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1000 results for “posit_glimpse”
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Step into Meghan's world with 'With Love, Meghan' - cooking, gardening, and joy! Watch the trailer now on Netflix. Premieres Jan 15!
Check out the trailer right here: https://www.theomenmedia.com/post/meghan-markle-s-with-love-meghan-a-glimpse-into-the-duchess-s-new-netflix-lifestyle-series
#MeghanMarkle #Netflix #WithLoveMeghan #LifestyleSeries #DuchessOfSussex #CookingShow #MindyKaling #RoyChoi #AliceWaters
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Step into Meghan's world with 'With Love, Meghan' - cooking, gardening, and joy! Watch the trailer now on Netflix. Premieres Jan 15!
Check out the trailer right here: https://www.theomenmedia.com/post/meghan-markle-s-with-love-meghan-a-glimpse-into-the-duchess-s-new-netflix-lifestyle-series
#MeghanMarkle #Netflix #WithLoveMeghan #LifestyleSeries #DuchessOfSussex #CookingShow #MindyKaling #RoyChoi #AliceWaters
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Embrace the nostalgia one last time as we bid farewell to Hawkins with the final set of images from Stranger Things Season 5. An era ends, but the memories are eternal.
Check them out right here: https://www.theomenmedia.com/post/a-nostalgic-goodbye-unveiling-the-final-glimpses-from-the-sets-of-stranger-things-season-5
#StrangerThings5 #EndOfAnEra #Netflix #StrangerThingsSeason5 #ST5Wrap #StrangerThingsFinale #HawkinsGoodbye #UpsideDownForever #ElevenAndFriends #NetflixSeries
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Embrace the nostalgia one last time as we bid farewell to Hawkins with the final set of images from Stranger Things Season 5. An era ends, but the memories are eternal.
Check them out right here: https://www.theomenmedia.com/post/a-nostalgic-goodbye-unveiling-the-final-glimpses-from-the-sets-of-stranger-things-season-5
#StrangerThings5 #EndOfAnEra #Netflix #StrangerThingsSeason5 #ST5Wrap #StrangerThingsFinale #HawkinsGoodbye #UpsideDownForever #ElevenAndFriends #NetflixSeries
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Netflix's 'Polo' trailer is here! Dive into the heart-thumping world of polo with Prince Harry & Meghan as your guides. Elite players, fierce rivalries, and family legacies await. Premieres December 10th.
Check out the trailer right here: https://www.theomenmedia.com/post/polo-on-netflix-a-glimpse-behind-the-glamour-of-polo-s-elite
#PoloOnNetflix #BehindTheGlamour #Polo #Netflix #NetflixPolo #PoloSeries #SussexProductions #SportsDocumentary #PoloChampionship #EliteSports #RoyalInspiration
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(10b/10)
As an example, tell us about your vision for the evolution of the fediverse. What would you love to see it looking like in a decade?
This could be vague impressions of a broad landscape, dimly glimpsed through the mists or the future. Or detailed descriptions of the UX or technical details of your dream unborn feature. Or anything in between.
(Feel free to post an edited version of the latter kind of vision in #FediverseIdeas; https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fediverse-ideas/)
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Happy 2024! I got two posts that are available for free to followers on my Ream page today!
A cool glossary of terms you will find in my upcoming novel, Smoke and Steel. I've crafted a sweet desert nation in Smoke and Steel inhabited by cat-people and this post gives you a glimpse of their culture and way of life.
A psych-horror short story called "An Unreliable Narrator of My Own Life". I know, psych-horror is not my usual, but I enjoyed writing this and if you know anything about my personal life, I think you will know why!
Just sign up for Ream and hit the follow button on my page and you will get access to these and a few other tidbits! If you want to nyooom through my whole back list in a month, use the code DREAMER for a free month at the Sorcery Seeker or Enchantment Enthusiast levels, which will get you access to pretty much everything digital right now.
If you want to know more about what I have planned for January on Ream, here's my calendar!
Happy New Year! Can't wait to share even more words and worlds with everyone <3
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Happy 2024! I got two posts that are available for free to followers on my Ream page today!
A cool glossary of terms you will find in my upcoming novel, Smoke and Steel. I've crafted a sweet desert nation in Smoke and Steel inhabited by cat-people and this post gives you a glimpse of their culture and way of life.
A psych-horror short story called "An Unreliable Narrator of My Own Life". I know, psych-horror is not my usual, but I enjoyed writing this and if you know anything about my personal life, I think you will know why!
Just sign up for Ream and hit the follow button on my page and you will get access to these and a few other tidbits! If you want to nyooom through my whole back list in a month, use the code DREAMER for a free month at the Sorcery Seeker or Enchantment Enthusiast levels, which will get you access to pretty much everything digital right now.
If you want to know more about what I have planned for January on Ream, here's my calendar!
Happy New Year! Can't wait to share even more words and worlds with everyone <3
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Happy 2024! I got two posts that are available for free to followers on my Ream page today!
A cool glossary of terms you will find in my upcoming novel, Smoke and Steel. I've crafted a sweet desert nation in Smoke and Steel inhabited by cat-people and this post gives you a glimpse of their culture and way of life.
A psych-horror short story called "An Unreliable Narrator of My Own Life". I know, psych-horror is not my usual, but I enjoyed writing this and if you know anything about my personal life, I think you will know why!
Just sign up for Ream and hit the follow button on my page and you will get access to these and a few other tidbits! If you want to nyooom through my whole back list in a month, use the code DREAMER for a free month at the Sorcery Seeker or Enchantment Enthusiast levels, which will get you access to pretty much everything digital right now.
If you want to know more about what I have planned for January on Ream, here's my calendar!
Happy New Year! Can't wait to share even more words and worlds with everyone <3
-
Happy 2024! I got two posts that are available for free to followers on my Ream page today!
A cool glossary of terms you will find in my upcoming novel, Smoke and Steel. I've crafted a sweet desert nation in Smoke and Steel inhabited by cat-people and this post gives you a glimpse of their culture and way of life.
A psych-horror short story called "An Unreliable Narrator of My Own Life". I know, psych-horror is not my usual, but I enjoyed writing this and if you know anything about my personal life, I think you will know why!
Just sign up for Ream and hit the follow button on my page and you will get access to these and a few other tidbits! If you want to nyooom through my whole back list in a month, use the code DREAMER for a free month at the Sorcery Seeker or Enchantment Enthusiast levels, which will get you access to pretty much everything digital right now.
If you want to know more about what I have planned for January on Ream, here's my calendar!
Happy New Year! Can't wait to share even more words and worlds with everyone <3
-
Happy 2024! I got two posts that are available for free to followers on my Ream page today!
A cool glossary of terms you will find in my upcoming novel, Smoke and Steel. I've crafted a sweet desert nation in Smoke and Steel inhabited by cat-people and this post gives you a glimpse of their culture and way of life.
A psych-horror short story called "An Unreliable Narrator of My Own Life". I know, psych-horror is not my usual, but I enjoyed writing this and if you know anything about my personal life, I think you will know why!
Just sign up for Ream and hit the follow button on my page and you will get access to these and a few other tidbits! If you want to nyooom through my whole back list in a month, use the code DREAMER for a free month at the Sorcery Seeker or Enchantment Enthusiast levels, which will get you access to pretty much everything digital right now.
If you want to know more about what I have planned for January on Ream, here's my calendar!
Happy New Year! Can't wait to share even more words and worlds with everyone <3
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Last Week on Instagram: Underwater Photos from My Favorite Dives
Behold a compilation of underwater images I recently unveiled on my Instagram feed. These photographs offer a glimpse into the enchanting world beneath the waves, where vibrant marine life dances amidst the backdrop of breathtaking seascapes.
Every week I share new underwater photos and short video clips on Instagram from my dives around the world, including the Caribbean, Indonesia, the Philippines, and more. If you missed this week’s posts, here are a few of my favorite shots and the stories behind them.
Colorful Reef Fish and Coral Scenes
From shallow reefs to deeper walls, I’m always looking for moments where reef fish, soft corals, and sponges line up in a single frame. These shots were taken on recent dives where visibility was excellent and natural light helped bring out the colors. I shared close-ups of reef fish, wide-angle reefscapes, and a few fun safety stop moments on Instagram this week.
Macro Moments: Nudibranchs and Tiny Critters
Some of this week’s most popular Instagram posts were macro images featuring nudibranchs, shrimp, and other tiny reef critters. Shooting macro underwater means slowing down, perfecting buoyancy, and paying attention to details on the reef. If you enjoy macro photography or just love seeing the smaller side of the ocean, make sure to follow along on my feed for more macro shots.
Why I Share My Underwater Photography on Instagram
Instagram is a great place to connect with other divers, underwater photographers, and ocean lovers. I use it as a visual logbook of my dives and a way to highlight responsible dive operators and destinations that care about marine conservation. Each week I post new underwater images, short video clips, and behind-the-scenes stories from recent trips and local dives.
Follow My Underwater Adventures
If you like these images and want to see more underwater photos, camera tests, and dive trip highlights, you can follow me on Instagram at @@ScubaHankNYC. I also post longer stories and detailed dive reviews here on the blog, so feel free to explore recent posts below.
Looking for more trip reports and underwater imagery? Check out:
#Photography #ScubaDiving #UnderwaterPhotographs -
The Original Peaky Blinders Jazz Band
I’ve been greatly enjoying the boxed set of six seasons of Peaky Blinders that I received as a gift recently. I may do a sort of review when I get to the end, but until then I thought I’d throw in a few tangential things. This post is an example. Here’s another one. This clip is from Episode 2 of Series 1, when the Shelby family are celebrating the reopening of the Garrison pub after it was destroyed by a firebomb earlier on. Listen to the music at the start.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEGYbaEew1A
The music being played is Livery Stable Blues by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a record I blogged about here. Released in 1917, it is no exaggeration to say that this was the first every commercial jazz record; I blogged about the 100th anniversary of its release.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WojNaU4-kI
The band was originally called the “Original Dixieland Jass Band“. A few months later they changed the “Jass” to “Jazz” – it is claimed because people kept defacing their posters by removing the letter “J” – and the new name stuck. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band is usually referred by Jazz buffs as the ODJB.
Led by cornettist Nick LaRocca and clarinettist Larry Shields, the ODJB was a group of white musicians from in and around New Orleans who had picked up their musical ideas from listening to musicians there, including playing for the pioneering mixed-race band led by Papa Laine, before moving to Chicago which is where they were spotted by representatives of the Victor label. Although the sound quality isn’t great, it gives a good insight to what ealy jazz drummers were like and shows Larry Shields was a dab hand at glissandi…
Series 1 of Peaky Blinders is set in 1919 (mainly in Birmingham but also with scenes in London). Not a lot of people know that the ODJB actually visited England in 1919. They performed in review at the Hammersmith Palais and then did a command performance in front of King George V, who (apparently) particularly enjoyed their version of Tiger Rag. There is no evidence that they visited Birmingham, but we get a glimpse before the above clip of a band decked out to look like them, laying live in the Garrison pub. I very much enjoy little details like that!
#GarrisonPub #Jazz #ODJB #OriginalDixielandJazzBand #PeakyBlinders -
The Original Peaky Blinders Jazz Band
I’ve been greatly enjoying the boxed set of six seasons of Peaky Blinders that I received as a gift recently. I may do a sort of review when I get to the end, but until then I thought I’d throw in a few tangential things. This post is an example. Here’s another one. This clip is from Episode 2 of Series 1, when the Shelby family are celebrating the reopening of the Garrison pub after it was destroyed by a firebomb earlier on. Listen to the background music at the start.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEGYbaEew1A
The music being played is Livery Stable Blues by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a record I blogged about here. Released in 1917, it is no exaggeration to say that this was the first every commercial jazz record; I blogged about the 100th anniversary of its release.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WojNaU4-kI
The band was originally called the “Original Dixieland Jass Band“. A few months later they changed the “Jass” to “Jazz” – it is claimed because people kept defacing their posters by removing the letter “J” – and the new name stuck. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band is usually referred by Jazz buffs as the ODJB.
Led by cornettist Nick LaRocca and clarinettist Larry Shields, the ODJB was a group of white musicians from in and around New Orleans who had picked up their musical ideas from listening to musicians there, including playing for the pioneering mixed-race band led by Papa Laine, before moving to Chicago which is where they were spotted by representatives of the Victor label. Although the sound quality isn’t great, it gives a good insight to what ealy jazz drummers were like – thumping bass and tom-toms but little use of the cymbals – and shows Larry Shields was a dab hand at glissandi…
Series 1 of Peaky Blinders is set in 1919 (mainly in Birmingham but also with scenes in London). Not a lot of people know that the ODJB actually visited England in 1919. They performed in review at the Hammersmith Palais and then did a command performance in front of King George V, who (apparently) particularly enjoyed their version of Tiger Rag. There is no evidence that they visited Birmingham, but we get a glimpse before the above clip of a band decked out to look like them, laying live in the Garrison pub. I very much enjoy little details like that!
#GarrisonPub #Jazz #ODJB #OriginalDixielandJazzBand #PeakyBlinders -
The Original Peaky Blinders Jazz Band
I’ve been greatly enjoying the boxed set of six seasons of Peaky Blinders that I received as a gift recently. I may do a sort of review when I get to the end, but until then I thought I’d throw in a few tangential things. This post is an example. Here’s another one. This clip is from Episode 2 of Series 1, when the Shelby family are celebrating the reopening of the Garrison pub after it was destroyed by a firebomb earlier on. Listen to the music at the start.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEGYbaEew1A
The music being played is Livery Stable Blues by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a record I blogged about here. Released in 1917, it is no exaggeration to say that this was the first every commercial jazz record; I blogged about the 100th anniversary of its release.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WojNaU4-kI
The band was originally called the “Original Dixieland Jass Band“. A few months later they changed the “Jass” to “Jazz” – it is claimed because people kept defacing their posters by removing the letter “J” – and the new name stuck. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band is usually referred by Jazz buffs as the ODJB.
Led by cornettist Nick LaRocca and clarinettist Larry Shields, the ODJB was a group of white musicians from in and around New Orleans who had picked up their musical ideas from listening to musicians there, including playing for the pioneering mixed-race band led by Papa Laine, before moving to Chicago which is where they were spotted by representatives of the Victor label. Although the sound quality isn’t great, it gives a good insight to what ealy jazz drummers were like and shows Larry Shields was a dab hand at glissandi…
Series 1 of Peaky Blinders is set in 1919 (mainly in Birmingham but also with scenes in London). Not a lot of people know that the ODJB actually visited England in 1919. They performed in review at the Hammersmith Palais and then did a command performance in front of King George V, who (apparently) particularly enjoyed their version of Tiger Rag. There is no evidence that they visited Birmingham, but we get a glimpse before the above clip of a band decked out to look like them, laying live in the Garrison pub. I very much enjoy little details like that!
#GarrisonPub #Jazz #ODJB #OriginalDixielandJazzBand #PeakyBlinders -
The Original Peaky Blinders Jazz Band
I’ve been greatly enjoying the boxed set of six seasons of Peaky Blinders that I received as a gift recently. I may do a sort of review when I get to the end, but until then I thought I’d throw in a few tangential things. This post is an example. Here’s another one. This clip is from Episode 2 of Series 1, when the Shelby family are celebrating the reopening of the Garrison pub after it was destroyed by a firebomb earlier on. Listen to the background music at the start.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEGYbaEew1A
The music being played is Livery Stable Blues by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a record I blogged about here. Released in 1917, it is no exaggeration to say that this was the first every commercial jazz record; I blogged about the 100th anniversary of its release.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WojNaU4-kI
The band was originally called the “Original Dixieland Jass Band“. A few months later they changed the “Jass” to “Jazz” – it is claimed because people kept defacing their posters by removing the letter “J” – and the new name stuck. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band is usually referred by Jazz buffs as the ODJB.
