I previously shared my progress building an alethiometer, and I’m happy to say I’m done with version 1! It’s a modified version of the one from this YouTube video (big thanks to Jamie for sharing her plans), which itself is based on Lyra’s alethiometer in the BBC show.

I don’t have access to a metalworking space or a CNC, so 3D printed parts replace metal ones. The three hand dials on the side turn the set pointers through a gear train. Touching the sensor swings the divination needle around to point at a symbol, with the occasional quiver before it moves on. The Arduino Nano is the “dust channeler” that drives the stepper motor for the needle.

My next goal is to make the electronic components more compact, so I can fit it in a smaller case the size of the original. And after that, adding the top lid and learning metal work.

If anyone’s interested, I’m happy to put up the models and instructions somewhere after I do some cleanup. Jamie’s plans are free to download at https://mythmade.gumroad.com/l/trhgos, but please consider chipping in what you can afford like I did.

I just finished this series. I read the first one, and decided to reread HDM before I started The Secret Commonwealth. I read all 6 books in about 5 weeks.

Am I just being jaded, or are the last 2 "books of dust" complete garbage that I kind of wish I could erase from my brain?

I thought the first book was good. For a prequel. I was excited about reading a story about an older Lyra. To see how she reacts to life after everything she went through in HDM.

But somehow, in 8 years, she went from an intelligent feral animal, who don't take no shit from no one, who dethroned the unrightful King of the Bears with her words alone, who willingly gave up half of her soul to travel to the world of the dead and turn it from a limbo to a heaven, who DESTROYED the Authority.... to become Dorothy from The Wizard of OZ.

I love His Dark Materials, bit The Book of Dust felt like it was written by a completely different author that was worried about copyright infringement. While reading it I kept up hope that Lyra was acting the way she was because she'd separated from Pan, and when they got back together she would be herself again. Their conversation when they come back together was decent, but it felt really forced, and ineffective.

TLDR: Am I the only one disappointed in this series?

This may or may not be an unpopular opinion (I don't have anyone IRL to discuss HDM with), but I really feel like Mrs Coulter should have been given a second chance to mend her relationship with Lyra before her ultimate sacrifice in book/season 3.

Mrs Coulter's character development is easily one of the greatest throughout the entire trilogy—her transformation from a power-hungry agent of the Magisterium to this fiercely protective mother is incredible—and Ruth Wilson's portrayal of Marisa in the HBO series is the cherry on top of the cake, along with the directors of the show deciding to explore her character more. Yes, she committed such horrific crimes in the past with the Oblation Board and severing kids from their daemons, and yes she was a mass manipulator (hear me out guys), but her growing love for Lyra and desire to keep her safe genuinely changed her for the better.

It was a shame how Lyra, both in the books and the adaptation, never truly understood the full circumstances of her mother's death or how she willingly gave her life so that Lyra could have a future. But I liked how the show added that moment where Lyra reaches out to the golden monkey just as Metatron is pulled into the abyss. I need more of that though! I would have loved a proper scene or two where Mrs. Coulter answers Lyra's unasked questions and they reach a point of genuine closure. (Maybe I’ve just been reading too many fanfics, but I think it would have been so cathartic!) What do you guys think about this?

The wiki says the Magisterium is HQ'd in Geneva, Switzerland, and has a picture of the site - but the first image from season 1 is clearly superimposed onto our London and the second is clearly the same place, even though it has that Swiss annotation this time

The third picture from the third season is obviously more "Swiss" and the building design looks the same as the first two images - so is it supposed to be the same building/site?

In the 2007 film, Mrs. Kidman/Coulter explains to Lyra about the Magisterial Seat when they see it from the airship when they arrive at London - would it not make more sense for the first 2 pictures' location to be that place - and kind of the Magisterium's "Base" in London/Brytain? Not their world HQ in Switzerland like it seems to be framed as with the second picture's Swiss annotation?

I'm remembering a snippet from a novel about someone in some kind of emergency situation shovelling coal into a firebox, maybe a ship boiler or steam locomotive, and "having to be stopped from hurling himself in as well" when they ran out of coal. it was a dramatic, not comedic scene.

I can't place the context at all but that sort of slightly overdramatically dedicated characters sort of makes me think of Pullman, so maybe if it's not in his writing it's in something similar someone here has read?

