#480

Definitely I understood it was just Northern Lights being adapted in this series. Although from the comments it sounds like they’re setting up a lot of elements of Book 2, which would make sense.

#481

I’m enjoying this v much, the finding of Billy Costa is as much of a gut punch as the books, so upsetting

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#482

Do you not mean Tony Makarios rather than Billy Costa? Not able to watch the show so maybe they’ve merged the two characters here.

#483

I think they must have done, been a long time since I read the books

#484

Yeah I guess so. The benefit of just having been reading them then. Obviously this is a standard sort of adaptive choice in writing stuff too.

1 Like
#485

Feels like they’re doing things chronologically, so we’re getting some bits of Subtle Knife early.

#486

Nothing in the book really occurs before NL but obviously it alludes to earlier events. I just assumed they’d do an Expanse as I mentioned earlier.

#487

So in the show (spoilers for last’s night) Lyra found Billy Costa without his daemon. Makes sense, it raises the stakes for the Gyptians, is more emotionally powerful because we know the character more. Poor Tony Markarios, didn’t even exist.

Interesting they’ve changed the dynamic of Will and his mum a bit. He seems like a decent actor though, hopefully a lot to build on. I think it slightly softens the impact of the start of SK where in the first few pages Will kills someone, to have this set-up, but I guess they need it to establish the premise.

@1101010 I just finished rereading SK, I don’t think the geography is that stretched, it all seems to happen a day or two outside of Citagazze (Will and Lyra have been walking with the witches, Parry and Lee basically follow in the balloon and land fairly close). If in any doubt just say the barriers between the worlds are thin and everything is stretched and distorted.

2 Likes
#488

Just finished the amber spyglass

The ending :sob::sob::sob::sob::sob:

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#489

My main issue is the distance in Lyra’s own world.

Nothing implies the windows can change position so there isn’t any way for Mrs Coulter to get to the mountains from that window, but there’s no explanation given for how else she got there.

Serafina is explained later in AS as her going directly to Iorek after funding Lee’s body and it’s logical to think the spell she casts takes time.

#490

Will try and keep tabs as I get into AS.

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#491

I also re-read the trilogy recently and found some of the timing a bit strange. How did Asriel build his fortress so quickly? But one thing that is explained in AS is that the opening of the passage between the worlds at the end of NL caused such a rupture that the worlds no longer matched up - e.g., Lyra’s Oxford no longer overlays our Oxford

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#492

Think they say that time moves differently in that world

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#493

I think it’s left ambiguous, but Ruta Skadi says something like that - “It’s like he’s been planning this for aeons, like time itself has changed for him” etc

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#494

Yep, read that paragraph earlier and you have it almost dead on.

#495

Think overall I’m a bit underwhelmed by this. Don’t think Lyra’s character or the daemon concept have come across at all. There have definitely been highlights but it’s basically decent Sunday night BBC fare and it could be so much more.

Will seems pretty good and it’s nice to see Jenny from Teachers.

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#496

I’m really liking it the but daemon thing is a problem. If you don’t know the books and missed the first minute of episode 1 you’d assume they were nothing more than pets.

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#497

Yep. Mrs FC (who has read the books) and me (haven’t, but I like me some fantasy) struggling to get through an episode of this in one sitting. If we’d watched this after the dreadful closer of War Of The Worlds last night we might never have woken up. The pace is so slow, the key cast seem off somehow next to the film (Ruth Wilson excepted), the absence of daemons is a deal breaker where the cruelty of daemon separation is THE MAIN POINT, the jarring back and forth between our world and their world comes out of nowhere (without what I assume is a more gradual reveal in the books?), it was too dark, it’s not cold enough (is this some subtle as a knife commentary on global warming?). I could go on (though I’m not sure I can go on with this adaptation). Sorry.

2 Likes
#498

The first book is contained entirely in Lyra’s world. It’s only with the second book that we begin to move between worlds and I guess it’s not jarring but obviously books are different.

#499

I accepted this side of things because we really have no idea about what he’s been up to all this time. We know he has alliances with others and the like so I just presumed that he’d been planning for at least as long as Lyra’s been alive and that some of the races he had connected with had the ability to make spectacular devices reality very quickly, but it makes sense if time isn’t really working at all right where he is.

The Amber Spyglass is certainly where stuff becomes a bit woollier. I am enjoying it but I can already feel why I liked it least of the trilogy: there is a certain feeling of Deus Ex Machina here, regardless of the reason, with Asriel having suddenly so much technology to fight this war.

And the Gallivespians seem like a sort of story-fixer of an idea: venomous, tiny, with perfect communication technology, and luckily there to keep things moving.

The core of the story with Will and Lyra is still as strong as ever but the stuff around them never quite feels as compelling for me.

I also hadn’t really considered the cliché (or maybe it’s more of a Trope) of the Mulefa being so good-natured, cooperative and gentle. It feels like a sort of home counties wet dream of how people can all get along really if they just lived simple and nice lives, just seems the classic critique of humans being wankers but aliens are all cool, maaaaan. (I am currently on Page 718 of my trilogy book, Amber Spyglass, Chapter 17.)

1 Like