Led by cornettist Nick LaRocca and clarinettist Larry Shields, the ODJB was a group of white musicians from in and around New Orleans who had picked up their musical ideas from listening to musicians there, including playing for the pioneering mixed-race band led by Papa Laine, before moving to Chicago which is where they were spotted by representatives of the Victor label. Although the sound quality isn’t great, it gives a good insight to what ealy jazz drummers were like – thumping bass and tom-toms but little use of the cymbals – and shows Larry Shields was a dab hand at glissandi…
Series 1 of Peaky Blinders is set in 1919 (mainly in Birmingham but also with scenes in London). Not a lot of people know that the ODJB actually visited England in 1919. They performed in review at the Hammersmith Palais and then did a command performance in front of King George V, who (apparently) particularly enjoyed their version of Tiger Rag. There is no evidence that they visited Birmingham, but we get a glimpse before the above clip of a band decked out to look like them, laying live in the Garrison pub. I very much enjoy little details like that!
#GarrisonPub #Jazz #ODJB #OriginalDixielandJazzBand #PeakyBlinders -
The Original Peaky Blinders Jazz Band
I’ve been greatly enjoying the boxed set of six seasons of Peaky Blinders that I received as a gift recently. I may do a sort of review when I get to the end, but until then I thought I’d throw in a few tangential things. This post is an example. Here’s another one. This clip is from Episode 2 of Series 1, when the Shelby family are celebrating the reopening of the Garrison pub after it was destroyed by a firebomb earlier on. Listen to the music at the start.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEGYbaEew1A
The music being played is Livery Stable Blues by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a record I blogged about here. Released in 1917, it is no exaggeration to say that this was the first every commercial jazz record; I blogged about the 100th anniversary of its release.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WojNaU4-kI
The band was originally called the “Original Dixieland Jass Band“. A few months later they changed the “Jass” to “Jazz” – it is claimed because people kept defacing their posters by removing the letter “J” – and the new name stuck. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band is usually referred by Jazz buffs as the ODJB.
Led by cornettist Nick LaRocca and clarinettist Larry Shields, the ODJB was a group of white musicians from in and around New Orleans who had picked up their musical ideas from listening to musicians there, including playing for the pioneering mixed-race band led by Papa Laine, before moving to Chicago which is where they were spotted by representatives of the Victor label. Although the sound quality isn’t great, it gives a good insight to what ealy jazz drummers were like and shows Larry Shields was a dab hand at glissandi…
Series 1 of Peaky Blinders is set in 1919 (mainly in Birmingham but also with scenes in London). Not a lot of people know that the ODJB actually visited England in 1919. They performed in review at the Hammersmith Palais and then did a command performance in front of King George V, who (apparently) particularly enjoyed their version of Tiger Rag. There is no evidence that they visited Birmingham, but we get a glimpse before the above clip of a band decked out to look like them, laying live in the Garrison pub. I very much enjoy little details like that!
#GarrisonPub #Jazz #ODJB #OriginalDixielandJazzBand #PeakyBlinders -
Resources for African American History Month: Selected Digital Collections – Teaching with the Library
Teaching with the Library Primary Sources & Ideas for Educators
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Resources for African American History Month: Selected Digital Collections
February 10, 2026, Posted by: Colleen Smith
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This is the second post in a series that looks at different resources from the Library that support teaching and learning about the achievements and contributions of African Americans throughout U.S. history. The first post highlighted several primary source sets from Teaching with the Library; today’s post brings attention to the Library’s digital collections.
More than twenty-five of the Library’s digital collections relate to the rich histories, cultures, traditions, and contemporary experiences of African Americans. A few are highlighted below, along with ideas for using collection items in the classroom.
Selected Collections
African American Photographs Assembled for the 1900 Paris Exposition
W. E. B. Du Bois compiled a series of photographs for the “American Negro” exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition. His goal was to show the diversity and successes of African Americans as a counter to common stereotypes. The Library of Congress holds approximately 220 mounted photographs reportedly displayed in the exhibition.
- Teachers might use items in this collection to introduce, investigate, or reinforce aspects of DuBois’s approach to combating racism and segregation.
- Images from the collection are powerful visuals of African Americans holding professions in diverse fields. This may help broaden students’ understanding of African American life at the time and bring attention to the experiences, successes, challenges, and contributions of African American individuals and communities.
By Popular Demand: Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s
To honor the remarkable life and legacy of Jackie Robinson, Library staff put together this collection featuring sources from across many different divisions of the Library.
- The colorful prints and photographs make this an inviting collection to explore with younger learners. Teachers could bring some of these visuals to support existing materials they use to celebrate Robinson and his contributions.
- For older learners, consider sending them to this set of brief essays. Topics include Robinson’s career and the greater subject of segregation in the sport of baseball.
This collection features digitized plays by Hurston (1891-1960), an author, anthropologist, and folklorist.
- A timeline offers a glimpse into Hurston’s life and career and could help students find an angle or selected topic for further research.
- Teachers interested in finding more on Huston’s work might also consult this resource guide from the American Folklife Center, where Hurston’s audio recordings are held. The guide highlights unique unpublished and published materials.
Frederick Douglass Newspapers, 1847 to 1874
Douglass, a leader in the black press, used the medium to communicate and persuade the public on the abolition of slavery and women’s rights. With this collection, students can explore newspapers edited by Frederick Douglass.
- These articles and essays are helpful for finding your way through the collection and identifying aspects to explore further. For example, this post gives further context to Douglass’s famous speech, “What to the American Slave is Your Fourth of July?“
- Ask students to consider how Douglass used the media of his time to capture public attention. In what ways do public figures use media today to communicate a message? What differences and similarities do students notice?
We hope this overview is helpful for considering how you might bring some of the Library’s digital collections to your classroom. If you are interested in more ways for students to engage with materials from the Library, you might check out the latest transcription campaign from By the People: the papers of Christian Fleetwood an African American Union soldier during the Civil War.
Do you enjoy these posts? Subscribe! You’ll receive free teaching ideas and primary sources from the Library of Congress.
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Continue/Read Original Article Here: Resources for African American History Month: Selected Digital Collections | Teaching with the Library
Tags: 1900 Paris Exposition, 25 Collections, African American History Month, American Negro, Blogs, By the People, Christian Fleetwood, Colleen Smith, Frederick Douglass Newspapers, History of Black Americans, Jackie Robinson, Library of Congress, Selected Digital Collections, Teaching with the Library, W.E.Ba. Du Bois, Zora Neal Hurston
#1900ParisExposition #25Collections #AfricanAmericanHistoryMonth #AmericanNegro #Blogs #ByThePeople #ChristianFleetwood #ColleenSmith #FrederickDouglassNewspapers #HistoryOfBlackAmericans #JackieRobinson #LibraryOfCongress #SelectedDigitalCollections #TeachingWithTheLibrary #WEBaDuBois #ZoraNealHurston -
Interview: I.D.K.
Photo courtesy of the band.Following the release of their latest single, “Nark 5,” we sat down I.D.K. to peel back the layers of their catchy, memorable, and energetic sound.
In this conversation, we dive deep into the thematics driving their lyrics, thoughtful songwriting and composing process that allows them to balance hardcore punk energy with a larger-than-life scale. We also get a glimpse into what’s next for the band, including their upcoming music video collaboration with Stone Fisted Production and their ambitious plans for the future.
Hello, thank you for taking the time to answer these questions. How have you been?
I have been well. Can’t complain.
It’s been over a decade since your last original release. Coming back in late 2025, did “Nark 5” feel like the natural first choice for a comeback, or were there other tracks in contention?
No other tracks when we wrote Nark 5. Nark 5 was the spark that drew us out of the life cave and back into the creative expressive side of the world. We are working on more tracks now but at that time our goal was to get a fresh new tune out there.
You’ve cited Star Wars: Andor as the primary catalyst for this track. What was it about the Narkina 5 that specifically resonated with the punk rock ethos of I.D.K.?
Just like in life, there’s always a fight. There’s always some force trying to wreck something good, trying to inject chaos into what’s working. It never stops. It’s always something.
To me, punk is about doing your thing and saying fuck everything else. Fuck the noise. Fuck the pressure. Fuck anyone trying to tell you who you’re supposed to be. The second you cross the line and violate my freedom — or anyone else’s — then it’s on. That’s when it shifts from punk rock to a hardcore beatdown, metaphorically speaking… or in the case of the prison break, literally.
Nark 5 is about the Empire’s bullying — about being pushed, controlled, and locked down — and then finally fighting back. It’s about breaking out and crushing the bully at the end of the prison break arc. That moment? That’s punk rock at its purest.
The song shifts between the perspectives of Cassian Andor (Keef Girgo) and Kino Loy. How did you approach translating those two very different emotional states, the confusion of capture versus the desperate leadership of an escape, into the music?
I feel like both situations share that same kind of crazy intensity. There’s the mental shock of being taken against your will, and then there’s the raw, survival-mode intensity of a life-or-death situation.
I knew right away that both of those moments matched the energy of the music. So what I did was split the song in half — the first half captures the abduction, and the second half drives the prison break.
You also plan to release a music video, done by Stone Fisted Production. How do you feel the visual narrative enhances the cinematic sound you were aiming for?
The video is almost finished. Nedd from Stone Fisted is doing an incredible job with it — he’s really bringing it to life. It’s currently in the post-production phase, and we’ll be announcing a premiere date soon.
I think people are really going to dig it. It’s a great blend of our live performance energy with the Narkina 5 imagery and concept woven throughout. We had a lot of people help us make it happen, and it’s definitely going to be a fun one.
How has the songwriting dynamic changed between you all since your 2008 releases? Is the process more collaborative now, or does it still start with a singular spark?
With Nark 5, the process was more collaborative. The initial spark came from Fabio and Mike, whereas I’m usually the primary songwriter.
Our 2008 EP was officially released in 2008, but it had actually been recorded a few years earlier. Those songs were created in a less collaborative environment, although all the members at the time still weighed in and gave their input on the material.
You’ve described the new sound as having cinematic dynamics. For a veteran hardcore punk band, how do you balance that grander, more polished scale without losing the raw, basement-show energy fans expect?
I’d say Nark 5, especially when combined with the video we’re making for it, has a very cinematic vibe. The song tells a story you can really visualize through the lyrics and the energy it gives off.
The video leans into that as well — there’s a strong cinematic feel, with storytelling woven into the visuals. That said, we feel it still falls right in line with our previous material sonically. The grit? That really comes out in our live shows — and that hasn’t changed.
Musically, “Nark 5” feels so precise. Did the long break change how you approach your instruments or the gear you use in the studio?
Not at all. In terms of playing and our overall approach, we stuck to what we’ve always done.
“Nark 5” deals with the cost of freedom. In today’s political and social climate, do you find yourselves writing more about fictional resistances as a metaphor, or do real-world events still bleed into the lyrics?
A little of both. It’s nearly impossible to keep the real world from bleeding into the lyrics — especially with Nark 5, given the current political and social climate.
How does the North Jersey/Cliffside Park scene look to you in 2026 compared to when you were last active? Is that old guard spirit still there?
It absolutely is. I.D.K. will forever be associated with being one of — if not the first — hardcore/punk bands from the area to really make a mark.
There aren’t necessarily as many shows happening like there were back in the day, at least to our knowledge, but people remember. The spirit is still there, and it gets passed down to the younger kids.
Whenever we play gigs up in the North Jersey area, there are always Cliffside and Fairview people representing at the shows.
You’re now releasing via Scorpion Records across platforms like Spotify and Bandcamp, tools that weren’t the standard back in 2008. How has navigating the modern digital landscape changed your perspective on being an independent band?
It hasn’t necessarily changed our perspective. What it has done is give us more tools at our disposal when it comes to promoting and getting the music out there — which is cool.
Does it take a little away from the more socially organic way things used to work — passing music through friends, grabbing a physical CD or record, and not having access to it outside of that? Sure.
There are pluses and minuses to it.
Hardcore and punk have undergone numerous sub-genre shifts over the last 15 years. What’s your take on the current state of the genre? Is it healthier now than it was during your hiatus?
That’s hard to say. I’m an older head, so I’ll always love what I experienced growing up in the New Jersey hardcore scene in the ’90s. I don’t get out to see shows as much as I’d like to these days, so it’s tough to really speak on the current live gig vibe.
I do follow newer bands online, though, and there are a lot of great ones out there — especially the heavier beatdown and metal-influenced hardcore bands. From what I can see from a distance, that scene is raging.
I don’t see as many bands like us, with more of a traditional punk/hardcore influence in the style. But that could also just be me being a little out of touch, haha.
“Nark 5” is the lead-in for a new EP on Scorpion Records. Can we expect a full concept record based on similar themes, or will the EP explore different territories?
Good question. We’re in the process of putting the music together now. Once we get into writing the lyrics, we’ll see where it takes us. It’s hard to say right now.
Now that the music is out and the video is on its way, what do the touring plans look like for 2026?
We haven’t played any gigs yet since the release of Nark 5, but we’re definitely excited to see how the crowds react — especially once the video drops.
Photo courtesy of the band.How are the new tracks, especially “Nark 5,” translating to a live setting? Is there a specific moment in the song where you really feel the crowd rising up with you?
Again, we haven’t gigged since the releasee so, we shall see!
What do you want the “2020s era” of I.D.K. to be remembered for? Is this a one-off reunion, or is the engine fully restarted for the long haul?
I’d say we’re like an engine that moves steadily, going where it can, when it can. Yes — we’d love to keep this going for the long haul. Our pace and the way we approach it will ultimately determine that.
That’s it. Thank you so much for your time. Anything you would like to say to our readers at the end of this interview?
Absolutely. First, we want to shout out our friend—and sometimes sixth member—Scott Dorey, who’ll be helping with guitar duties at our upcoming March 7th gig in Morris Plains New Jersey at the Autodidact.
Also, Nedd Jacobs and Stone Fisted Productions, who directed our upcoming Nark 5 music video. He’s doing a great job, and we can’t wait to release it.
We also want to give a shout-out to Scott Earth of Scorpion Records to help with our releases and promotion.
Last but certainly not least, our families—for putting up with the noise and the scheduling. I.D.K. simply wouldn’t happen without their support.
#HARDCORE #HARDCOREPUNK #IDK #INTERVIEWS #melodicPunkRock #MUSIC #PUNKROCK -
CW: Albums the Fediverse Loved in 2025 (CW'd because it's a looooooong post)
Albums the Fediverse Loved in 2025
And here we have it: a list of 151 albums (plus a few artists/labels in general) that kept 64 of us going in 2025, nearly 75% of those 2025 releases and the rest earlier gems! Given our collective eclectic tastes, voting/ranking was not attempted, but bolded titles and post tags indicate albums that were submitted by multiple Fedizens. Genre tags are included as tasting notes (apologies if I got any wrong), each title is linked to its Bandcamp/Songlink when possible, and footnotes list who submitted each album along with extra comments they included (warning: comments may include MOAR ALBUMS; also note: footnotes look way better on the blog). So, click and listen away – perhaps you’ll find a new-to-you album that gets you through 2026!
