Pullman

It kept me up until about 2am last night, but I finally finished Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass. I struggled to get through sections of the first two books of the trilogy, but the last book made it all worthwhile. The series was certainly worth reading.

However, Pullman comes up a little short in his goal of being to atheism what C.S. Lewis was to Christianity. These are good books, mind you, but unlike the Narnia series, I don't think they are great children's books. And C.S. Lewis was truly one of the great minds of the twentieth century. Will people fifty years from now be saying that Philip Pullman was one of the great minds of the twenty-first? Perhaps -- but it's going to take more than His Dark Materials to get him there.

Finally, I'm not so sure that Pullman's work is that convincing an argument against Christianity (or religion more broadly). Surely Nietzsche's arguments on religion, not to mention Rand's, are more powerful. Pullman really breaks no new ground.

Personally, I'm hopeful one of Jaffo's future novels takes up the topic.

[Posted at 23:02 CST on 06/05/02] [Link]