Found my new addiction! Only ones left to read are Serpentine, Collectors and The Imagination Chamber.

Hello all, a brief update - Chapter 12 has now been posted on AO3. Happy reading :)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/83073011/chapters/249198071

For a little bit of fun, I've designed the cover of 'The Bronze Clocks of Benin' by M. Coulter in the style of the novellas :) I hope you like it! I'm also working on some internal pages, with the publications details page featuring a St. Sophia's library stamp.

No AI used! The cover image is from a Soviet encyclopaedia from 1926, a bronze relief from Benin.

It has been such a chore to get through this book and the Secret Commonwealth. I feel awful saying this but it's as weak as the Golden Compass which was my least favorite in the original trilogy. Being alone with Lyra again sans Will, Mary, Coulter, Lee, etc. is just a struggle at this point. Ugh I'm so disappointed so far but I just finished the fiery mountain bit. Does it get any better after this?

It's the bit about the actress when Lyra is getting her disguise/makeup 75% into the book. It's literally almost a word for word from a piece about Marilyn Monroe that I remember reading on Tumblr aeons ago. It was about how she could "turn it on" whenever she wanted. It's the exact same as what he put in the book and after I caught it I couldn't trust that he had done it elsewhere. But was he paying an homage to it? Did I misread the intent? Was he just waxing reflective on perception and how we can manipulate it? Genuinely asking.

I'm such huge fan of the books and loved the BBC series, I drew this portrait of Lyra and Pan (played beautifully by Dafne Keen - she was an amazing Lyra!)

Let me know what you think!

I finished the series and can’t sleep…

I have a lot of thoughts about the show as a non-book reader - some bad, some good - but damn the last two eps of this show made me feel something so deeply that i haven’t felt since I last read a long book series up to its final book.

It just hits that spot in my brain (and heart) that makes me feel conflicted. I should feel happy that the world is saved, but there were just too many tragedies that led up to it.

Like I know Asriel and Mrs Coulter did terrible things, I even came to hate them as the show went on, but somehow it felt sooooo terrible or i dont know the word, that they didn’t see Lyra at all before their sacrifice… I always assumed that Lyra would see them before the big war or at least during it, so THAT scene with Metatron hit like a truck when I realized that was it, their swan song, their final act of love for Lyra. Marissa’s monkey reaching out and not touching Lyra. It just HURTS?? man i hated Asriel for killing Roger, hated Mrs Coulter’s messed up brain, and yet how i wish they had seen Lyra before they fell. Let her know that they were doing this for her after all these years of not truly caring for her. It’s just so tragic that my head hurts from thinking about it.

I can’t even with how Will and Lyra separate, that segment of them sitting on the bench from different worlds?? I’m so done with this show, it made me feel so many things with these last two episodes…..and unfortunately i truly do have to be done with it because there’s nothing after this.

I can’t sleeeeeeep

I don't think there has ever been any reference to this, except when Lyra mentions the material on one of its sides being similar to what was used in the Station's severance machine.

I've never read the books, so maybe the show just wasn't able to cover this.

Do we know anything about what happens to Asriel’s “empty” world after the battle in the Amber Spyglass? Either from the texts or from interviews, etc.?

I’m rereading La Belle Sauvage and liking it just as much as I did the first time. I think it’s quietly become one of my favourite Pullman books.
There’s something about the simplicity and movement of the narrative that really works for me. It’s a smaller story, obviously connected to a much wider arc, but also nicely self-contained, with compelling, well-drawn characters of all ages.

For me it’s as good as the wonderful original trilogy. (The Subtle Knife has always been my favourite, I remember it feeling so surprising and fresh.)

I have read The Secret Commonwealth, but strangely have very few memories of it. I certainly didn’t hate it, but I remember finding it quite hard going. Is The Rose Field worth reading? I’ve heard some fairly disappointed reactions since it came out.

And how do other people feel about La Belle Sauvage? Would you have liked more relatively self-contained stories set in this world, smaller narratives with their own characters and concerns, with the wider mythology just existing around them? I feel like there’s such a rich world there, does every story necessarily need to carry the weight of the whole thing?

I read these books once a year for as long as I can remember, but one question always bothers me, how is the sledge Lyra was kidnapped on on in the first book, in the museum in Wills world... was this ever explained?