Thanks so much to the Fedizens who joined in, it’s so nice to see familiar faces from the 1001 Other Albums project as well as some new ones! And, as always, it’s lovely to get a glimpse of how diverse our tastes in music are, and to see people trying something new solely based on a random Fedi recommendation. The Fedi music community truly is a bright spot, and I personally am immensely grateful for it. 🙏🏻
Band – Title (year released, place of origin; genre)footnote
Action/Adventure – Ever After (2025, US; pop-punk)1
AFI – Silver Bleeds the Black Sun… (2025, US; post-punk, gothic rock)2
Against Me! – White Crosses (2010, US; punk rock)3
Alkaline Trio – Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs (2024, US; punk rock)4
Am I in Trouble? – Spectrum (2025, US; avant-garde black metal)5
Ami Taf Ra – The Prophet and the Madman (2025, US/Morocco; Moroccan gnawa, gospel, jazz)6
An Abstract Illusion – Woe (2022, Sweden; atmospheric black/death/prog metal)7
Analog Africa (label, in general) (1960s-80s, Africa; reissues)8
Anna Tivel – Animal Poem (2025, US; indie folk)9
Archon Satani – The Righteous Way to Completion (1997, Sweden; death ambient/black industrial)10
Ashbreather – La Grande Bouffe (2025, Canada; progressive sludge/death metal)11
Au4 – …And Down Goes The Sky (2013, Canada; prog rock)12
aya – hexed! (2025, UK; electronic, noise)13
Bad Cop/Bad Cop – Lighten Up (2025, US; punk rock)14
Baghed – Smear Campaign (2025, US; punk rock)15
Bank Myna – Eimuria (2025, France; post-rock/metal, doom gaze, slow core)16
Belle and Sebastian – Push Barman to Open Old Wounds (2005, Scotland; indie pop)17
Benedicte Maurseth – Mirra (2025, Norway; folk, jazz)18
Bill Frisell – Harmony (2019, US; folk-jazz)19
Black Flower – Kinetic (2025, Belgium; Ethio-jazz, Afrobeat, dub)20
Bon Iver – SABLE, fABLE (2025, US; indie folk/pop)21
Brittany Davis – Black Thunder (2025, US; cosmic jazz, r&b/soul, singer-songwriter)22
CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso – Papota (2025, Argentina; experimental trap, hip-hop, EDM, jazz, Latin pop)23
Caroline Shaw / Attacca Quartet – Orange (2019, US; classical, ambient, folk)24
Castle Rat – The Bestiary (2025, US; fantasy heavy metal)25
Causa Sui – Pewt’r Sessions 1 (2011, Denmark; psych/stoner rock)26
Celeste – Woman of Faces (2025, UK; neo-soul, jazz, singer-songwriter)27
Charlie Hunter, Carter McLean featuring Silvana Estrada – s/t (2018, US/Mexico; jazz)28
Circuit des Yeux – Halo on the Inside (2025, US; singer-songwriter, experimental)29
Civic – Chrome Dipped (2025, Australia; punk)30
clipping – Dead Channel Sky (2025, US; hip-hop)31
Dan Mangan – Natural Light (2025, Canada; indie rock/folk)32
Daniela Pas – Spira (2023, Italy; singer-songwriter, electronic, experimental)33
Data Rebel – Single Cell (2025, UK; electronic, IDM, ambient)34
Dax Riggs – 7 Songs for Spiders (2025, US; blues metal/shoegaze blues)35
Deafheaven – Lonely People With Power (2025, US; blackgaze, metal)36
Degraved – Spectral Realm of Ruin (2025, US; death metal)37
Delobos – Cabal (2025, Spain; post-alt rock, post-rock, psychedelia)38
Devil ANTHEM. – Profound Rebuild (2025, Japan; J-pop)39
Die Spitz – Something to Consume (2025, US; punk, alt rock)40
Divide and Dissolve – Insatiable (2025, Australia; doom, drone, neo classical)41
Dödsrit – Mortal Coil (2021, Sweden; atmospheric/melodic black metal, blackened crust)42
Dool – The Shape of Fluidity (2024, Netherlands; rock, alternative)43
downy – 8th Album/Untitled (2025, Japan; math rock/post-rock)44
Drab Majesty – Completely Careless (2012-2015) (2016, US; darkwave, shoegaze, dream pop)45
Dropkick Murphy – For The People (2025, US; Celtic punk)46
Eikichi Yazawa – I believe (2025, Japan; rock)47
El Pino & The Volunteers – The Long-lost Art of Becoming Invisible (2009, Netherlands; alt country/folk)48
Elli De Mon – Raìse (2025, Italy; blues, dialect, garage, psychedelic)49
Eric Church – Evangeline vs. The Machine (2025, US; country)50
Ethmebb – Allo Babar et les Caramboleurs (2025, France; progressive melodic blackened death power metal)51
Ex-Vöid – In Love Again (2025, UK; indie pop/rock)52
EYES – Spinner(2025, Denmark; hardcore, noise rock)53
FACS – Wish Defense (2025, US; noise rock, neo-post-punk)54
Faetooth – Labrynthine (2025, US; fairy doom/stoner metal)55
False Aralia (label) – ALL the new 12-inch singles (2025, US; abstract electronic)56
Fever Ray – The Year of the Radical Romantics (2025, Sweden; experimental, electronic, pop)57
FOKALITE – Fokas, Lite & Four Shooting Riddles (2025, Japan; J-pop)58
Françoise Hardy – La question (1971, France; French pop, Brazilian saudade/bossa nova)59
Fust – Big Ugly (2025, US; rock)60
Geese – Getting Killed (2025, US; art/experimental rock)61
Gnome – King (2022, Belgium; stoner/prog/hard rock)62
Habak – Mil orquídeas en medio del desierto (2025, Mexico; melodic crust)63
Hallelujah the Hills – DECK (2025, US; indie rock)64
HANABIE – Bucchigiri Tokyo (2024, Japan; metalcore)65
Hatchie – Liquorice (2025, Australia; indie/dream pop)66
Hole – Live Through This (1994, US; alt rock)67
IAN – Come On Everybody, Let’s Do Nothing! (2025, UK; experimental, post-rock/metal)68
Igorrr – Amen (2025, France; experimental/avant-garde metal)69
Imperial Triumphant – Goldstar (2025, US; experimental metal)70
In the Womb of the Universe – Searching for Sunrise (2024, US; electronic, synthpop)71
In the Woods… – Otra (2025, Norway; avant-garde metal)72
Insomnium – Shadows of the Dying Sun (2014, Finland; melodic death metal)73
Jade Bird – Who Wants to Talk About Love (2025, UK; folk rock, singer-songwriter)74
JER – Death of the Heart (2025, US; ska punk)75
Jethro Tull – Thick as a Brick (1972, UK; prog rock)76
Judas Priest – Invincible Shield (2024, UK; heavy metal)77
Just Mustard – We Were Just Here (2025, Ireland; post-punk, noise, shoegaze, trip hop)78
Kaku P-Model – unZIP (2025, Japan; experimental, electronic)79
Kieran Hebden and William Tyler – 41 Longfield Street Late ‘80s (2025, UK; electronic)80
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Float Along – Fill Your Lungs (2013, Australia; psychedelic pop)81
Kostnatění – Přílišnost (2025, US; avant-garde black metal)82
Küenring – In Search of Paradise (2025, Austria; heavy metal/hard rock)83
L.A. Salami (artist, in general) (UK; folk, post-modern blues, acoustic, rock)84
Labyrinthus Stellarum – Rift in Reality (2025, Ukraine; atmospheric/cosmic black metal)85
Lorien Testard – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Original Soundtrack) (2025, France; soundtrack)86
Lorna Shore – I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me (2025, US; death metal/deathcore)87
Lucy Dacus – Forever is a Feeling (2025, US; indie rock, folk-pop, singer-songwriter)88
Maeror Tri – Multiple Personality Disorder (1993, Germany; ambient, noise, drone)89
Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force – Khadim (2025, Germany/Senegal; mbalax, experimental, dub techno)90
Marshall Allen – New Dawn (2025, US; avant-garde jazz)91
Max Cooper – On Being (2025, UK; electronic, ambient, avant-garde)92
Messa – The Spin (2025, Italy; doom metal)93
Michel Legrand – The Essential Michel Legrand Film Music Collection (2005, France; soundtrack, compilation)94
MIKE – Showbiz! (2025, US; hip-hop/rap)95
Miynt – Rain Money Dogs (2025, Sweden; indie/bedroom rock)96
Modern English – Mesh & Lace (1981, UK; post-punk)97
Momma – Welcome to My Blue Sky (2025, US; alt/indie rock)98
more eaze & claire rousay – no floor (2025, US; experimental, ambient, avant-pop, sound collage)99
Moron Police – Pachinko (2025, Norway; concept album)100
Morris Kolontyrsky – Origination (2025, US; ambient, drone, experimental)101
Nærværet – Når Man Ser Inn I En Annens Hjerte (2024, Sweden/Norway; experimental, field recording, tape manipulation/loops)102
Nailed to Obscurity – Generation of The Void (2025, Germany; melodic/prog death/doom metal)103
Nicolas Gombert & James Weeks / Apartment House – G O M B E R T (2025, Flanders/UK; contemporary classical)104
Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman – Lady of the Lake (2023, US; folk)105
Nout – Live Album (2024, France; alternative, punk, rock, jazz, noise)106
Olga Anna Markowska – Iskra (2025, Poland; modern classical, ambient)107
Ozzy Osbourne – Ozzmosis (1995, UK; heavy metal)108
Pino Palladino & Blake Mills – That Wasn’t a Dream (2025, Wales/US; experimental jazz)109
Point Mort – Le Point de Non-retour (2025, France; blackened crust postcore)110
Plague of Carcosa – In The Dreamless Deep (2025, US; doomnoise, experimental metal)111
Population II – Maintenant Jamais (2025, Canada; art/prog/psychedelic rock)112
Primal Scream – XTRMNTR (2000, Scotland; experimental electro-rock)113
Priscilla Block – Things You Didn’t See (2025, US; country, singer-songwriter)114
Psychonaut – World Maker (2025, Belgium; post-metal)115
Queens of the Stone Age – Alive in the Catacombs (2025, US; rock)116
Radiopuhelimet – Kosminen Tiedottomuus (2020, Finland; alt rock)117
Rebecca Foon & Aliayta Foon-Dancoes – Reverie (2025, Canada; modern classical)118
Rivers of Nihil – s/t (2025, US; death/prog metal)119
Rogue Jones – Dos Bebés (2023, Wales; folk, indie pop)120
Shayfer James – Summoning (2025, US; noir-pop, dark cabaret)121
Shedfromthebody – Whisper and Wane (2025, Finland; doomgaze, [post-]metal)122
Shepherds of Cassini – In Thrall to Heresy (2025, New Zealand; prog metal)123
Silvana Estrada – Vendrán Suaves Lluvias (2025, Mexico; singer-songwriter)124
Silvana Estrada (with Charlie Hunter) – Lo Sagrado (2017, Mexico/US; singer-songwriter)125
Širom – In the Wind of Night, Hard-Fallen Incantations Whisper (2025, Slovenia; instrumental avant-garde imaginary folk)126
SKC & The Poem – s/t (2025, Belgium; alt/folk rock)127
SKLOSS – The Pattern Speaks (2025, US/Scotland; space gaze, post-metal)128
Soulwax – All Systems Are Lying (2025, Belgium; electronic alt rock)129
Spiritbox – Tsunami Sea (2025, Canada; metalcore)130
State Azure – The Light That Remains (2025, UK; electronica, ambient, downtempo)131
Stereolab – Switched On Volumes 1-5 (2024, UK/France; avant-pop)132
Steve Tibbetts – Close (2025, US; jazz fusion)133
Stick To Your Guns – Keep Planting Flowers (2025, US; hardcore)134
Suede – Antidepressants (2025, UK; post-punk, gothic rock)135
Summer Walker – Finally Over It (2025, US; R&B, singer-songwriter)136
Susan Bear – Algorithmic Mood Music (2024, Scotland; electronic, alt-pop)137
Swansea Sound – Twentieth Century (2023, Wales; indie pop)138
TDJ (artist, in general) (Canada; electronic)139
Terveet Kädet – Lapin Helvetti (2015, Finland; hardcore punk)140
Tool – Lateralus (2001, US; prog rock/metal, art rock)141
The Bug Club – “Have U Ever Been 2 Wales” (2025, Wales; indie rock)142
The New Eves – The New Eve Is Rising (2025, UK; avant-garde/art rock)143
Trio del Mango – Cómelo (2025, US/Puerto Rico; experimental, noise)144
Turnstile – Never Enough (2025, US; alt rock)145
UNIVERSITY – McCartney, It’ll Be OK (2025, UK; punk, noise rock)146
Water Damage – Instruments (2025, US; experimental psych/drone-rock)147
Weakened Friends – Feels Like Hell (2025, US; indie rock)148
Weirs – Diamond Grove (2025, US; trad folk, experimental noise)149
Wet Leg – moisturizer (2025, UK; indie rock)150
White Lies – Five V2 (2019, UK; post-punk)151
X-Cetra – Summer 2000 (Y2K 25th Anniversary Edition) (2025, US; sleepover core, dance-pop)152
Yara Asmar – everyone I love is sleeping and I love them so so much (2025, Lebanon; modern classical/ambient)153
Yugen Blakrok – Anima Mysterium (2019, South Africa; hip-hop)154
Yws Gwynedd – Codi/ \Cysgu (2014, Wales; indie rock)155
Footnote Number. Fediverse username(s): Comments
- poisonous ↩︎
- buffyleigh: My emotional support album of the year. I’ve been a fan of AFI since 2000 but haven’t liked an album since 2006. The second I heard the first single “Behind The Clock”, my expectations for this album skyrocketed, and they were absolutely exceeded. It sounds nothing like anything they’ve ever done, and yet it feels like this was the album they’ve always been moving towards. Song of the year goes to the entirety of side A, and Davey Havok’s unexpectedly different sound on this album is my overall favourite vocal performance of year. ↩︎
- Braininabowl ↩︎
- umrk: top album requested by my kids in the car this year ↩︎
- brh ↩︎
- RolloTreadway: The most gloriously unhinged album I’ve heard this year. Twists together ideas from everywhere without the slightest consideration of whether doing so might be normal or accepted. The kind of album where a classic French chanson or some deep filthy funk just appears out of nowhere and then is never referred to again. It shouldn’t work but it absolutely does. ↩︎
- gavin57: That last one is an all-timer. It’s astonishing. ↩︎
- platenworm ↩︎
- rachelcholst ↩︎
- 3rik: This has been a year for nighttime music and music for trying to sleep. ↩︎
- swampgas: definitely my most played this year. A sludgy, deathdoom concept album about greed and gluttony and corruption thats riffy and groovy af. These are driving rhythms that chug hard! ↩︎
- MichaelMcWilliams: The one album that tops my list this year also appears in the 1001 Other Albums list. Band website offering free download of the album: https://au4.ca ↩︎
- brh ↩︎
- poisonous ↩︎
- jake4480 ↩︎
- mbr ↩︎
- riff: Most “Wait why did i never listen to this band before ?” of the year. ↩︎
- keefeglise ↩︎
- eamonn ↩︎
- _slotek_ ↩︎
- onuryasar: My kind of, very balanced Indie Pop: just the right amount of Indie but not too much and just the right amount of Pop but not too much 🙂 ↩︎
- icastico ↩︎
- santialone ↩︎
- eamonn ↩︎
- burnitdown || MetalheadDana ↩︎
- cloudtripper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_e5kKzlFqU&list=RD8_e5kKzlFqU&start_radio=1 ↩︎
- nevar23 ↩︎
- debonaire: Recency bias is pushing me to three Silvana Estrada albums. I love her voice, I love the music, I love her with Charlie Hunter. ↩︎
- otherdog ↩︎
- fistfulofdave: Aussie punk in the vein of The Saints and Radio Birdman. ↩︎
- rothko ↩︎
- Chigaze: what happens when four guys to go a cottage in Ontario, find a flow state, and record an album over a few days. I got to see them play the album through at the Winspear in Edmonton and it’s way up there on my concert experience list. ↩︎
- evilchili: The Italian singer and composer’s debut is a hypnotic journey of loops, bloops, and dramatic and impassioned vocalizations. ↩︎
- nellie_m ↩︎
- fistfulofdave: Blues metal? Shoegaze blues? I don’t know or care, I like it. ↩︎
- tym || niels ↩︎
- jake4480 ↩︎
- santialone ↩︎
- Kingu ↩︎
- tym || demon6 ↩︎
- otherdog ↩︎
- MetalheadDana: I listened to this album when it first came out in 2021 but for some reason it didn’t click with me. But apparently 2021 Dana had horrible taste in music, because in early 2025 I randomly tried Dodsrit – Mortal Coil again and fell in love and have been obsessed with it all year, it’s the perfect blend of crust punk and black metal and I love it. ↩︎
- TG_Esq ↩︎
- rustynail ↩︎
- alicemcalicepants ↩︎
