just my interpretation – I think that some of their current venom towards each other stems at least partly from that messy history together. I think that they were probably very passionate with each other at first, but the way things played out in the end, caused it all to sour and twist and now it's been translated into what we see before us, with all those years of resentment and bitterness spilling over.
Agreed completely. It was a passionate relationship – probably driven at least partly by the fact that it was forbidden, due to Mrs. Coulter being married – and it turned out badly. So now they hate each other in that way that only former lovers really can. Also, I'm not sure they were ever truly in love, or whether it was mostly lust. It wouldn't surprise me at all if it were mostly lust, which then turned to hate.
Wht does Pullman constantly refer to Mrs Coulter as Mrs Coulter? Its not a conplaint but I cant come up with a reason for the “formal-ness” ( i know good english ) of it. Any ideas?
Because using her first name would invite us to get to know her. Mrs Coulter is a title and underlines the mystery of her motives and how enigmatic she appears to other people. 🙂
I assumed it was for the same reason your teachers in school were always Mrs/Mr Soandso. It's what kids would call an unfamiliar adult.
Iorek eating Lee's heart was a sign of deepest respect and companionship, so maybe instead he should just trample on Lord Asriel's.
He should poo on it and then leave it to cliffghasts.
I didn't expect that I would ever feel the need to defend Lord Ariel, but isn't it possible that he lied to Mrs. Coulter when he said he didn't care for Lyra? I don't understand the game these two are playing. I'm at a point where I don't believe anything they say.
Maybe he couldn't allow himself to care for her. He was the one who rescued her and brought her to Jordan College, which implies some feeling, but he couldn't indulge those feelings because he had 'more important' things to do. And maybe the tenderness became frustrated and now he's forgotten how to let himself care about her. Either way, Lee and Iorek are still better fathers to Lyra than Asriel.
I rather agree; one really needs to take anything they say with a whole mountain of salt, especially when either is not the POV character. They lie like anything, those two.
Y'know it's interesting that your reaction to this chapter was 'there’s a part of me that can’t believe these two could ever stand each other for more than five minutes, let alone enough time to conceive a child' because the entire time I read it I just kept expecting Asriel and Mrs Coulter to just have sex already.
I mean, sure they spent the whole time sniping at each other, but am I just imagining the ridiculous levels of sexual tension going on?
That only happens in romatic comedies and chick lit. Please Pullman, don't have them get together at the end of the big battle! Don't turn this into chick lit!
Honestly, I thought the same thing. For them, seducing the other is just another form of manipulation. And really…. can you imagine their sex? It would be RIDICULOUS.
I imagine it would be rather violent. And sexy?
Haha. Yes, violent indeed! And as for the second part… I think that question mark is apt. Either sexy or freaking TERRIFYING.
Oh dear god yes. I never had any trouble imagining that these two got it on (and that it was totally fucked up and hot and dysfunctional).
Both Mrs. Coulter and Lord Douchebag Asriel still confuse me to no end… I just don't really get them, you just can never tell when and if they're being thruthful, I find this quite unsettling…
The intention craft is fascinating…
One of my favourite bands, Pure Reason Revolution, have a song called The Intention Craft, I don't quite see how the lyrics relate to the books, but I'm pretty sure that at least the title is a nod to Pullman…
Don't get put off by the frankly bad video, they were still young and had ridiculous hair at that point, but the music is really amazing
http://www.muzu.tv/gb/purereasonrevolution/the-in…
Here's an acoustic version of that song…[youtube o25JqLtBYdY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o25JqLtBYdY youtube]
Sorry for favourite band spamming 😉
I've reread this book and I honestly still can't tell if Mrs. Coulter is supposed to be good or bad or what. Which I think is what Pullman wants. Best to just not care and categorize her as "undefined".
Enjoying your reviews, Mark!
One thing to add: from what you said about not believing Mrs. Coulter before, because she hadn't mentioned, let alone repented for, the horrible things she did before –I think you're expecting a kind of "redemption" from her. But I don't see that as really what's happening, at least as I can tell so far. She's not "turning to the good side" so much as she is continuing to be selfish, but now her self interest includes a feeling of love. that's the only difference I can see so far.
I love her, though. She's fascinating, and I do sympathize with her here.
Chapter 16 Epigraph!
