Engaging With an Alternative.

Back in 2008 I read Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials. It isn’t quite a classic work when compared with the established canon of classic works, but I don’t think any work of fiction has engaged me in quite the same way, or to quite the same degree, as that one did. For me, it had everything.

On the side of us good guys there is a young female heroine, a small army of honourable gypsies searching for their kidnapped children, a giant polar bear of intelligence, integrity and courage, and a regiment of warlike witches whose aim is sure and whose love for any mortal man can be extremely hazardous to him. The witches are ambivalent. I like that.

The bad guys consist chiefly of the Church Establishment, their henchmen, and a beautiful female villain. I’m strangely fond of beautiful female villains. I never understood why.

And it’s all set in an environment of multiple parallel universes which can be accessed if only you know where the gateways are. I think I might have mentioned my fascination with the concept of portals and parallel universes on this blog.

So there you have it: the very perfection of an alternative reality into which I was more than happy to be placed back in 2008, and which is even more to my taste now.

So now we have the TV series to watch. I mentioned it here a few weeks ago. I found the first two episodes a little disappointing, but this week’s third episode was a substantial improvement and I have high hopes for the rest. The rest is where the bear and the witches make their entrance, you see, and I am inordinately fond of bears and witches.

The only difficulty I’m having now is that our young heroine, Lyra Belacqua, has a habit of occasionally looking disturbingly like the Lady B. Same hint of olive in the skin tone, same raven hair, same enigmatic look in those deep, dark eyes. (‘Dark’ eyes, incidentally, do not derive their quality from the colour of the irises, but from their conformation within the context of the upper face and the subtle meanings they convey.) Fortunately, the Lady B is now a million miles away and ever was so to all intents and purposes, so I’m managing the confusion well enough.