Once Upon a Time in the North - Philip Pullman

[bookgazing]

Although I enjoyed ‘Once Upon a Time in the North’ by Phillip Pullman I find I don’t have a lot to say about it. It was pretty much a typical western adventure, reworked and set in Pullman’s fantasy world. Great to see Lee Scoresby and Hester again, entertaining to see how Lee and Iorek Byrnison met but ultimately it was a little bit unsatisfying.

Texan Lee and his daemon Hester have just come into possession of the balloon they use in the original ‘His Dark Materials’ series. They land somewhat rockily, in the town of Novy Odense and become entangled in a political debate, which quickly turns personal as Lee finds an old enemy working for the candidate tipped to win the local election. Lee winds up helping to liberate a captain’s cargo, which is being illegally detained by said candidate. Iorek Byrnison becomes involved with this scheme and this is how the two meet.

I feel like this new series of small books by Pullman is slightly unnecessary, like Pullman is getting paid to print the back story he loves because his publishers feel the public will buy anything related to ‘His Dark Materials’. I have genuinely affectionate feelings for the original series and it was a massive wrench to leave that world, especially as the ending to the trilogy could not be described as entirely happy. However if I want to revisit it I’ll reread the books. For this second series of books to have the same sort of emotional value for me as the original series I feel they need to do more than describe the fictional world of some of my favourite characters. I wanted to see new, revolutionary ideas being released, as well as cracking action, just like in the first three books. The idea of combining the western genre with fantasy and moving a genre usually set under blazing suns to the Arctic is inventive but it’s a superficial inventiveness.

Don’t count me out of the series just yet though as ‘The Book of Dust’ sounds like an extremely necessary addition to the ‘His Dark Materials’ work, if it does what Pullman says it will. ‘The Book of Dust’, possibly appearing in 2009, will contain some answers for people who have questioned why Pullman is so down on religion in his fantasy series. A book about Will is planned as well which I’m sure I’ll read, but I hope Pullman will be creating something entirely new in the near future.

This was my fourth book for the ‘Once Upon a Time’ challenge. How are others doing with the challenge?