Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Get Ready For The Book of Dust!

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It doesn't matter to me that this news isn't about a renewed interest in reviving the film series -- if there's news about Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, then I will illustrate such news with a photograph of Daniel Craig in character in the movie version because Daniel Craig in tweed with a beard just gives me energy to go on. And boy is there ever new news about Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials! The author has just announced he is writing an entire new trilogy!

Okay. Have you woken up on the floor? I will give you a minute to situate yourself. Take deep breaths. It it true. The Guardian wouldn't lie to us!

"The Book of Dust, an epic fantasy trilogy that will stand alongside his bestselling series, His Dark Materials, will be published in October around the world. The as-yet-untitled first volume of The Book of Dust, due out on 19 October, will be set in London and Oxford, with the action running parallel to the His Dark Materials trilogy.

... Pullman’s brave and outspoken heroine, Lyra Belacqua, will return in the first two volumes. Featuring two periods of her life – as a baby and 10 years after His Dark Materials ended – the series will include other characters familiar to existing readers, as well as creations such as alethiometers (a clock-like truth-telling device), daemons (animals that are physical manifestations of the human spirit) and the Magisterium, the church-like totalitarian authority that rules Lyra’s world."

Pullman has already finished the first two books and is at work on the third, so it doesn't seem like we have to worry about any kind of George RR Martin situation here. Anyway I was just looking at my copies of the original HDM books on my shelf the other day and considering a re-read and obviously, the time is perfect. Y'all have read the books right? I'm not surprised that the big-screen Hollywood version failed - they were never going to have the balls to make the movies about what the books are about. The BBC was supposedly working on a new TV miniseries based off of them but I haven't seen an update on that in awhile and it's not mentioned here.
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4 comments:

Pierce said...

I was just talking about His Dark Materials yesterday. I was telling someone how The Golden Compass left out about a fifth of the book at the end, and how I thought the next movie would pick up where this one left off. It hasn't happened yet. Daniel Craig in anything is good. Also, it will be interesting to see where Hollow City picks up from Miss Peregrine's School for Peculiar Children, because the movie ended before the story in the book does.

Mark Alexander said...

Y'know who could to do the cinematic version properly and has the balls to face those "difficult" themes head-on? HBO. Yup. The network that gave us Game of Thrones and Westworld. Can you imagine? It would be AWESOME.

Aquinas1220 said...

I agree with Mark that HBO could do Pullman justice. At first I thought his books would simply be "unfilmable" but I thought the same thing about "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell" and the BBC managed to do pretty good there.

Derreck said...

I still wonder how long Lyra and Will decided to keep up on sitting in that garden.

*sighs for three days*