{"id":441,"date":"2011-07-19T07:00:25","date_gmt":"2011-07-19T14:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=441"},"modified":"2011-07-18T16:14:44","modified_gmt":"2011-07-18T23:14:44","slug":"mark-reads-the-amber-spyglass-chapter-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2011\/07\/mark-reads-the-amber-spyglass-chapter-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘The Amber Spyglass’: Chapter 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the second chapter of The Amber Spyglass<\/em>, THIS IS ALL THE MOST PERFECT THING OF ALL THINGS EVER. Also, who knew angels could be total douchebags<\/em>??? If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re intrigued, then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read The Amber Spyglass<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This is pretty much my own personal version of heaven. How ironic<\/em>.<\/p>\n

CHAPTER TWO: BALTHAMOS AND BARUCH<\/strong><\/p>\n

How great is it that Pullman drops us into Will\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s perspective immediately after the end of The Subtle Knife<\/em>? Also, this is the most perfect book that was ever a book ever.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad that Pullman spent so much time in the last book building the relationship between Lyra and Will. It was great character development at the time, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s now clear it needed <\/em>to happen. Had it not, it would have seemed incredibly silly that Will would go against his father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s desire and seek out Lyra instead. But Lyra is Will\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only true friend and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lost her. Why wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t he try to find her?<\/p>\n

What is so spectacular to me is the fact that when it comes right down to it, twelve-year-old Will spends the entirety of chapter two bossing around two angels who are thousands of years old and massively in love with one another. He commands their attention, he demands the things he needs, and he makes it abundantly clear that he is the boss and no one else. No, seriously. When he discovers that angels are \u00e2\u20ac\u0153weaker\u00e2\u20ac\u009d than humans, he says this:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153If I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m stronger, you have to obey me. Besides, I have the knife. So I can command you: help me find Lyra. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care how long it takes, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll find her first and then<\/em> I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll go to Lord Asriel.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Again, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talking to ANGELS. WHO ARE THOUSANDS OF YEARS OLD<\/em>. What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so striking to me is that Will is aware of the power that he has, but he chooses it not to benefit himself, but to locate his best friend and liberate her from whomever has her captive. Will\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s moral compass has always been strong and blatant, but I still can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help feeling impressed by this all. Would I have done the same thing when I was Will\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s age? Or would I have been too overwhelmed by the awesome responsibility that came with being the bearer of the subtle knife? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t honestly know, but I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t deny that I find will to be a respectable role model in this sense, even for myself at my current age.<\/p>\n
Pullman further expands the world of angels as we learn that the two who have come to Will, named Balthamos and Baruch, are actually low level angels themselves. (There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an angel hierarchy<\/em>? How exactly does that work? Hell, how does one even become<\/em> an angel?) Because of this, the two can only be seen in near-dark, and even then, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still just outlines of themselves. They are determined to bring Will to Lord Asriel for some unsaid reason, though I imagine it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s probably because he has the knife. Will\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s having none of that. He sends one of the angels off to attempt to locate Lyra while the other stays with him as he naps. Seriously, bless him<\/em>. Commanding angels and taking naps. He is perfect<\/em>.<\/p>\n
Guess who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not so perfect? Balthamos. I had an idea of writing this chapter from the point of view of Balthamos as a jaded hipster who is just so over<\/em> this poor mortal, but there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too much important stuff here to discuss. But Balthamos is, without a question, rude, sarcastic, sassy, and fed-up with Will from the very beginning. I chalked some of it up to the fact that the angel was dealing with a child (in his perspective) who was bossy and insolent, but that soon didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even really make sense. He was being rude simply for the sake of it, as if Will\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very existence was enough to get upset about. (Actually, much later, I realized that Will had separated Balthamos from the angel he loved, and that would certainly be enough to keep him snappy.) As Will lays out his plans for heading to the camp where Mrs. Coulter was (as the angel relays the fact that there are dead bodies there and one is probably Sir Charles), Blathamos can barely hold back his utter contempt for Will. More than any other moment, I was kind of irritated by the scene where Will came upon the body of Sir Charles and began to collect as many supplies as possible. Seriously:<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Do you think I need anything else?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You could do with some sense,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d came the reply. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Some faculty to enable you to recognize wisdom and incline you to respect and obey it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Hey, Balthamos: shut your angel mouth<\/em><\/strong>. What the HELL<\/em> are you doing? Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just assume you are a more wise being than Will. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pretty easy to believe. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re \u00e2\u20ac\u0153much older\u00e2\u20ac\u009d than Baruch, who is 4,000 years old<\/em>. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m inclined to believe you possess far more wisdom than most beings ever. You are speaking with a twelve-year-old boy. Getting snappy with him is like getting cross with a newborn for not being able to spell their name. GIVE HIM A LITTLE TIME. <\/strong>Why are you being such a turdface<\/em>???<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Better stick to your task. You have plundered this dead man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s property, you have all the toys you need to keep you alive; now may we move on?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