- Chigaze: nails it just as a solid Dropkick’s album but goes farther with songs made for the times. “Who’ll Stand With Us” and “School Days Over” are amazing workers songs while “Chesterfields and Aftershave” takes me back to my own grandfather. ↩︎
- thesinkingbelle ↩︎
- Braininabowl ↩︎
- riff: Most listened this year. ↩︎
- Mark52 ↩︎
- Moss ↩︎
- e (eva) ↩︎
- steveroyle: Leaving out Never Enough by Turnstile as I’m sure that’ll get plenty of votes. ↩︎
- fistfulofdave: Angular, noise rock, neo-post punk. Unsettling, laid-back, yet aggressive. And yes it was the last album Steve Albini recorded. ↩︎
- MetalheadDana || demon6 ↩︎
- soundclamp: Runner-ups – https://lineimprint.bandcamp.com/album/muzak-for-the-encouragement-of-unproductivity; https://myheartaninvertedflame.bandcamp.com/album/my-heart-an-inverted-flame-apparitions-split; https://timbarnes.bandcamp.com/album/lost-words-1 ↩︎
- buffyleigh: I’ve known of Fever Ray since first seeing the TV show Vikings, but I for some reason didn’t check them out further until this year, when their s/t album came up for a blog post. I was floored. As it happens, their kinda sorta live album was set to come out soon after my first listen of the s/t, so I got caught up on the full Karin Dreijer discography, got super duper obsessed with their spectacular ARTE concert (which is essentially the same versions performed on the new album), and proceeded to be immensely inspired – nay, awakened – by this artist. ↩︎
- Kingu ↩︎
- onuryasar: I’ve first discovered the song Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex (I know, late comer), which brought me to Greg Gonzalez’s Wikipedia page, that says “Gonzalez was heavily inspired by French singer Françoise Hardy and her album La question”. I remember this album being mentioned in my Fedi timeline recently, so I gave it a spin and it turned on and on for the remainder of the year. [Editor’s note: Also see the 1001 OA spotlight on this album from earlier this year!] ↩︎
- rachelcholst ↩︎
- mynameistillian ↩︎
- burnitdown ↩︎
- demon6 ↩︎
- donutage: I was a bit skeptical of this, and sure, in a 52-song project there’s some unevenness, but between the sheer audacity of the attempt & the frequent successes it scores, definitely one of the more remarkable records of the year. ↩︎
- Tak ↩︎
- e (eva) ↩︎
- Lizahadiz ↩︎
- mbr ↩︎
- brh ↩︎
- umrk: my fav album released in 2025 ↩︎
- superflippy ↩︎
- raisedfist ↩︎
- gavin57 ↩︎
- Mark52: Jade Bird has been by far my most listened to album this year. ↩︎
- poisonous ↩︎
- derthomas: I kept coming back to this album because it just fits every mood. It’s peak Jethro Tull if you ask me, it’s perfect in any way. Also the Steven Wilson Remaster sounds incredible. ↩︎
- burnitdown ↩︎
- jebeyer: a longer list is here – https://www.buymusic.club/list/whistlingkitty-some-of-my-favorite-2025-releases ↩︎
- thesinkingbelle: honorable mentions – Scare – In The End, Was It Worth It; Creatvre – Toujours Humain ; Guck – Gucked Up ; AVTT/PTTN – AVTT/PTTN; Saor – Amidst the Ruins ; Jessica93 – 666 tours de periph’ ; Deadguy – Near-Death Travel Services; LS Dunes – Violet; Aesop Rock – I Heard It’s A Mess There Too ; Fishbone – Stockholm Syndrome ; Dead Pioneers – Po$t American ; Ethereal Wound – Defile | Demise; Sci Fi Industries – Initial States ↩︎
- soundclamp ↩︎
- cloudtripper ↩︎
- rustynail ↩︎
- derthomas: My AOTY from a very underground Heavy Metal band from Austria. ↩︎
- platenworm ↩︎
- raisedfist ↩︎
- thesinkingbelle ↩︎
- t4s: Honorable mentions – The Halo Effect, Machine Head, Heaven Shall Burn, Spiritbox, Jinjer, Allegaeon ↩︎
- rachelcholst ↩︎
- 3rik ↩︎
- Wintergr33n: Percussion-driven music from Senegal on a self-released album: https://ra.co/news/82509. ↩︎
- platenworm: 5 things that ruled my world musically this year:
– The Analog Africa Label
– The Artist L.A. Salami
– The knowledge that you can have too much music
– The knowledge that you can make your solo debut album when you are 100 years old……Hail Hail Marshall Allen
– And that everybody loved Ozzy ↩︎ - nellie_m: The music project that somehow touched me most deeply was the result of two years of work by Max Cooper. „Powerful works of art have traditionally sprung from some source deep within an artist and, if they strike the right tone, resonate with an audience to leave a lasting mark. But what if that equation were reversed: what if an artist were to draw their inspiration from deep within their audience, and use that to reflect those ideas, emotions, hopes, fears, pains and aspirations back to us?…“ ↩︎
- niels || TG_Esq || sentynel || otherdog || umrk ↩︎
- eamonn ↩︎
- jake4480 ↩︎
- steveroyle ↩︎
- alicemcalicepants ↩︎
- BramMeehan ↩︎
- avi_miller: All three fall into the more ambient realm, and they all are absolutely phenomenal. I love music that is based more around textures and creating a mood than creating a melody, and this year had some really good ones. ↩︎
- niels ↩︎
- TG_Esq ↩︎
- 3rik ↩︎
- raisedfist ↩︎
- keefeglise: Compositions by Nicholas Gombert and James Weeks. Performed by Apartment House. Flanders/UK. Contemporary Classical (Debatable! Gombert died in 1560.) ↩︎
- evilchili: Two hipster kids from Brooklyn play 100 year old Appalachian folk tunes and make them come alive. Honest, reverential, and true. ↩︎
- riff: “Instantly burned in my brain” this year (well, it was actually their KEXP session from april that blew my mind, but since i have to submit an album, it’ll do nicely 🙂 ). ↩︎
- avi_miller ↩︎
- derthomas: I discovered this album this year on a metal journey (yeah, late to the party) and I loved it. It’s my favourite Ozzy album. ↩︎
- _slotek_ ↩︎
- mbr ↩︎
- tym: Oh and not a brand new release, but the remaster and new tracks for the 20th anniversary reissue of ‘Takk…’ by Sigur Rós are pretty great. That and ( ) are still what I listen to the most, this year and apparently every year. ↩︎
- Kingu ↩︎
- epu: I had all but forgotten party drug enthusiasm tracks like ‘higher than the sun’ from 1991, and it turns out they made so many albums since I last tuned in. This one really resonates with my reaction to USpol this year. It rekindled my love for this band; I bought Evil Heat import on CD, my first physical purchase since last year. ↩︎
- Mark52 ↩︎
- sentynel ↩︎
- Braininabowl ↩︎
- jiiruu ↩︎
- avi_miller ↩︎
- jiiruu || t4s || gavin57 ↩︎
- Steffi ↩︎
- superflippy ↩︎
- rustynail: most played ↩︎
- sentynel ↩︎
- debonaire ↩︎
- debonaire ↩︎
- TwoClownsEating: I discovered this band in 2025. Absolutely incredible, I’ve bought their entire catalogue and had the privilege to see them live a few months ago. Unbelievably good musicians. Magical music. ↩︎
- jomel: 2025 was a great year for Belgian music. Stef Kamil Carlens, co-founder of dEUS has released a gem with his new band The Poem. I have seen SKC twice this year, once in a solo gig, and the second time (in less then 2 weeks) for the “worst Case scenario” rewind from (and so with) dEUS, those two concerts were fabulous, and at the time, I wasn’t expecting this release.
Bonus Albums: The live album from Depeche Mode – Memento Mori: Mexico City; Arvo Pârt – Credo (released Alpha Classics label) which includes his “hits” – Credo , Fratres , Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten (my favourite one) https://outhere-music.com/en/albums/arvo-part-credo; 2025 Bryan Ferry release, with Amelia Barrat as female lead singer/speaker. Some of his material came from the 70’s and were updated, it’s a timeless album, and elegant as always https://soundcloud.com/bryanferry/sets/loose-talk-4 ↩︎ - jebeyer ↩︎
- jomel: (AKA 2manydj’s) Yep, those guys will make you dance, and rock, I guess they’ve listened to Kraftwerk & Front242. ↩︎
- Tak ↩︎
- nellie_m ↩︎
- cloudtripper ↩︎
- _slotek_ ↩︎
- t4s ↩︎
- Lizahadiz ↩︎
- slamma ↩︎
- e (eva): algorithmic mood music was my fav last year! but i’m still listening to it and i didn’t submit anything then. ↩︎
- Steffi ↩︎
- BramMeehan: I’ve listened to so much TDJ, though no one release in particular. ↩︎
- jiiruu ↩︎
- buffyleigh: There’s so many other albums I’d love to list here for exposure, but it feels more honest to list this masterpiece, my first obsession of the year, courtesy of catching their amazing set at the big Black Sabbath/Ozzy send-off concert. I mean, I even titled my AOTY list “Forty Six & 2”, since that was the first song Tool played there and got my attention. Said list is here. ↩︎
- epu: Ok, this one’s kind of a cheat, it’s an EP.
2024, my friend turned me on to Bug Club for its lo-fi production aesthetic, humor and infectious fun/dark undertones. Marriage from 2023 album ‘Rare Birds: Hour of Song’ was the hook.
You can get this band straight into your heart and mind with this EP. And it takes me back to that one time I did go to Wales. ↩︎ - jomel: This newcomer British female band has written the ultimate feminist anthem as opening track. || RolloTreadway: I don’t tend to be very much of a rock person, so for a big brash rock record to have such an impact on me must say something. It’s noisy and it’s loud and it has guitars and drums and punkiness. And, er, flutes. Harmonicas. Cellos. Weird interpretations of bible stories. All chaos and absurdity and celebration and being absolutely done with the patriarchy and above all else fun. So much fun. ↩︎
- soundclamp ↩︎
- santialone ↩︎
- steveroyle ↩︎
- jebeyer ↩︎
- donutage: far & away my number 1; an angry & desperate neo-grunge banger. Sonia Sturino is a force of nature. ↩︎
- RolloTreadway: In parts weird and experimental, in others traditional. Here there’s strange droney noise, and then there’s some light, old-fashioned fiddle playing. Electronic distortion, a choir recorded live outdoors singing a simple hymn. It’s an astonishingly creative and unique folk record. ↩︎
- donutage: not as jaw-dropping as their debut (my runaway 2022 fave), but with a lot of the same qualities. It’s dancy, smart, & sexy, without ever once being submissive. || slamma ↩︎
- alicemcalicepants ↩︎
- slamma ↩︎
- keefeglise ↩︎
- evilchili: Afro-futurist South African Hip-Hop Mysticism. Blakrok instantly became my favourite female MC. ↩︎
- Steffi ↩︎
#AOTY #AOTY2025 #CastleRat #Deafheaven #DieSpitz #Faetooth #ListenToThis #Messa #music #musicDiscovery #RiversOfNihil #TheNewEves #WetLeg
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Re-listen Liveblog: La Belle Sauvage
Doing a re-listen of books 1-2 in the Book of Dust trilogy, since book 3 just came out.
I just finished the first one, La Belle Sauvage, liveblogging it on Mastodon and on Bluesky, Here’s a roundup post.
(I haven’t read this book since it came out in 2017, and I deliberately didn’t reread my original 2017 reaction post to LBS until now. Feel free to look through both, see which things I had different reactions about, and how many times I just noticed the same thing twice.)
La Belle Sauvage, chapters 1-3:
This starts off so strong. Like Lyra opening TGC, Malcolm is an active, curious, fun kid! We get a ton of worldbuilding through the places he explores, and a ton more through “noticing what the adults pointedly aren’t telling him.”
Not sure how well a reader could follow the background mystery if you didn’t know all the names and references from HDM. But if you have, it’s really juicy. Malcolm obvs has no idea, and it’s great how he fills the gaps with wild speculation.
Our one glimpse of baby Lyra so far was super charming.
Chapter 4:
Detour into the POV of Farder Coram.
In retrospect, a lot of this is an excuse to recap things we know from HDM, but the writing is engaging enough that it’s hard to mind.
[Note after rereading my original reaction post: Huh, this annoyed me a lot more the first time around. Apparently it gets a lot more tolerable when you haven’t been deep in the original HDM recently.]
Chapters 5-6:
Hannah Relf, and the whole field of “alethiometry as a serious academic discipline” that she belongs to, is barely in HDM. Really cool to see it showcased with her younger self in action here.
The way Malcolm gets roped into her spycraft is a little contrived, but I’ll allow it. Hannah’s ongoing stress about the morality of it helps.
(Made more sense when adults were recruiting Lyra, she wasn’t just an unusually-sharp 11-year-old, they also knew she was part of an Important Prophecy.)
The first titles Hannah lends Malcolm turn out to be “The Body in the Library” and “A Brief History of Time.”
Anybody out there written “HDM AU of Agatha Christie”? It’s canon now.
Chapters 7-9:
Getting into the League of St. Alexander plot now, and, oof, still hits hard. An upsettingly realistic story of a group of kids being manipulated into turning on each other, and on the actually-supportive adults in their lives.
Reminds me of the school sections in Nona the Ninth. There’s high-stakes politics and espionage happening around them, people are getting killed, we have a small group of good teachers trying their best to get normal lessons to the kids in spite of it all, and the whole thing is from the POV of the kids, who aren’t officially being told much, but they know something is up. Lots of urgently passing rumors, on the level of “well, my dad says he heard such-and-such, so I reckon that means…”
Very different setups, but still, lots of parallels! And both good.
Oh, one more thing!
This St. Alexander appears to be an in-universe creation, but the Church official who tells his story also talks to the kids about Jesus – not in detail, just mentions of things like, their job is to spread The Love Of Jesus(TM).
I checked out the HDM ebooks just to text-search them. The name “Christ” never comes up. The name “Jesus” only comes up in TAS, and it’s from Mary Malone. (Talking to Lyra — no mention of whether Lyra recognizes the name.) Nobody ever mentions Christmas or Easter, either.
The Magisterium is explicitly Christian — TGC has Lyra mention someone being “baptized as a Christian.” (After that, the term disappears until, again, Mary in TAS uses it.) So this felt like a worldbuilding point, that their doctrine specifically de-emphasizes Jesus. No obligatory prayers, no lip service to “what would Jesus do,” no framing their actions in terms of “following the Word of Christ,” no references at all.
…And now we’re in LBS, and this random person is telling a group of elementary-school kids “of course this is a Proper Country where we follow the Good Word about Jesus,” like of course that’s a common thing they’ve all heard of.
Is this difference also a worldbuilding point? Or is it a Doylist thing where, in writing HDM, Pullman wasn’t ready to antagonize Jesus’ fans that directly, and now he is?
(So far, no idea! TBD if anything in future chapters will make it clearer.)
[Post-reread note: They did not make it clearer.]
Chapters 10-11:
Lors Asriel! HDM readers know in a few years he’ll murder a kid Malcolm’s age for a military advantage, but here, Malcolm doesn’t pick up anything sinister at all. Personal charisma on full blast. Don’t remember if Malcolm ever learns different, or not.
[Post-reread note: Well, not in this book, at least.]