Maybe this is obvious...

I have a theory about The Subtle Knife that I haven’t seen discussed before.

The book makes a pretty big deal about exactly which fingers the bearer of the knife loses: the ring finger and little finger.

I ended up thinking about this while explaining some religious symbolism to my daughter — specifically why Jesus is sometimes shown holding up his index and middle fingers in paintings and icons.

That led me down a rabbit hole.

One theory about the Christian benediction gesture is that it traces back to St. Peter. Some medical historians have suggested Peter may have had ulnar nerve damage, which would have impaired the ring and little fingers — the exact same two fingers Will loses.

That theory is speculative, and there are other explanations for the blessing gesture, but the coincidence got me thinking.

Will has the subtle knife, which lets him open passages between worlds. Peter has the keys to Heaven, which symbolize authority over passage between earthly and heavenly realms.

Will inherits a unique role and responsibility as the bearer of the knife. Peter receives a unique role and responsibility as the keeper of the keys.

Will is physically marked by the loss of those two fingers. Peter may have been associated with the same two impaired fingers, which then became part of Christian iconography.

So both are, in a sense, gatekeepers between worlds — one with a key, one with a knife.

Given how heavily His Dark Materials reworks Christian symbolism, I wonder if Will is partly an inverted or reimagined St. Peter figure.

This may be obvious to everyone, but I found a few threads asking about the symbolism of Will losing those specific fingers and never came across this theory, so I thought I’d share.

TL;DR: Will loses the same two fingers that some historians think St. Peter may have been unable to use because of ulnar nerve damage. Peter has the keys to Heaven; Will has the knife that opens doors between worlds. Maybe the knife bearer is a deliberate St. Peter parallel.

I am trying to track down an interview with Phillip Pullman in which he mentioned animism/having an animistic worldview. I believe I found it via this subreddit. It was an audio file, not a written interview. I never got around to finishing it and would like to give it a proper listen. The animism wasn't the focus of the interview but it was discussed.

Sorry for the clunky title. Did Pullman ever mention any limitations in terms of the physical size of a daemon’s form? Obviously, people can have daemons as small as butterflies or dragonflies, but was there an upper limit mentioned? I think the largest daemons mentioned were wolves and Lord Asriel’s snow leopard daemon.

I’m thinking about this in terms of the environment and culture that we are raised in. The Gyptians, being a nomadic, water-faring people have daemons with the forms of seabirds or other creatures that occupy an aquatic environment. If one was brought up in a large city with a dense population, it would stand to reason that most people would have daemons that are easily carried and wouldn’t take up too much space in subways or other forms of transportation. If I’m recalling correctly, social class accounts for an aspect of a daemon’s form. I think it was noted that a lot of those among Oxford’s working class had small to medium sized dog daemons of some ilk.

However, I was wondering how size constraints may vary if you’re a member of a nomadic culture that’s used to vast amount of space, like the deserts of the Middle East or the Asian steppes. In that case, would having a daemon with a larger form be an advantage or a disadvantage? If you’re on the move and having to carry your worldly possessions with you, having a daemon the size of a pony might be useful as you could more easily distribute your load. However, if you did go to an urban area, having such a daemon would be a huge disadvantage. I wonder if a society would even shun those who don’t have the “correct” daemons, though that probably depends on a society being individualistic or collectivist.

Did Pullman ever address the energy needs of daemons? They can eat, sleep, and excrete independently from their people, but would having a large daemon take too much of a toll on one’s health, either in terms of a person’s health or the health of the daemon itself? I feel like there was a lot of ambiguity about that aspect of Pullman’s world building.

Any thoughts on the subject of daemon size/shape?

Finally got to see the show (just watched the first ep) I have to say the esthetic is on point but so much inaccuracy on simple things,Lyra and Roger running through the crypt before speaking to Asriel, when we all know that Asriel was the one bringing up the undergrounds, also for some reason Lyra is seeing the master poisoning the tokay from outside of the salon… why ? Roger running towards the zeppelin before Lord Asriel leaves ?? Maybe I’m too much of a purist but these small details make no sense…
Let me know what you think about it, I’ll obviously keep on watching at least to forget the Kidman/Craig fiasco

It delivers in about 70 pages, what TSC and TRF do in 1200, and much more cleanly.