OH, SOMEONE NEEDS A SMACK ON THEIR HOLY FACE. My mom would shame you out of existence for that sort of talkback. RUDE<\/em>.<\/p>\n
Yet even Balthamos\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s incessant whining and bitterness could not ruin what Pullman does next. It did<\/em> seem strange that Will was only able to cut between his world and Citt\u00c3\u00a1gazze. If there were infinite worlds, shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t he be able to travel to any of the other ones? So Pullman introduces the concept of feeling between<\/em> worlds:<\/p>\n
It was like tracing a row of stitches while pressing so softly that none of them was harmed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
When Will concentrates, he can feel the various worlds piled on top of one another, and each one has its own texture to them. I cannot believe that my prediction about seeing other worlds was answered so quickly. Will is able to open a window to at least two other worlds<\/em>, each with a texture unique to itself.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Are you going to stay here all day?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Balthamos.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
WILL YOU SHUT THE HELL UP, DUDE. This boy is opening windows into parallel universes <\/em>right in front of you. Surely this is important?!?!?!?!?!<\/p>\n
It is<\/em> important, as Will finds a way to recognize a subtle feeling that means that the ground in the parallel world is in exactly the same place as the one he is in, making it easier to travel into other worlds without falling fifty feet to one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death. I can already guess what this means: Will is going to travel to a whole lot more worlds than I predicted. He travels to a third parallel world in this session that contains a bison-like creature with horns and blue hair. This is going to be the best book of all books, right??? <\/em>Unfortunately, Balthamos is miserable, does not understand joy, and probably was a goth in his past life or something. This angel is the worst downer I have ever come across. Is traveling between worlds something completely normal for him? No, honestly, he is the epitome of an angel hipster. He was into all of this way before Will, so Will just bores and infuriates him. Well, and he misses his angel boyfriend. I’ll excuse that portion of it.<\/p>\n
After a long day of traveling, Balthamos directs Will through another window in pursuit of Baruch, who has discovered that Mrs. Coulter took Lyra back to her own world. (That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s smart, actually. Go back to her world of comfort.) Will plans to stay in Ci\u00e2\u20ac\u2122gazze for the night and then travel through to Lyra\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s world in the morning. Will asks if Balthamos can change shape (in order to become a d\u00c3\u00a6mon so Will does not look out of place), and, unsurprisingly, the angel agrees after dripping every word he speaks with sarcasm. Look, Balthamos: You need this boy. You will get him quicker if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not openly hostile to him every goddamn second<\/em>. Get him to Lyra, stop complaining, and then you can go on your way.<\/p>\n
To be fair to Balthamos, he does seem to warm up to Will the next day, albeit using food to do so. Angels can eat? Who knew? But maybe it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just a temporary thing. Perhaps Balthamos is just tired of being angry. Either way, the angel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tone does<\/em> start to change once Baruch returns. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m guessing that it helps that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only been a few days and Baruch has successfully located Lyra and Mrs. Coulter. Baruch confirms that they are both alone and in hiding. That confuses Will. (And me. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll just say it: I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m confused. Why is she hiding from<\/em> the Church? I always considered her<\/em> the representation of the Church.)<\/p>\n
Well, this has all been nice and fascinating. (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not being facetious. Again, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m an atheist. Angels are awesome.) But Pullman had gone far too long without Shit Getting Real. How about the arrival of The Chariot and one of God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s angels? THAT SHOULD DO IT, RIGHT?<\/p>\n
This third angel–much stronger and larger than the other two–is struggling under the weight of Balthamos and Baruch, who are holding him down and covering his mouth. But when Will mistakenly turns on his torch and causes Balthamos to let go in fright, and in a second, the third angel manages to get aware from Baruch and call out to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Lord Regent\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in a voice that is stunning and loud. It frightens me how quick Will is to act, pulling out the subtle knife and immediately slashing the third angel violently as another<\/em> figure comes speeding towards them from the sky.<\/p>\n
And then the angel dies. Will killed an angel<\/em>. THIS IS ONLY THE SECOND CHAPTER.<\/p>\n
Quicky, Will cuts a window into a new world (number four for this chapter alone oh my god i was never prepared<\/em>) and he and the angels manage to escape Lord Regent and his spear. (I love that sentence dearly.)<\/p>\n