Stray daemon details that caught my eye:
- The shop teacher’s woodpecker daemon drills holes in scrap wood as a nervous tic
- Malcolm’s unsettled Aster can take chimera forms, like an owl with duck feathers, but only experiments with that when nobody else is watching
- Hyena daemon urinates in the road, while looking at Malcolm. Makes him feel so dirty/violated that he’s too embarrassed to tell anyone until his next meeting with Hannah
Are we supposed to believe daemons have been doing that (just, you know, normally in private) all along? Not sure I buy it.
[Post-reread note: There’s an upcoming journey with baby Lyra in which Malcolm is constantly aware of how often she needs to be fed and changed. The idea of feeding/changing Pan is never even mentioned. So, yeah, I don’t think it’s a general daemon bodily function. I think it’s is a skill this specific daemon has cultivated to freak people out.]
Chapters 12-13:
Oh, huh. Argument at Malcolm’s family pub, the phrase “scientific management of resources” gets thrown around. A slip from Pullman, or was “experimental theology” supposed to be a term from Church-controlled circles, not common in the general public?
[Post-reread note: For now, I think it was just a slip from Pullman.]
Argument is about the upcoming plot-point flood.
Seems worth noting that the “modern, scientific” proponents are all characters who are going to be proven wrong. The Right Understanding comes from “the ancient wisdom of the gyptians who know how to read the signs” and “one guy’s granny.”
Hannah gets access to a contraband alethiometer! From the description, this is the one Lyra will eventually get.
Contrast to the Bodleian Library one she was using officially. Don’t think I realized there were different models before this. With only 6 ever made, I figured they were a matching set.
The Bodleian one has full-color symbols! The stolen one has plain black ink lineart.
Idle theorizing: all 6 were originally made with black lineart, but that faceplate was damaged and replaced at some point. The new artist either was told to paint the new symbols fancier, or just had fun with it.
End of this latest chapter refers to Bonneville (the guy with the hyena daemon) as “a physicist.”
So much for my half-baked theory that maybe “experimental theology” was a replacement term for “physics” specifically.
Chapters 14-15:
Higher-up spies encourage Hannah to keep talking with (from their POV) this random 11-year-old, but it gets in-universe justified in a way that works for me. (…I mean narratively, not ethically.)
Alice (teen kitchen worker) calls Lyra a “little flirt” for giggling at Malcolm. Not creepy on its own, that’s a joke people make about babies…but knowing that Pullman is planning future Lyra/Malcolm, with more explicitly-creepy stuff in the lead-up…yeah, this is a retroactive big oof.
Malcolm gets to meet Mrs. Coulter! Unlike with Asriel, he gets a bad vibe off her immediately. Well, she’s on track to murder a lot more children than Asriel will, so maybe it’s fair.
(Also, Asriel shows care for Lyra, which biases Malcolm toward him instantly.)
Part 1 ends (at the 54% mark) with the predicted Big Flood hitting. Alice, Malcolm, and Lyra get stranded together in a boat.
Everything I remember being “meh” about this book is on their river journey. Plunging apprehensively onward…
Chapter 16:
Worldbuilding detail: pharmacies are marked with a green cross. (Not sure from context if it’s just a palette-swapped ➕️, or an actual ✝️.)
The dynamic between Alice and Malcolm is really good here. Grudging teamwork.
Malcolm and Aster see a drowned body during the flooding, and wonder “what happens to daemons when you die?”
Surprised they wouldn’t know. Even with no deaths in their close family, surely it’s a thing children are taught about? (They’ve been reading murder mysteries! It never came up?)
Different chat a few chapters ago, they saw Pan turning into a mole, and wondered how a baby daemon knows how to turn into a creature they’ve never actually seen.
That I liked, because it doesn’t seem like there’s a clear, generally-known answer. One adult daemon offered “You just feel mole-y.”
Chapter 17:
Mention of a prophecy about “a boy” that might be Malcolm.
Feels like overkill? Like “he can’t just be a normal person caught up in Lyra’s cosmic destiny, he’s gotta be special too.” (Don’t remember if there’s payoff for this later. Might like it more if it’s good. TBD.)
[Post-reread note: There was not.]
Chapter 18:
Not much to say here except “go Alice.” Previously seen decking Bonneville with a chair, now she gets off a gun at him.
Bonneville mentions “experimental theology” to Malcolm. Guess he doesn’t use “science”…?
Malcolm has been seeing flecks/lights that Hannah thinks are migraine auras. He misheard it as “auroras”. Unsubtle hint that this is Dust’s way of guiding him? Hasn’t been plot-pivotal yet, so we’ll see.
[Post-reread note: It was not.]
Chapter 19:
Reappearance of a trusted ally I forgot was coming back at all! Surprised and delighted.
Kitten!Pan kneads Malcolm’s hand as he rocks Lyra. He thinks “she’s too young to know it’s taboo,” but I expect it’d hurt if she didn’t feel so comfy and cared-for with him.
Earlier hints of “things in the river” now expanded with examples: mermaids, Father Thames, “old gods.”
I know we meet some of these in later chapters. And, look, I’m good with Lyra’s world having more fantastical beings than we already saw. But it sure would be weird if, after all HDM, the message of LBS was “sure, the Magisterium is evil and their god sucks, but science also sucks and will lead you astray, the truth is in following the right religion and trusting the better gods.”
Don’t remember if that’s how it actually ends! Just noting, as of now, the vibes feel odd.
[Post-reread note: Good news, I don’t think that was the message. The possibly-god-ish creatures we meet are no more or less trustworthy than other people.]
Chapter 20:
Evil Magisterium group kidnapped Lyra, after a St. Alexander kid in the refugee group tipped them off. Malcolm hates him, which is fair, but his own family are also so awful to him that I get why he was won over in the first place. Praise and affirmation for a kid who isn’t getting any at home is one heck of a drug.
The daring rescue is quite good! The Alice-Malcolm teamwork is really flourishing by now.
Malcolm’s “aurora” pops up again, but only to highlight the place they were already going. Finding Lyra is all their own ingenuity.
Chapter 21:
Last quarter of the book, and now things get outright magical.
Washing up on the island of a mystery woman with a cloud of butterflies. Malcolm first assumes one of them is her daemon, then wonders if, somehow, all of them are. Hey, I’ve written that fic.
A bag they took off Bonneville has…an alethiometer inside. Malcolm figures it’s the famous missing one.
Explains how conveniently Bonneville always caught up to them! And maybe why he was so convinced that “kidnapping Lyra” was the key to fixing his life in the first place.
They leave the alethiometer with the probably-faerie woman. So I guess from now on it’ll be Missing For Real forever.
At least it’s a more poetic end than “the kids drop it in the water and it gets crushed in the flood.” Getting some One Ring vibes here. It won’t get lost when it doesn’t want to.
Chapter 22:
Oh, they didn’t trade the alethiometer to the faerie, just its nice box? Huh. That’s less poetic, but a savvier move from Malcolm, so good for him.
New batch of probably-faeries, in fancy dress, in the garden of a fancy-but-unreachable manor. They each have a bird, which might or might not be daemons.
Really like the setup of “desolate ruins, hidden just outside the beautiful tranquil sphere of the garden.” Classic Fairyland worldbuilding.
…And Bonneville isn’t dead, again. Ugh.
Unless this is a faerie-thing taking his shape? Others are taking shapes of people familiar to Alice+Malcolm, including at least one who’s dead. Although I don’t remember him being that…and it’s enough of a satisfying twist, I feel like I would?
[Post-reread note: No luck, this is just Bonneville.]
This might retroactively ruin my “oh, nice, the alethiometer justifies how conveniently he always caught up with them” satisfaction.
Will the narrative give him a new justification for this round? TBD.
[Post-reread note: It did not.]
Chapter 23:
Meeting a giant in the water, talking him into opening a set of gates. Fully fairy-tale logic here, with Little Nemo type imagery. This team could make it through the Phantom Tollbooth or survive the Labyrinth, easy.
They figure this guy is the minor god of some tributary, since he works for Father Thames, god of the Thames. Logical enough.
Also, part of their scheme is making him believe Lyra is a princess. Not clear if he’s just gullible, or she has supernatural Princess Vibes that he can sense.
Back in normal reality, a witch! Most human person they’ve met all day, but with her Arctic-tern daemon not in range at first, poor Malcolm assumes otherwise.
(Briefly wonders if her branch of cloud-pine is her daemon. …I’ve written that fic too.)
Okay, I know from HDM why the witches would have an interest in Lyra. What I’m not sure of is, why didn’t this one try to either (depending on clan) guide her to safety, or kill her?
She shields them with what H2G2 would call a Somebody Else’s Problem field, but then just flies off again. Hmm.
[Post-reread note: Yeah, this never gets resolved or comes up again. Why even put her in the book??]
Chapter 24:
Alice swiped a bunch of food from the faerie garden party, and the whole crew eats some now. I’m surprised it’s still food-shaped, outside that sphere of magic influence. They’re not hesitant to eat it, hm.
I didn’t mention before, but the faerie woman with the butterflies breastfed Lyra, and Malcolm+Alice were immediately suspicious. So they have some idea of the dangers of eating unseelie food…
[Post-reread note: Yeah, this goes nowhere.]
Getting foreshadowing now that Bonneville is a ghost, which would be fine by me!
…Nope, he’s alive, hyena daemon and all. Dammit.
Malcolm, almost in these words: “I need an adult”
Valid, buddy.
Anyway, we’re trying to murder him again, and this time the hyena vanishes, so I guess it finally took. About time.
Bonneville grabbed Alice’s daemon to force her to follow him, so Malcolm followed to help, while his own daemon stayed to guard Lyra. Forced to endure the distance pain because they had no one else to rely on. That was a good heroic sequence there!
Mixed feelings about the rest. Alice already beat this guy twice, and yet he gets to keep coming back, until the boy character takes him on? Malcolm succeeds with an oar when Alice couldn’t with An Actual Gun? Not my favorite twist.
There’s been an air of SA around Bonneville for a while. He got shunned from academia over an unspecified sex crime, which got mentioned so much that I figured it was setting up a dramatic reveal of the details, but now it seems like maybe not?
Point is, it’s not unexpected that he tries to assault Alice. (Vague about the extent of it, since Malcolm’s POV doesn’t fully process what he sees.)
But before now, all his creepiness was a means to the end of kidnapping Lyra. And here it seems like he forgets all about Lyra, his main goal is to assault Alice.
We know why Lyra was worth a massive multi-day boat chase: she’s Mrs. Coulter’s baby, and he wanted her influence on his side.
But why is Alice worth that?
There’s no nice way to put this, sorry in advance: why not go after any of the thousand closer teenage girls who would be easier targets? This is so much work to attack a specific girl! Predators are lazy!
I can sure imagine it being about “revenge for those two times she nearly killed him.”
But: He doesn’t show that. There’s no “haha, now you’ll be sorry for everything you did to me!” type gloating. Can’t think of anything that foreshadowed his priority-switch away from Lyra. This is just me retconning in a reason, not the book giving one.
One chapter left to go.
The list of “points I expect this book to leave unresolved” has gotten pretty long. On first read, I remember thinking they were left hanging for the sequel to pick up! They…were not.
Here goes nothing…
Chapter 25, thread 1:
I do like that they’ve washed up in a graveyard this time. Coffins in a stone mausoleum give them justifiably-still-dry wood to build fires with.
Malcolm apologizes a lot to the skeletons. Good kid.
…It’s just occurring to me that I would’ve loved a reveal that the hints about ghosts were foreshadowing “the ghosts of the graveyard, moved and affirmed by Malcolm’s respect, rise up to help him kill Bonneville.”
Doubly so if this was Ghost Bonneville, seeking revenge on Alice for killing him. That unfinished business could have guided him after Alice, and Malcolm would need the supernatural help of the graveyard ghosts to kill him double-plus-dead.
Feeling a little cheated we didn’t get this now, ngl :(
Back on the morning after the flood, Hannah deduced that Malcolm would try to take Lyra to Asriel’s address.
Good payoff: her allies have had boats looking for the canoe ever since. They even found Asriel first, got him in a boat, and so they found the canoe on the water! Probably would’ve fallen apart before the kids reached him, so instead, he reaches them. Moments before a Magisterium boat does, even! A good dramatic rescue scene.
Bad lack-of-payoff: Did Hannah’s cool secret alethiometer come to anything at all?
She didn’t use it to figure out where Malcolm was going, she just deduced that from the evidence + how well she knows Malcolm.
[Post-reread note: I didn’t comment at the time, but this was in chapter 17. Which is also Hannah’s last appearance in the book. She gets mentioned in chapters 18 and 22, but never shows up on-page again.]
To be clear, I like that bit! Their friendship is genuine and important. Giving it that kind of plot payoff was good!
But there was never a different plot point that she did need the alethiometer for.
There was also plenty of setup about how difficult it is. It takes a lot of study and cross-referencing. Hannah doesn’t have the magical intuition that Lyra does.
So you could’ve made the payoff out of that instead. It answered something for her, she’s poring over the books looking at the symbols…and we, the readers, can connect them all to the bizarre events of Malcolm and Alice’s Excellent Unseelie Adventure. But Hannah doesn’t have that context. At last, she despairs. “I can’t do it! This is out of my league! It’s so obscure and complicated, only a genius could figure it out.”
[Cue Lyra’s leitmotif from HDM playing in the background.]
Heck, drop the whole Special Bonus Witch Prophecy, let Hannah deduce “a boy is going on a journey carrying a treasure” from the symbols she reads. She just can’t interpret anything more helpful, like “pick him up at this date and time.”
Oh, and! About that prophecy! Why didn’t it say “a boy and a girl”?
Alice was integral to Lyra surviving this trip. She did half the carrying! What gives, prophets? Behind every man is an unacknowledged woman, even in a witch prophecy??
Chapter 25, thread 2:
Alice gets to yell at Lord Asriel about how great Malcolm is, so don’t you dare disrespect everything he’s done.
I like this! Well-earned!
Alice has never hesitated to tell off Malcolm when she has a problem with him. So this reversal, telling off someone else in his defense, is really fulfilling. And you know she means it.
From here they get to Jordan College, via Asriel flying a gyropter. (Helicopter.) I’m retroactively surprised Malcolm+Alice haven’t heard any before. Wouldn’t they be used for rescues? And to survey the flood damage?
They gyropters also have earmuff/microphone setups to communicate over the rotors. Which has me retroactively wondering why nobody else has used radio. Not to communicate, not for news reports, not to play music in the pub…
I was vaguely assuming the tech didn’t exist here! Now…huh.
Asriel basically dumps the kids at Jordan (literally, the last scene is Malcolm collapsing on their carpet) and immediately biffs off to the North. A+ parenting, right there.
Most of this journey has been “washing up at a sanctuary, feeling safe for a short time, then having to flee”, so it’s a little anticlimactic to end on “but THIS time it’ll be fine, no worries, roll credits.”
I’d feel better if Hannah was here to greet them! Which would also salve the lack of Hannah in the back half of the book. She got a few scenes, chapters ago, then totally disappeared. Unsatisfying.
(And just imagine if Hannah had brought Malcolm+Alice’s parents! We didn’t actually meet Alice’s before, but we met Malcolm’s, and surely all of them deserve that reunion!)
One more anticlimax: Asriel tells the kids “never talk about this, not with anyone but each other, then you’ll be safe.”
Not buying that at all.
Their school is full of junior Magisterium spies. Teachers were getting fired. A local guy stood up to Church agents at the pub once, then he and his family had to flee the district.
The town knows which kids went missing during the flood. And which one had a canoe.
What stops the Church from kidnapping these kids the minute they get home, and forcing the intel out of them?
…on a more upbeat note, why not give the kids clearance to talk about it with a whole circle of specific adults Asriel trusts? Farder Coram counts. Hannah deserves to.
It took support, intel, and prep from several sympathetic adults to get these kids through the flood. If we ended with Asriel setting up a group of supporters to get them through whatever danger the Church brings down next, I’d feel reassured!
But nope.