<img src=" <a href="http://www.bridgetothestars.net/misc_gallery/albums/Extras/TAS-Epigraphs/scan0049.jpg">” target=”_blank”>http://www.bridgetothestars.net/misc_gallery/albums/Extras/TAS-Epigraphs/scan0049.jpg">
Oops, try again.
Chapter 16 Epigraph!
<img src="http://www.bridgetothestars.net/misc_gallery/albums/Extras/TAS-Epigraphs/scan0049.jpg">
Good this time. 🙂
And now Mark understands the title of BTTS 😀
I've never thought Lord Asriel's comment to Mrs. Coulter about her becoming a doting mother was overly misogynistic — I just thought that everything he admired about her was the complete opposite of that.
Still, I do love the trope of the Good Guy who's a Total Asshole.
One thing this chapter crystallised for me though was something that's been bothering me in the comments — all the 'Oh noes, Lord Asriel is a terrible father! We cannot love him!' Aside from the whole 'this guy is busy taking on God almighty, he might have other things on his mind than a child' side of things, a slight redeeming feature might be that I think he was perfectly aware from the get-go that he'd be a terrible father. So while he wasn't going to let Mrs. Coulter have her, he still placed her somewhere safe, where she could be educated (okay, that idea went a bit awry), and where he could pop in to take a look from time to time. Let's be honest, that was in Lyra's interest. Can you imagine if he'd tried to raise her? He'd have been talking like that directly to her every single day. Very possibly he place Lyra at Jordan for selfish reasons — not wanting to be bothered — but that betokens some small awareness that it would be the best idea for him to play dearest-daddy-daddikins.
"How did he contact them without the subtle knife? I don’t understand that."
Well, there ARE open doorways between worlds that were created by the knife but never closed. Also, Asriel has some kind of mojo that brings him things he wants, remember? I have no idea how that works though. And I doubt he ripped another child apart from its daemon every time he wanted to go into another world. BUT YOU NEVER KNOW WITH LORD ASRIEL.
I like when Lord Roke thinks Mrs. Coulter is like a scorpion, and it's better to keep scorpions where you can see them. Not everyone is taken in by her charms.
Also, DAMMIT MARK, the anagram contest got me thinking about anagrams in general, and now I've wasted a couple of hours on the Internet Anagram Server figuring out anagrams of my full name in case I ever need an alias.
So, uh, if you ever see a Tessie Parthenia Cohens wandering around, that's… not me. *whistles nonchalantly*
(Mark, your anagram alter ego is Hiram Rooks, btw. You're welcome.)
*snickers*
Well, if you ever meet a Jean Hooch Bran, that's not me either…
or a Jean Hobo Ranch, for that matter 😉
Asriel truly is a total git face. I'm catching up, so far behind and not even attempting to read comments at the moment, but the truth of this fact deserved a mention. Talk about an anti-hero, Mr Pullman!
"Yet it took the Church making it personal for her to switch her allegiance."
Isn't that true of all of us, to some extent? For example, if the famine happening in East Africa at the moment was happening in our own backyard, we'd be horrified to see children starving, people walking miles and miles simply in hope of food etc… but because it's happening in Africa, many people have not done anything about it, or have given a tenner and felt good about it then gone on with their lives. How many of us have actually sacrificed money or food that we can't really afford, or missed out on some of our customary luxuries, to actually give a significant amount? How many of us are thinking about the tragedy unfolding every day and trying to find things, big and small, that we can do about it?
What I find most disturbing about Mrs Coulter is that she takes to an extreme an attitude, a way of life, that we in the West practise more or less every day in order for us to carry on living the way we want and buying what we want and not going hungry without a constant sense of guilt. She is like the Western world's guilty conscience.
Not to say that most of us would stand by if those children were dying in front of us – as she probably would. But her attitude is a magnified version of something we do on a daily basis. When the suffering isn't in front of our faces – isn't happening to people we have a connection to – we so easily forget. Just IMO, but I think this is what many readers find so difficult about Mrs Coulter. She may be extreme, but something in us realises that, in less extreme and more seemingly innocent ways, we act the same way all the time.
Now that the concept of the Republic of Heaven is introduced, I think it's safe to pass along this little link:
http://www.hbook.com/magazine/articles/2001/nov01…
Which is sort of an essay by Pullman explaining the whole concept in full.
I read this chapter before I went to bed one night and I was really tired and about two pages in I had to put it down because my brain could not handle it at all. THIS BOOK GAAAH.