It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t until they were safe that I realized Pullman had broken his own tendency to have characters speak plainly and openly. I mean…they do now<\/em>, but our entire experience with these two angels has involved them hiding the truth or Bathalmos refusing to tell it because\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.well, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just an angry angel, apparently. But good GOD. INFO DUMPING BEAUTY IS NOW A REALITY.<\/p>\n
WHAT MARK LEARNS IN CHAPTER TWO<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n
Lord Regent is named Metraton! He sounds like a transformer.<\/li>\n
Baruch and Balthamos discovered a secret of the Kingdom, which is the world of the Authority.<\/li>\n
The Authority is indeed the Abrahmic God.<\/li>\n
GOD WAS NOT THE CREATOR BUT SIMPLY THE FIRST ANGEL. Oh, now<\/em> I know why this book is hated. That alone is deeply, deeply blasphemous in terms of Christian theology.<\/li>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself. Matter loves matter. It seeks to know more about itself, and Dust is formed.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Can I marry this quote? Can I? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s self-realization. Self-interest. The quest for knowledge. This is so beautiful<\/em>.<\/li>\n
God lied about creating the universe and when an angel found this out, she was banished by God and this<\/em> is who Baruch and Balthamos serve.<\/li>\n
The Chariot = The Clouded Mountain. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the location of the Kingdom, it is constantly moving, shrouded in clouds by god so that no one can see the summit where the Authority lives.<\/li>\n
HEAVEN IS NOT REAL. GOD SENDS ALL DEAD SOULS TO THE WORLD OF THE DEAD, WHICH IS A PRISON CAMP. holy fuck why<\/em>. Oh my god, I totally get why people hate this but I am loving it with all of my heart<\/strong>.<\/li>\n
Will is the most amazing, fierce twelve-year-old to have ever existed. I actually felt a tinge of Lyra\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s personality coming through him when he flat-out told the angels that their plan to use Will to convince Lord Asriel to listen to their \u00e2\u20ac\u0153secret\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is just a poor idea. Bless him.<\/li>\n
Will AGAIN commands two thousands-of-years-old angels to do exactly what he wants. Baruch heads off to speak with Lord Asriel and Balthamos stays to help will get Lyra and protect him.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
After all this, Balthamos finally realizes that he has made a grave mistake in underestimating Will and he apologizes to him for being so rude to him. BRAVO. I mean, it was<\/em> kind of entertaining to have a sassy angel as a companion, but it was a bit too much for me.<\/p>\n
But I want to end this review with a bit of a discussion about the revelation of God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true nature in this book. Obviously, this is a loose theory presented by Pullman for the book, but when I was Christian, I was constantly confused by how God was portrayed. It was hard not to assign human traits or characteristics to Him because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all that I knew. The Catholic Church, through my teachers, harked on the idea that I should never think of God in those terms, though, because they were inherently flawed and fell short of the truth because they were man-made and could never capture His true nature.<\/p>\n
That seemed to be more of a hindrance than a help for me, though. If we could not portray God in any method that we could understand, how could we put faith in the concept if it was so abstract?<\/p>\n
I felt that the source material (that sounds really douchey) didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help either. Was God all-loving? Hateful? Angry? Should I fear Him? Love Him? Cherish or worship Him? Why\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d he even make us in the first place? How did my own purpose fit within the design of a Creator who apparently created me simply to turn around and spend my whole life thanking Him for it? Even worse, how could I thank a God who dropped me into a system that wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t<\/em> pleasant and bore the fruits of a species who was so bent on hatred and destruction?<\/p>\n
Before I was able to describe the vacancy in my heart and before I had to admit that I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe in any higher being without lying to myself, my rebellion against God came from those ideas. Either God lied to me, or I was born into an unjust system that I was supposed to appreciate. I tried so hard to rectify the two, to prove to myself that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no reason God would lie to me, or that my perception of justice was flawed by the influence of non-believers around me. For anyone who has struggled with faith or these sort of theological conundrums, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a painful and confusing process. Why would so many people lie to you? Why would they believe the lie themselves? That can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t possibly be what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happening, could it?<\/p>\n
I am enjoying the chance to speculate<\/em> if this is true, and I look forward to being able to discuss it further, but for now, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think about these things in those terms. My atheism is remarkably simple these days: I feel nothing inside of me. I feel no inkling of holy love or divine intervention or cosmic companionship. I feel hollow and it is how I have always felt. I can discuss the theology of it, but it turns out to be an act of absurdity in the end. None of it matters, even if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all real. Because there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no God inside of me.<\/p>\n
Also, gay angels<\/em>. Excuse the term, but GOD BLESS ALL OF THIS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the second chapter of The Amber Spyglass, THIS IS ALL THE MOST PERFECT THING OF ALL THINGS EVER. Also, who knew angels could be total douchebags??? If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re intrigued, then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read The Amber Spyglass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,79],"tags":[23,81,62,61,80],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-his-dark-materials","category-the-amber-spyglass","tag-mark-reads","tag-mark-reads-the-amber-spyglass","tag-philip-pullman","tag-religion","tag-the-amber-spyglass-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}