So that’s La Belle Sauvage. Really strong start! Faceplanted in a whole lot of ways by the end.
Might need a new thread for the “and ANOTHER thing that never got resolved–!” reactions that will undoubtedly hit me over the rest of the night.
(TSC is checked out. Will start that some time soon.)
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Re-listen Liveblog: La Belle Sauvage
Doing a re-listen of books 1-2 in the Book of Dust trilogy, since book 3 just came out.
I just finished the first one, La Belle Sauvage, liveblogging it on Mastodon and on Bluesky, Here’s a roundup post.
(I haven’t read this book since it came out in 2017, and I deliberately didn’t reread my original 2017 reaction post to LBS until now. Feel free to look through both, see which things I had different reactions about, and how many times I just noticed the same thing twice.)
La Belle Sauvage, chapters 1-3:
This starts off so strong. Like Lyra opening TGC, Malcolm is an active, curious, fun kid! We get a ton of worldbuilding through the places he explores, and a ton more through “noticing what the adults pointedly aren’t telling him.”
Not sure how well a reader could follow the background mystery if you didn’t know all the names and references from HDM. But if you have, it’s really juicy. Malcolm obvs has no idea, and it’s great how he fills the gaps with wild speculation.
Our one glimpse of baby Lyra so far was super charming.
Chapter 4:
Detour into the POV of Farder Coram.
In retrospect, a lot of this is an excuse to recap things we know from HDM, but the writing is engaging enough that it’s hard to mind.
[Note after rereading my original reaction post: Huh, this annoyed me a lot more the first time around. Apparently it gets a lot more tolerable when you haven’t been deep in the original HDM recently.]
Chapters 5-6:
Hannah Relf, and the whole field of “alethiometry as a serious academic discipline” that she belongs to, is barely in HDM. Really cool to see it showcased with her younger self in action here.
The way Malcolm gets roped into her spycraft is a little contrived, but I’ll allow it. Hannah’s ongoing stress about the morality of it helps.
(Made more sense when adults were recruiting Lyra, she wasn’t just an unusually-sharp 11-year-old, they also knew she was part of an Important Prophecy.)
The first titles Hannah lends Malcolm turn out to be “The Body in the Library” and “A Brief History of Time.”
Anybody out there written “HDM AU of Agatha Christie”? It’s canon now.
Chapters 7-9:
Getting into the League of St. Alexander plot now, and, oof, still hits hard. An upsettingly realistic story of a group of kids being manipulated into turning on each other, and on the actually-supportive adults in their lives.
Reminds me of the school sections in Nona the Ninth. There’s high-stakes politics and espionage happening around them, people are getting killed, we have a small group of good teachers trying their best to get normal lessons to the kids in spite of it all, and the whole thing is from the POV of the kids, who aren’t officially being told much, but they know something is up. Lots of urgently passing rumors, on the level of “well, my dad says he heard such-and-such, so I reckon that means…”
Very different setups, but still, lots of parallels! And both good.
Oh, one more thing!
This St. Alexander appears to be an in-universe creation, but the Church official who tells his story also talks to the kids about Jesus – not in detail, just mentions of things like, their job is to spread The Love Of Jesus(TM).
I checked out the HDM ebooks just to text-search them. The name “Christ” never comes up. The name “Jesus” only comes up in TAS, and it’s from Mary Malone. (Talking to Lyra — no mention of whether Lyra recognizes the name.) Nobody ever mentions Christmas or Easter, either.
The Magisterium is explicitly Christian — TGC has Lyra mention someone being “baptized as a Christian.” (After that, the term disappears until, again, Mary in TAS uses it.) So this felt like a worldbuilding point, that their doctrine specifically de-emphasizes Jesus. No obligatory prayers, no lip service to “what would Jesus do,” no framing their actions in terms of “following the Word of Christ,” no references at all.
…And now we’re in LBS, and this random person is telling a group of elementary-school kids “of course this is a Proper Country where we follow the Good Word about Jesus,” like of course that’s a common thing they’ve all heard of.
Is this difference also a worldbuilding point? Or is it a Doylist thing where, in writing HDM, Pullman wasn’t ready to antagonize Jesus’ fans that directly, and now he is?
(So far, no idea! TBD if anything in future chapters will make it clearer.)
[Post-reread note: They did not make it clearer.]
Chapters 10-11:
Lors Asriel! HDM readers know in a few years he’ll murder a kid Malcolm’s age for a military advantage, but here, Malcolm doesn’t pick up anything sinister at all. Personal charisma on full blast. Don’t remember if Malcolm ever learns different, or not.
[Post-reread note: Well, not in this book, at least.]
Stray daemon details that caught my eye:
- The shop teacher’s woodpecker daemon drills holes in scrap wood as a nervous tic
- Malcolm’s unsettled Aster can take chimera forms, like an owl with duck feathers, but only experiments with that when nobody else is watching
- Hyena daemon urinates in the road, while looking at Malcolm. Makes him feel so dirty/violated that he’s too embarrassed to tell anyone until his next meeting with Hannah
Are we supposed to believe daemons have been doing that (just, you know, normally in private) all along? Not sure I buy it.
[Post-reread note: There’s an upcoming journey with baby Lyra in which Malcolm is constantly aware of how often she needs to be fed and changed. The idea of feeding/changing Pan is never even mentioned. So, yeah, I don’t think it’s a general daemon bodily function. I think it’s is a skill this specific daemon has cultivated to freak people out.]
Chapters 12-13:
Oh, huh. Argument at Malcolm’s family pub, the phrase “scientific management of resources” gets thrown around. A slip from Pullman, or was “experimental theology” supposed to be a term from Church-controlled circles, not common in the general public?
[Post-reread note: For now, I think it was just a slip from Pullman.]
Argument is about the upcoming plot-point flood.
Seems worth noting that the “modern, scientific” proponents are all characters who are going to be proven wrong. The Right Understanding comes from “the ancient wisdom of the gyptians who know how to read the signs” and “one guy’s granny.”
Hannah gets access to a contraband alethiometer! From the description, this is the one Lyra will eventually get.
Contrast to the Bodleian Library one she was using officially. Don’t think I realized there were different models before this. With only 6 ever made, I figured they were a matching set.
The Bodleian one has full-color symbols! The stolen one has plain black ink lineart.
Idle theorizing: all 6 were originally made with black lineart, but that faceplate was damaged and replaced at some point. The new artist either was told to paint the new symbols fancier, or just had fun with it.
End of this latest chapter refers to Bonneville (the guy with the hyena daemon) as “a physicist.”
So much for my half-baked theory that maybe “experimental theology” was a replacement term for “physics” specifically.
Chapters 14-15:
Higher-up spies encourage Hannah to keep talking with (from their POV) this random 11-year-old, but it gets in-universe justified in a way that works for me. (…I mean narratively, not ethically.)
Alice (teen kitchen worker) calls Lyra a “little flirt” for giggling at Malcolm. Not creepy on its own, that’s a joke people make about babies…but knowing that Pullman is planning future Lyra/Malcolm, with more explicitly-creepy stuff in the lead-up…yeah, this is a retroactive big oof.
Malcolm gets to meet Mrs. Coulter! Unlike with Asriel, he gets a bad vibe off her immediately. Well, she’s on track to murder a lot more children than Asriel will, so maybe it’s fair.
(Also, Asriel shows care for Lyra, which biases Malcolm toward him instantly.)
Part 1 ends (at the 54% mark) with the predicted Big Flood hitting. Alice, Malcolm, and Lyra get stranded together in a boat.
Everything I remember being “meh” about this book is on their river journey. Plunging apprehensively onward…
Chapter 16:
Worldbuilding detail: pharmacies are marked with a green cross. (Not sure from context if it’s just a palette-swapped ➕️, or an actual ✝️.)
The dynamic between Alice and Malcolm is really good here. Grudging teamwork.
Malcolm and Aster see a drowned body during the flooding, and wonder “what happens to daemons when you die?”
Surprised they wouldn’t know. Even with no deaths in their close family, surely it’s a thing children are taught about? (They’ve been reading murder mysteries! It never came up?)
Different chat a few chapters ago, they saw Pan turning into a mole, and wondered how a baby daemon knows how to turn into a creature they’ve never actually seen.
That I liked, because it doesn’t seem like there’s a clear, generally-known answer. One adult daemon offered “You just feel mole-y.”
Chapter 17:
Mention of a prophecy about “a boy” that might be Malcolm.
Feels like overkill? Like “he can’t just be a normal person caught up in Lyra’s cosmic destiny, he’s gotta be special too.” (Don’t remember if there’s payoff for this later. Might like it more if it’s good. TBD.)
[Post-reread note: There was not.]
Chapter 18:
Not much to say here except “go Alice.” Previously seen decking Bonneville with a chair, now she gets off a gun at him.
Bonneville mentions “experimental theology” to Malcolm. Guess he doesn’t use “science”…?
Malcolm has been seeing flecks/lights that Hannah thinks are migraine auras. He misheard it as “auroras”. Unsubtle hint that this is Dust’s way of guiding him? Hasn’t been plot-pivotal yet, so we’ll see.
[Post-reread note: It was not.]
Chapter 19:
Reappearance of a trusted ally I forgot was coming back at all! Surprised and delighted.
Kitten!Pan kneads Malcolm’s hand as he rocks Lyra. He thinks “she’s too young to know it’s taboo,” but I expect it’d hurt if she didn’t feel so comfy and cared-for with him.
Earlier hints of “things in the river” now expanded with examples: mermaids, Father Thames, “old gods.”
I know we meet some of these in later chapters. And, look, I’m good with Lyra’s world having more fantastical beings than we already saw. But it sure would be weird if, after all HDM, the message of LBS was “sure, the Magisterium is evil and their god sucks, but science also sucks and will lead you astray, the truth is in following the right religion and trusting the better gods.”
Don’t remember if that’s how it actually ends! Just noting, as of now, the vibes feel odd.
[Post-reread note: Good news, I don’t think that was the message. The possibly-god-ish creatures we meet are no more or less trustworthy than other people.]
Chapter 20:
Evil Magisterium group kidnapped Lyra, after a St. Alexander kid in the refugee group tipped them off. Malcolm hates him, which is fair, but his own family are also so awful to him that I get why he was won over in the first place. Praise and affirmation for a kid who isn’t getting any at home is one heck of a drug.
The daring rescue is quite good! The Alice-Malcolm teamwork is really flourishing by now.
Malcolm’s “aurora” pops up again, but only to highlight the place they were already going. Finding Lyra is all their own ingenuity.
Chapter 21:
Last quarter of the book, and now things get outright magical.
Washing up on the island of a mystery woman with a cloud of butterflies. Malcolm first assumes one of them is her daemon, then wonders if, somehow, all of them are. Hey, I’ve written that fic.
A bag they took off Bonneville has…an alethiometer inside. Malcolm figures it’s the famous missing one.
Explains how conveniently Bonneville always caught up to them! And maybe why he was so convinced that “kidnapping Lyra” was the key to fixing his life in the first place.
They leave the alethiometer with the probably-faerie woman. So I guess from now on it’ll be Missing For Real forever.
At least it’s a more poetic end than “the kids drop it in the water and it gets crushed in the flood.” Getting some One Ring vibes here. It won’t get lost when it doesn’t want to.
Chapter 22:
Oh, they didn’t trade the alethiometer to the faerie, just its nice box? Huh. That’s less poetic, but a savvier move from Malcolm, so good for him.
New batch of probably-faeries, in fancy dress, in the garden of a fancy-but-unreachable manor. They each have a bird, which might or might not be daemons.
Really like the setup of “desolate ruins, hidden just outside the beautiful tranquil sphere of the garden.” Classic Fairyland worldbuilding.
…And Bonneville isn’t dead, again. Ugh.
Unless this is a faerie-thing taking his shape? Others are taking shapes of people familiar to Alice+Malcolm, including at least one who’s dead. Although I don’t remember him being that…and it’s enough of a satisfying twist, I feel like I would?
[Post-reread note: No luck, this is just Bonneville.]
This might retroactively ruin my “oh, nice, the alethiometer justifies how conveniently he always caught up with them” satisfaction.
Will the narrative give him a new justification for this round? TBD.
[Post-reread note: It did not.]
Chapter 23:
Meeting a giant in the water, talking him into opening a set of gates. Fully fairy-tale logic here, with Little Nemo type imagery. This team could make it through the Phantom Tollbooth or survive the Labyrinth, easy.
They figure this guy is the minor god of some tributary, since he works for Father Thames, god of the Thames. Logical enough.
Also, part of their scheme is making him believe Lyra is a princess. Not clear if he’s just gullible, or she has supernatural Princess Vibes that he can sense.
Back in normal reality, a witch! Most human person they’ve met all day, but with her Arctic-tern daemon not in range at first, poor Malcolm assumes otherwise.
(Briefly wonders if her branch of cloud-pine is her daemon. …I’ve written that fic too.)
Okay, I know from HDM why the witches would have an interest in Lyra. What I’m not sure of is, why didn’t this one try to either (depending on clan) guide her to safety, or kill her?
She shields them with what H2G2 would call a Somebody Else’s Problem field, but then just flies off again. Hmm.
[Post-reread note: Yeah, this never gets resolved or comes up again. Why even put her in the book??]
Chapter 24:
Alice swiped a bunch of food from the faerie garden party, and the whole crew eats some now. I’m surprised it’s still food-shaped, outside that sphere of magic influence. They’re not hesitant to eat it, hm.
I didn’t mention before, but the faerie woman with the butterflies breastfed Lyra, and Malcolm+Alice were immediately suspicious. So they have some idea of the dangers of eating unseelie food…
[Post-reread note: Yeah, this goes nowhere.]
Getting foreshadowing now that Bonneville is a ghost, which would be fine by me!
…Nope, he’s alive, hyena daemon and all. Dammit.
Malcolm, almost in these words: “I need an adult”
Valid, buddy.
Anyway, we’re trying to murder him again, and this time the hyena vanishes, so I guess it finally took. About time.
Bonneville grabbed Alice’s daemon to force her to follow him, so Malcolm followed to help, while his own daemon stayed to guard Lyra. Forced to endure the distance pain because they had no one else to rely on. That was a good heroic sequence there!
Mixed feelings about the rest. Alice already beat this guy twice, and yet he gets to keep coming back, until the boy character takes him on? Malcolm succeeds with an oar when Alice couldn’t with An Actual Gun? Not my favorite twist.
There’s been an air of SA around Bonneville for a while. He got shunned from academia over an unspecified sex crime, which got mentioned so much that I figured it was setting up a dramatic reveal of the details, but now it seems like maybe not?
Point is, it’s not unexpected that he tries to assault Alice. (Vague about the extent of it, since Malcolm’s POV doesn’t fully process what he sees.)
But before now, all his creepiness was a means to the end of kidnapping Lyra. And here it seems like he forgets all about Lyra, his main goal is to assault Alice.
We know why Lyra was worth a massive multi-day boat chase: she’s Mrs. Coulter’s baby, and he wanted her influence on his side.
But why is Alice worth that?
There’s no nice way to put this, sorry in advance: why not go after any of the thousand closer teenage girls who would be easier targets? This is so much work to attack a specific girl! Predators are lazy!
I can sure imagine it being about “revenge for those two times she nearly killed him.”
But: He doesn’t show that. There’s no “haha, now you’ll be sorry for everything you did to me!” type gloating. Can’t think of anything that foreshadowed his priority-switch away from Lyra. This is just me retconning in a reason, not the book giving one.
One chapter left to go.
The list of “points I expect this book to leave unresolved” has gotten pretty long. On first read, I remember thinking they were left hanging for the sequel to pick up! They…were not.
Here goes nothing…
Chapter 25, thread 1:
I do like that they’ve washed up in a graveyard this time. Coffins in a stone mausoleum give them justifiably-still-dry wood to build fires with.
Malcolm apologizes a lot to the skeletons. Good kid.
