{"id":442,"date":"2011-07-20T07:00:43","date_gmt":"2011-07-20T14:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=442"},"modified":"2011-07-19T15:35:39","modified_gmt":"2011-07-19T22:35:39","slug":"mark-reads-the-amber-spyglass-chapter-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2011\/07\/mark-reads-the-amber-spyglass-chapter-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;The Amber Spyglass&#8217;: Chapter 3"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!-- p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica} span.s1 {letter-spacing: 0.0px} -->In the third chapter of <em>The Amber Spyglass<\/em>, Serafina Pekkala rushes to the company of an ally in order to spread news of disaster in the other world. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read <em>The Amber Spyglass<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><!--more-->CHAPTER THREE: SCAVENGERS<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I guess I <em>was<\/em> right, but I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find out until this book: Lord Asriel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actions have set in motion the destruction of Lyra\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s world. Is he ever going to have to stand accountable for what he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s done here? At the opening of chapter three, Pullman narrates the terrors of the natural world through Serafina Pekkala, who openly weeps at the sight of her once-beautiful land and how it is now being destroyed. The ice caps are melting. The snow has disappeared from the mountain caps. <em>The sun is out<\/em>. When she finally comes upon her destination (OMG IOREK BYRNISON!!!!), she finds the bear-king swimming to catch a walrus, which is unusual because they should be hunting on the ice.<\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sad to hear Serafina express such disappointment in herself as she begins to tell Iorek that his comrade, Lee Scoresby, has died. I guess we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re dealing with that now, eh? I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still in shock that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dead, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to believe there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a chance we could see him again, one last time. But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the thing about death: you rarely get to say what you want before it comes.<\/p>\n<p>Serafina reveals that she cast a spell on Lee to prevent him from decomposing and then gives the bear-king instructions on how to travel to this parallel world so that he may see his friend one last time. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d spent so much time in the world Iorek lives in that I forgot that this parallel world has talking animals in it. As these two speak of other worlds and Lee, a few Arctic foxes are eavesdropping on the two. I knew that they were referenced in the chapter title, and I was intrigued to learn that they can only understand speech in the present tense, but I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say I understood <em>why<\/em> they were here at all. They are scavengers of speech, apparently, but how did that relate to anything else?<\/p>\n<p>Before we get back to that, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s celebrate one thing, and one thing only: Having (part of) a chapter from the point of view of Iorek Byrnison. Doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that sound perfect forever? Because it is. It truly is. Iorek\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s narration is more matter-of-fact than anyone else\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, and it feels well with his generally-calm demeanor. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take Iorek to be the kind of bear to show a wide, varied spectrum of emotions, so he sets off on his journey to find Lee Scoresby in a no-nonsense kind of way.<\/p>\n<p>It does not take him long to find what he is looking for, and he walks determinedly towards the gully where Serafina told him he would find Lee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s body. The ground is littered with the after effects of war, though it seems many other people had died her long before the Tartar guards. Iorek is a patient creature and he walks with just that one goal in mind: To see his friend one last time. I started feeling sad when Iorek passed the giant boulder, marked with bullets. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that <em>I<\/em> wanted to see Lee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lifeless body without Hester alongside him. Iorek does not think in such terms, and he presses on to discover the body of the aeronaut who saved his life.<\/p>\n<p>I really loved this line:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Lee Scoresby looked not asleep, nor at peace&#8211;he looked as if he had died in battle&#8211;but he looked as if he knew that his fight had been successful.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I still can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really accept it. WHY PULLMAN <em>WHHHYYYYYY<\/em>. I just wanted more chapters with him, but now he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gone. As I became increasingly upset at the thought, I wondered how Iorek would take seeing Lee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s body like this. I got my answer.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>And because the Texan aeronaut was one of the very few humans Iorek had ever esteemed, he accepted the man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s last gift to him. With deft movements of his claws, he ripped aside the dead man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clothes, opened the body with one slash, and began to feast on the flesh and blood of his old friend. It was his first meal for days, and he was hungry.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Oh, well don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let me stop you there, Iorek. Keep going!<\/p>\n<p>My shock at this was brief, lasting only a few seconds before I came to understand how&#8230;romantic this was? I suppose that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the only way I know how to describe it. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean it in the sexual sense, but it <em>is<\/em> an overwhelmingly intimate moment for Iorek, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you think? In this moment, however, thoughts swirl into Iorek\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s head. He worries about Lyra; he worries about the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153agitation among the witches\u00e2\u20ac\u009d; he worries about the existence of parallel worlds, one of which he just swam into; he worries about the loss of the ice and how it has divided his kingdom, leaving him to seek out a new place for the <em>panserbj\u00c3\u00b8rne<\/em> to live. Out of everything, Iorek chooses to focus on but one of them: vengeance.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Iorek would avenge him. The good man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s flesh and bone would both nourish him and keep him restless until blood was spilled enough to still his heart.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Uh. This is\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6..<em>the greatest possible character direction for Iorek???<\/em> This bear is BUILT for revenge. And without Lyra to calm him or stop him\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.oh shit, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gonna get <em>REAL<\/em>. EXCITE!!!!<\/p>\n<p>Briefly, Pullman switches over to a <em>cliff-ghast<\/em>. No, seriously! We learn that they know Scoresby is dead, and this seems to excite them. Do I know what this means? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t!<\/p>\n<p>I do know that we get another bit of Lyra\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dream in the world of the dead. Is she <em>actually<\/em> there, though? Does that potion that Mrs. Coulter fed her do this? Either way, Lyra seems to be stuck in the world of the dead for the time being. Is it possible that Will could stumble upon her there if he finds a way to travel to that world? I suppose anything is possible at this point.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>Remember, visit <a href=\"http:\/\/forum.bridgetothestars.net\/viewtopic.php?f=4&amp;t=215435\" target=\"_blank\">BridgeToTheStars.net<\/a> to discuss this week&#8217;s posts in a spoiler-happy environment!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the third chapter of The Amber Spyglass, Serafina Pekkala rushes to the company of an ally in order to spread news of disaster in the other world. 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":[23,81,62,80],"class_list":["post-442","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-the-amber-spyglass-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442","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=442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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