…It’s just occurring to me that I would’ve loved a reveal that the hints about ghosts were foreshadowing “the ghosts of the graveyard, moved and affirmed by Malcolm’s respect, rise up to help him kill Bonneville.”
Doubly so if this was Ghost Bonneville, seeking revenge on Alice for killing him. That unfinished business could have guided him after Alice, and Malcolm would need the supernatural help of the graveyard ghosts to kill him double-plus-dead.
Feeling a little cheated we didn’t get this now, ngl :(
Back on the morning after the flood, Hannah deduced that Malcolm would try to take Lyra to Asriel’s address.
Good payoff: her allies have had boats looking for the canoe ever since. They even found Asriel first, got him in a boat, and so they found the canoe on the water! Probably would’ve fallen apart before the kids reached him, so instead, he reaches them. Moments before a Magisterium boat does, even! A good dramatic rescue scene.
Bad lack-of-payoff: Did Hannah’s cool secret alethiometer come to anything at all?
She didn’t use it to figure out where Malcolm was going, she just deduced that from the evidence + how well she knows Malcolm.
[Post-reread note: I didn’t comment at the time, but this was in chapter 17. Which is also Hannah’s last appearance in the book. She gets mentioned in chapters 18 and 22, but never shows up on-page again.]
To be clear, I like that bit! Their friendship is genuine and important. Giving it that kind of plot payoff was good!
But there was never a different plot point that she did need the alethiometer for.
There was also plenty of setup about how difficult it is. It takes a lot of study and cross-referencing. Hannah doesn’t have the magical intuition that Lyra does.
So you could’ve made the payoff out of that instead. It answered something for her, she’s poring over the books looking at the symbols…and we, the readers, can connect them all to the bizarre events of Malcolm and Alice’s Excellent Unseelie Adventure. But Hannah doesn’t have that context. At last, she despairs. “I can’t do it! This is out of my league! It’s so obscure and complicated, only a genius could figure it out.”
[Cue Lyra’s leitmotif from HDM playing in the background.]
Heck, drop the whole Special Bonus Witch Prophecy, let Hannah deduce “a boy is going on a journey carrying a treasure” from the symbols she reads. She just can’t interpret anything more helpful, like “pick him up at this date and time.”
Oh, and! About that prophecy! Why didn’t it say “a boy and a girl”?
Alice was integral to Lyra surviving this trip. She did half the carrying! What gives, prophets? Behind every man is an unacknowledged woman, even in a witch prophecy??
Chapter 25, thread 2:
Alice gets to yell at Lord Asriel about how great Malcolm is, so don’t you dare disrespect everything he’s done.
I like this! Well-earned!
Alice has never hesitated to tell off Malcolm when she has a problem with him. So this reversal, telling off someone else in his defense, is really fulfilling. And you know she means it.
From here they get to Jordan College, via Asriel flying a gyropter. (Helicopter.) I’m retroactively surprised Malcolm+Alice haven’t heard any before. Wouldn’t they be used for rescues? And to survey the flood damage?
They gyropters also have earmuff/microphone setups to communicate over the rotors. Which has me retroactively wondering why nobody else has used radio. Not to communicate, not for news reports, not to play music in the pub…
I was vaguely assuming the tech didn’t exist here! Now…huh.
Asriel basically dumps the kids at Jordan (literally, the last scene is Malcolm collapsing on their carpet) and immediately biffs off to the North. A+ parenting, right there.
Most of this journey has been “washing up at a sanctuary, feeling safe for a short time, then having to flee”, so it’s a little anticlimactic to end on “but THIS time it’ll be fine, no worries, roll credits.”
I’d feel better if Hannah was here to greet them! Which would also salve the lack of Hannah in the back half of the book. She got a few scenes, chapters ago, then totally disappeared. Unsatisfying.
(And just imagine if Hannah had brought Malcolm+Alice’s parents! We didn’t actually meet Alice’s before, but we met Malcolm’s, and surely all of them deserve that reunion!)
One more anticlimax: Asriel tells the kids “never talk about this, not with anyone but each other, then you’ll be safe.”
Not buying that at all.
Their school is full of junior Magisterium spies. Teachers were getting fired. A local guy stood up to Church agents at the pub once, then he and his family had to flee the district.
The town knows which kids went missing during the flood. And which one had a canoe.
What stops the Church from kidnapping these kids the minute they get home, and forcing the intel out of them?
…on a more upbeat note, why not give the kids clearance to talk about it with a whole circle of specific adults Asriel trusts? Farder Coram counts. Hannah deserves to.
It took support, intel, and prep from several sympathetic adults to get these kids through the flood. If we ended with Asriel setting up a group of supporters to get them through whatever danger the Church brings down next, I’d feel reassured!
But nope.
So that’s La Belle Sauvage. Really strong start! Faceplanted in a whole lot of ways by the end.
Might need a new thread for the “and ANOTHER thing that never got resolved–!” reactions that will undoubtedly hit me over the rest of the night.
(TSC is checked out. Will start that some time soon.)
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Re-listen Liveblog: La Belle Sauvage
Doing a re-listen of books 1-2 in the Book of Dust trilogy, since book 3 just came out.
I just finished the first one, La Belle Sauvage, liveblogging it on Mastodon and on Bluesky, Here’s a roundup post.
(I haven’t read this book since it came out in 2017, and I deliberately didn’t reread my original 2017 reaction post to LBS until now. Feel free to look through both, see which things I had different reactions about, and how many times I just noticed the same thing twice.)
La Belle Sauvage, chapters 1-3:
This starts off so strong. Like Lyra opening TGC, Malcolm is an active, curious, fun kid! We get a ton of worldbuilding through the places he explores, and a ton more through “noticing what the adults pointedly aren’t telling him.”
Not sure how well a reader could follow the background mystery if you didn’t know all the names and references from HDM. But if you have, it’s really juicy. Malcolm obvs has no idea, and it’s great how he fills the gaps with wild speculation.
Our one glimpse of baby Lyra so far was super charming.
Chapter 4:
Detour into the POV of Farder Coram.
In retrospect, a lot of this is an excuse to recap things we know from HDM, but the writing is engaging enough that it’s hard to mind.
[Note after rereading my original reaction post: Huh, this annoyed me a lot more the first time around. Apparently it gets a lot more tolerable when you haven’t been deep in the original HDM recently.]
Chapters 5-6:
Hannah Relf, and the whole field of “alethiometry as a serious academic discipline” that she belongs to, is barely in HDM. Really cool to see it showcased with her younger self in action here.
The way Malcolm gets roped into her spycraft is a little contrived, but I’ll allow it. Hannah’s ongoing stress about the morality of it helps.
(Made more sense when adults were recruiting Lyra, she wasn’t just an unusually-sharp 11-year-old, they also knew she was part of an Important Prophecy.)
The first titles Hannah lends Malcolm turn out to be “The Body in the Library” and “A Brief History of Time.”
Anybody out there written “HDM AU of Agatha Christie”? It’s canon now.
Chapters 7-9:
Getting into the League of St. Alexander plot now, and, oof, still hits hard. An upsettingly realistic story of a group of kids being manipulated into turning on each other, and on the actually-supportive adults in their lives.
Reminds me of the school sections in Nona the Ninth. There’s high-stakes politics and espionage happening around them, people are getting killed, we have a small group of good teachers trying their best to get normal lessons to the kids in spite of it all, and the whole thing is from the POV of the kids, who aren’t officially being told much, but they know something is up. Lots of urgently passing rumors, on the level of “well, my dad says he heard such-and-such, so I reckon that means…”
Very different setups, but still, lots of parallels! And both good.
Oh, one more thing!
This St. Alexander appears to be an in-universe creation, but the Church official who tells his story also talks to the kids about Jesus – not in detail, just mentions of things like, their job is to spread The Love Of Jesus(TM).
I checked out the HDM ebooks just to text-search them. The name “Christ” never comes up. The name “Jesus” only comes up in TAS, and it’s from Mary Malone. (Talking to Lyra — no mention of whether Lyra recognizes the name.) Nobody ever mentions Christmas or Easter, either.
The Magisterium is explicitly Christian — TGC has Lyra mention someone being “baptized as a Christian.” (After that, the term disappears until, again, Mary in TAS uses it.) So this felt like a worldbuilding point, that their doctrine specifically de-emphasizes Jesus. No obligatory prayers, no lip service to “what would Jesus do,” no framing their actions in terms of “following the Word of Christ,” no references at all.
…And now we’re in LBS, and this random person is telling a group of elementary-school kids “of course this is a Proper Country where we follow the Good Word about Jesus,” like of course that’s a common thing they’ve all heard of.
Is this difference also a worldbuilding point? Or is it a Doylist thing where, in writing HDM, Pullman wasn’t ready to antagonize Jesus’ fans that directly, and now he is?
(So far, no idea! TBD if anything in future chapters will make it clearer.)
[Post-reread note: They did not make it clearer.]
Chapters 10-11:
Lors Asriel! HDM readers know in a few years he’ll murder a kid Malcolm’s age for a military advantage, but here, Malcolm doesn’t pick up anything sinister at all. Personal charisma on full blast. Don’t remember if Malcolm ever learns different, or not.
[Post-reread note: Well, not in this book, at least.]
Stray daemon details that caught my eye:
- The shop teacher’s woodpecker daemon drills holes in scrap wood as a nervous tic
- Malcolm’s unsettled Aster can take chimera forms, like an owl with duck feathers, but only experiments with that when nobody else is watching
- Hyena daemon urinates in the road, while looking at Malcolm. Makes him feel so dirty/violated that he’s too embarrassed to tell anyone until his next meeting with Hannah
Are we supposed to believe daemons have been doing that (just, you know, normally in private) all along? Not sure I buy it.
[Post-reread note: There’s an upcoming journey with baby Lyra in which Malcolm is constantly aware of how often she needs to be fed and changed. The idea of feeding/changing Pan is never even mentioned. So, yeah, I don’t think it’s a general daemon bodily function. I think it’s is a skill this specific daemon has cultivated to freak people out.]
Chapters 12-13:
Oh, huh. Argument at Malcolm’s family pub, the phrase “scientific management of resources” gets thrown around. A slip from Pullman, or was “experimental theology” supposed to be a term from Church-controlled circles, not common in the general public?
[Post-reread note: For now, I think it was just a slip from Pullman.]
Argument is about the upcoming plot-point flood.
Seems worth noting that the “modern, scientific” proponents are all characters who are going to be proven wrong. The Right Understanding comes from “the ancient wisdom of the gyptians who know how to read the signs” and “one guy’s granny.”
Hannah gets access to a contraband alethiometer! From the description, this is the one Lyra will eventually get.
Contrast to the Bodleian Library one she was using officially. Don’t think I realized there were different models before this. With only 6 ever made, I figured they were a matching set.
The Bodleian one has full-color symbols! The stolen one has plain black ink lineart.
Idle theorizing: all 6 were originally made with black lineart, but that faceplate was damaged and replaced at some point. The new artist either was told to paint the new symbols fancier, or just had fun with it.
End of this latest chapter refers to Bonneville (the guy with the hyena daemon) as “a physicist.”
So much for my half-baked theory that maybe “experimental theology” was a replacement term for “physics” specifically.
Chapters 14-15:
Higher-up spies encourage Hannah to keep talking with (from their POV) this random 11-year-old, but it gets in-universe justified in a way that works for me. (…I mean narratively, not ethically.)
Alice (teen kitchen worker) calls Lyra a “little flirt” for giggling at Malcolm. Not creepy on its own, that’s a joke people make about babies…but knowing that Pullman is planning future Lyra/Malcolm, with more explicitly-creepy stuff in the lead-up…yeah, this is a retroactive big oof.
Malcolm gets to meet Mrs. Coulter! Unlike with Asriel, he gets a bad vibe off her immediately. Well, she’s on track to murder a lot more children than Asriel will, so maybe it’s fair.
(Also, Asriel shows care for Lyra, which biases Malcolm toward him instantly.)
Part 1 ends (at the 54% mark) with the predicted Big Flood hitting. Alice, Malcolm, and Lyra get stranded together in a boat.
Everything I remember being “meh” about this book is on their river journey. Plunging apprehensively onward…
Chapter 16:
Worldbuilding detail: pharmacies are marked with a green cross. (Not sure from context if it’s just a palette-swapped ➕️, or an actual ✝️.)
The dynamic between Alice and Malcolm is really good here. Grudging teamwork.
Malcolm and Aster see a drowned body during the flooding, and wonder “what happens to daemons when you die?”
Surprised they wouldn’t know. Even with no deaths in their close family, surely it’s a thing children are taught about? (They’ve been reading murder mysteries! It never came up?)
Different chat a few chapters ago, they saw Pan turning into a mole, and wondered how a baby daemon knows how to turn into a creature they’ve never actually seen.
That I liked, because it doesn’t seem like there’s a clear, generally-known answer. One adult daemon offered “You just feel mole-y.”
Chapter 17:
Mention of a prophecy about “a boy” that might be Malcolm.
Feels like overkill? Like “he can’t just be a normal person caught up in Lyra’s cosmic destiny, he’s gotta be special too.” (Don’t remember if there’s payoff for this later. Might like it more if it’s good. TBD.)
[Post-reread note: There was not.]
Chapter 18:
Not much to say here except “go Alice.” Previously seen decking Bonneville with a chair, now she gets off a gun at him.
Bonneville mentions “experimental theology” to Malcolm. Guess he doesn’t use “science”…?
Malcolm has been seeing flecks/lights that Hannah thinks are migraine auras. He misheard it as “auroras”. Unsubtle hint that this is Dust’s way of guiding him? Hasn’t been plot-pivotal yet, so we’ll see.
[Post-reread note: It was not.]
Chapter 19:
Reappearance of a trusted ally I forgot was coming back at all! Surprised and delighted.
Kitten!Pan kneads Malcolm’s hand as he rocks Lyra. He thinks “she’s too young to know it’s taboo,” but I expect it’d hurt if she didn’t feel so comfy and cared-for with him.
Earlier hints of “things in the river” now expanded with examples: mermaids, Father Thames, “old gods.”
I know we meet some of these in later chapters. And, look, I’m good with Lyra’s world having more fantastical beings than we already saw. But it sure would be weird if, after all HDM, the message of LBS was “sure, the Magisterium is evil and their god sucks, but science also sucks and will lead you astray, the truth is in following the right religion and trusting the better gods.”
Don’t remember if that’s how it actually ends! Just noting, as of now, the vibes feel odd.
[Post-reread note: Good news, I don’t think that was the message. The possibly-god-ish creatures we meet are no more or less trustworthy than other people.]
Chapter 20:
Evil Magisterium group kidnapped Lyra, after a St. Alexander kid in the refugee group tipped them off. Malcolm hates him, which is fair, but his own family are also so awful to him that I get why he was won over in the first place. Praise and affirmation for a kid who isn’t getting any at home is one heck of a drug.
The daring rescue is quite good! The Alice-Malcolm teamwork is really flourishing by now.
Malcolm’s “aurora” pops up again, but only to highlight the place they were already going. Finding Lyra is all their own ingenuity.
Chapter 21:
Last quarter of the book, and now things get outright magical.
Washing up on the island of a mystery woman with a cloud of butterflies. Malcolm first assumes one of them is her daemon, then wonders if, somehow, all of them are. Hey, I’ve written that fic.
A bag they took off Bonneville has…an alethiometer inside. Malcolm figures it’s the famous missing one.
Explains how conveniently Bonneville always caught up to them! And maybe why he was so convinced that “kidnapping Lyra” was the key to fixing his life in the first place.
They leave the alethiometer with the probably-faerie woman. So I guess from now on it’ll be Missing For Real forever.
At least it’s a more poetic end than “the kids drop it in the water and it gets crushed in the flood.” Getting some One Ring vibes here. It won’t get lost when it doesn’t want to.
Chapter 22:
Oh, they didn’t trade the alethiometer to the faerie, just its nice box? Huh. That’s less poetic, but a savvier move from Malcolm, so good for him.
New batch of probably-faeries, in fancy dress, in the garden of a fancy-but-unreachable manor. They each have a bird, which might or might not be daemons.
Really like the setup of “desolate ruins, hidden just outside the beautiful tranquil sphere of the garden.” Classic Fairyland worldbuilding.
…And Bonneville isn’t dead, again. Ugh.
Unless this is a faerie-thing taking his shape? Others are taking shapes of people familiar to Alice+Malcolm, including at least one who’s dead. Although I don’t remember him being that…and it’s enough of a satisfying twist, I feel like I would?
[Post-reread note: No luck, this is just Bonneville.]
This might retroactively ruin my “oh, nice, the alethiometer justifies how conveniently he always caught up with them” satisfaction.
Will the narrative give him a new justification for this round? TBD.
[Post-reread note: It did not.]
Chapter 23:
Meeting a giant in the water, talking him into opening a set of gates. Fully fairy-tale logic here, with Little Nemo type imagery. This team could make it through the Phantom Tollbooth or survive the Labyrinth, easy.
They figure this guy is the minor god of some tributary, since he works for Father Thames, god of the Thames. Logical enough.
Also, part of their scheme is making him believe Lyra is a princess. Not clear if he’s just gullible, or she has supernatural Princess Vibes that he can sense.
Back in normal reality, a witch! Most human person they’ve met all day, but with her Arctic-tern daemon not in range at first, poor Malcolm assumes otherwise.
(Briefly wonders if her branch of cloud-pine is her daemon. …I’ve written that fic too.)
Okay, I know from HDM why the witches would have an interest in Lyra. What I’m not sure of is, why didn’t this one try to either (depending on clan) guide her to safety, or kill her?
She shields them with what H2G2 would call a Somebody Else’s Problem field, but then just flies off again. Hmm.
[Post-reread note: Yeah, this never gets resolved or comes up again. Why even put her in the book??]
Chapter 24:
Alice swiped a bunch of food from the faerie garden party, and the whole crew eats some now. I’m surprised it’s still food-shaped, outside that sphere of magic influence. They’re not hesitant to eat it, hm.
I didn’t mention before, but the faerie woman with the butterflies breastfed Lyra, and Malcolm+Alice were immediately suspicious. So they have some idea of the dangers of eating unseelie food…
[Post-reread note: Yeah, this goes nowhere.]
Getting foreshadowing now that Bonneville is a ghost, which would be fine by me!
…Nope, he’s alive, hyena daemon and all. Dammit.
Malcolm, almost in these words: “I need an adult”
Valid, buddy.
Anyway, we’re trying to murder him again, and this time the hyena vanishes, so I guess it finally took. About time.
Bonneville grabbed Alice’s daemon to force her to follow him, so Malcolm followed to help, while his own daemon stayed to guard Lyra. Forced to endure the distance pain because they had no one else to rely on. That was a good heroic sequence there!
Mixed feelings about the rest. Alice already beat this guy twice, and yet he gets to keep coming back, until the boy character takes him on? Malcolm succeeds with an oar when Alice couldn’t with An Actual Gun? Not my favorite twist.
There’s been an air of SA around Bonneville for a while. He got shunned from academia over an unspecified sex crime, which got mentioned so much that I figured it was setting up a dramatic reveal of the details, but now it seems like maybe not?
Point is, it’s not unexpected that he tries to assault Alice. (Vague about the extent of it, since Malcolm’s POV doesn’t fully process what he sees.)
But before now, all his creepiness was a means to the end of kidnapping Lyra. And here it seems like he forgets all about Lyra, his main goal is to assault Alice.
We know why Lyra was worth a massive multi-day boat chase: she’s Mrs. Coulter’s baby, and he wanted her influence on his side.
But why is Alice worth that?
There’s no nice way to put this, sorry in advance: why not go after any of the thousand closer teenage girls who would be easier targets? This is so much work to attack a specific girl! Predators are lazy!
I can sure imagine it being about “revenge for those two times she nearly killed him.”
But: He doesn’t show that. There’s no “haha, now you’ll be sorry for everything you did to me!” type gloating. Can’t think of anything that foreshadowed his priority-switch away from Lyra. This is just me retconning in a reason, not the book giving one.
One chapter left to go.
The list of “points I expect this book to leave unresolved” has gotten pretty long. On first read, I remember thinking they were left hanging for the sequel to pick up! They…were not.
Here goes nothing…
Chapter 25, thread 1:
I do like that they’ve washed up in a graveyard this time. Coffins in a stone mausoleum give them justifiably-still-dry wood to build fires with.
Malcolm apologizes a lot to the skeletons. Good kid.
…It’s just occurring to me that I would’ve loved a reveal that the hints about ghosts were foreshadowing “the ghosts of the graveyard, moved and affirmed by Malcolm’s respect, rise up to help him kill Bonneville.”
Doubly so if this was Ghost Bonneville, seeking revenge on Alice for killing him. That unfinished business could have guided him after Alice, and Malcolm would need the supernatural help of the graveyard ghosts to kill him double-plus-dead.
Feeling a little cheated we didn’t get this now, ngl :(
Back on the morning after the flood, Hannah deduced that Malcolm would try to take Lyra to Asriel’s address.
Good payoff: her allies have had boats looking for the canoe ever since. They even found Asriel first, got him in a boat, and so they found the canoe on the water! Probably would’ve fallen apart before the kids reached him, so instead, he reaches them. Moments before a Magisterium boat does, even! A good dramatic rescue scene.
Bad lack-of-payoff: Did Hannah’s cool secret alethiometer come to anything at all?
She didn’t use it to figure out where Malcolm was going, she just deduced that from the evidence + how well she knows Malcolm.
[Post-reread note: I didn’t comment at the time, but this was in chapter 17. Which is also Hannah’s last appearance in the book. She gets mentioned in chapters 18 and 22, but never shows up on-page again.]
To be clear, I like that bit! Their friendship is genuine and important. Giving it that kind of plot payoff was good!
But there was never a different plot point that she did need the alethiometer for.
There was also plenty of setup about how difficult it is. It takes a lot of study and cross-referencing. Hannah doesn’t have the magical intuition that Lyra does.
So you could’ve made the payoff out of that instead. It answered something for her, she’s poring over the books looking at the symbols…and we, the readers, can connect them all to the bizarre events of Malcolm and Alice’s Excellent Unseelie Adventure. But Hannah doesn’t have that context. At last, she despairs. “I can’t do it! This is out of my league! It’s so obscure and complicated, only a genius could figure it out.”
[Cue Lyra’s leitmotif from HDM playing in the background.]
Heck, drop the whole Special Bonus Witch Prophecy, let Hannah deduce “a boy is going on a journey carrying a treasure” from the symbols she reads. She just can’t interpret anything more helpful, like “pick him up at this date and time.”
Oh, and! About that prophecy! Why didn’t it say “a boy and a girl”?
Alice was integral to Lyra surviving this trip. She did half the carrying! What gives, prophets? Behind every man is an unacknowledged woman, even in a witch prophecy??
Chapter 25, thread 2:
Alice gets to yell at Lord Asriel about how great Malcolm is, so don’t you dare disrespect everything he’s done.
I like this! Well-earned!
Alice has never hesitated to tell off Malcolm when she has a problem with him. So this reversal, telling off someone else in his defense, is really fulfilling. And you know she means it.
From here they get to Jordan College, via Asriel flying a gyropter. (Helicopter.) I’m retroactively surprised Malcolm+Alice haven’t heard any before. Wouldn’t they be used for rescues? And to survey the flood damage?
They gyropters also have earmuff/microphone setups to communicate over the rotors. Which has me retroactively wondering why nobody else has used radio. Not to communicate, not for news reports, not to play music in the pub…
I was vaguely assuming the tech didn’t exist here! Now…huh.
Asriel basically dumps the kids at Jordan (literally, the last scene is Malcolm collapsing on their carpet) and immediately biffs off to the North. A+ parenting, right there.
Most of this journey has been “washing up at a sanctuary, feeling safe for a short time, then having to flee”, so it’s a little anticlimactic to end on “but THIS time it’ll be fine, no worries, roll credits.”
I’d feel better if Hannah was here to greet them! Which would also salve the lack of Hannah in the back half of the book. She got a few scenes, chapters ago, then totally disappeared. Unsatisfying.
(And just imagine if Hannah had brought Malcolm+Alice’s parents! We didn’t actually meet Alice’s before, but we met Malcolm’s, and surely all of them deserve that reunion!)
One more anticlimax: Asriel tells the kids “never talk about this, not with anyone but each other, then you’ll be safe.”
Not buying that at all.
Their school is full of junior Magisterium spies. Teachers were getting fired. A local guy stood up to Church agents at the pub once, then he and his family had to flee the district.
The town knows which kids went missing during the flood. And which one had a canoe.
What stops the Church from kidnapping these kids the minute they get home, and forcing the intel out of them?
…on a more upbeat note, why not give the kids clearance to talk about it with a whole circle of specific adults Asriel trusts? Farder Coram counts. Hannah deserves to.
It took support, intel, and prep from several sympathetic adults to get these kids through the flood. If we ended with Asriel setting up a group of supporters to get them through whatever danger the Church brings down next, I’d feel reassured!
But nope.
So that’s La Belle Sauvage. Really strong start! Faceplanted in a whole lot of ways by the end.
Might need a new thread for the “and ANOTHER thing that never got resolved–!” reactions that will undoubtedly hit me over the rest of the night.
(TSC is checked out. Will start that some time soon.)
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Re-listen Liveblog: La Belle Sauvage
Doing a re-listen of books 1-2 in the Book of Dust trilogy, since book 3 just came out.
I just finished the first one, La Belle Sauvage, liveblogging it on Mastodon and on Bluesky, Here’s a roundup post.
(I haven’t read this book since it came out in 2017, and I deliberately didn’t reread my original 2017 reaction post to LBS until now. Feel free to look through both, see which things I had different reactions about, and how many times I just noticed the same thing twice.)
La Belle Sauvage, chapters 1-3:
This starts off so strong. Like Lyra opening TGC, Malcolm is an active, curious, fun kid! We get a ton of worldbuilding through the places he explores, and a ton more through “noticing what the adults pointedly aren’t telling him.”
Not sure how well a reader could follow the background mystery if you didn’t know all the names and references from HDM. But if you have, it’s really juicy. Malcolm obvs has no idea, and it’s great how he fills the gaps with wild speculation.
Our one glimpse of baby Lyra so far was super charming.
Chapter 4:
Detour into the POV of Farder Coram.
In retrospect, a lot of this is an excuse to recap things we know from HDM, but the writing is engaging enough that it’s hard to mind.
[Note after rereading my original reaction post: Huh, this annoyed me a lot more the first time around. Apparently it gets a lot more tolerable when you haven’t been deep in the original HDM recently.]
Chapters 5-6:
Hannah Relf, and the whole field of “alethiometry as a serious academic discipline” that she belongs to, is barely in HDM. Really cool to see it showcased with her younger self in action here.
The way Malcolm gets roped into her spycraft is a little contrived, but I’ll allow it. Hannah’s ongoing stress about the morality of it helps.
(Made more sense when adults were recruiting Lyra, she wasn’t just an unusually-sharp 11-year-old, they also knew she was part of an Important Prophecy.)
The first titles Hannah lends Malcolm turn out to be “The Body in the Library” and “A Brief History of Time.”
Anybody out there written “HDM AU of Agatha Christie”? It’s canon now.
Chapters 7-9:
Getting into the League of St. Alexander plot now, and, oof, still hits hard. An upsettingly realistic story of a group of kids being manipulated into turning on each other, and on the actually-supportive adults in their lives.
Reminds me of the school sections in Nona the Ninth. There’s high-stakes politics and espionage happening around them, people are getting killed, we have a small group of good teachers trying their best to get normal lessons to the kids in spite of it all, and the whole thing is from the POV of the kids, who aren’t officially being told much, but they know something is up. Lots of urgently passing rumors, on the level of “well, my dad says he heard such-and-such, so I reckon that means…”
Very different setups, but still, lots of parallels! And both good.
Oh, one more thing!
This St. Alexander appears to be an in-universe creation, but the Church official who tells his story also talks to the kids about Jesus – not in detail, just mentions of things like, their job is to spread The Love Of Jesus(TM).
I checked out the HDM ebooks just to text-search them. The name “Christ” never comes up. The name “Jesus” only comes up in TAS, and it’s from Mary Malone. (Talking to Lyra — no mention of whether Lyra recognizes the name.) Nobody ever mentions Christmas or Easter, either.
The Magisterium is explicitly Christian — TGC has Lyra mention someone being “baptized as a Christian.” (After that, the term disappears until, again, Mary in TAS uses it.) So this felt like a worldbuilding point, that their doctrine specifically de-emphasizes Jesus. No obligatory prayers, no lip service to “what would Jesus do,” no framing their actions in terms of “following the Word of Christ,” no references at all.
…And now we’re in LBS, and this random person is telling a group of elementary-school kids “of course this is a Proper Country where we follow the Good Word about Jesus,” like of course that’s a common thing they’ve all heard of.
Is this difference also a worldbuilding point? Or is it a Doylist thing where, in writing HDM, Pullman wasn’t ready to antagonize Jesus’ fans that directly, and now he is?
(So far, no idea! TBD if anything in future chapters will make it clearer.)
[Post-reread note: They did not make it clearer.]
Chapters 10-11:
Lors Asriel! HDM readers know in a few years he’ll murder a kid Malcolm’s age for a military advantage, but here, Malcolm doesn’t pick up anything sinister at all. Personal charisma on full blast. Don’t remember if Malcolm ever learns different, or not.
[Post-reread note: Well, not in this book, at least.]
Stray daemon details that caught my eye:
- The shop teacher’s woodpecker daemon drills holes in scrap wood as a nervous tic
- Malcolm’s unsettled Aster can take chimera forms, like an owl with duck feathers, but only experiments with that when nobody else is watching
- Hyena daemon urinates in the road, while looking at Malcolm. Makes him feel so dirty/violated that he’s too embarrassed to tell anyone until his next meeting with Hannah
Are we supposed to believe daemons have been doing that (just, you know, normally in private) all along? Not sure I buy it.
[Post-reread note: There’s an upcoming journey with baby Lyra in which Malcolm is constantly aware of how often she needs to be fed and changed. The idea of feeding/changing Pan is never even mentioned. So, yeah, I don’t think it’s a general daemon bodily function. I think it’s is a skill this specific daemon has cultivated to freak people out.]
Chapters 12-13:
Oh, huh. Argument at Malcolm’s family pub, the phrase “scientific management of resources” gets thrown around. A slip from Pullman, or was “experimental theology” supposed to be a term from Church-controlled circles, not common in the general public?
[Post-reread note: For now, I think it was just a slip from Pullman.]
Argument is about the upcoming plot-point flood.
Seems worth noting that the “modern, scientific” proponents are all characters who are going to be proven wrong. The Right Understanding comes from “the ancient wisdom of the gyptians who know how to read the signs” and “one guy’s granny.”
Hannah gets access to a contraband alethiometer! From the description, this is the one Lyra will eventually get.
Contrast to the Bodleian Library one she was using officially. Don’t think I realized there were different models before this. With only 6 ever made, I figured they were a matching set.
The Bodleian one has full-color symbols! The stolen one has plain black ink lineart.
Idle theorizing: all 6 were originally made with black lineart, but that faceplate was damaged and replaced at some point. The new artist either was told to paint the new symbols fancier, or just had fun with it.
End of this latest chapter refers to Bonneville (the guy with the hyena daemon) as “a physicist.”
So much for my half-baked theory that maybe “experimental theology” was a replacement term for “physics” specifically.
Chapters 14-15:
Higher-up spies encourage Hannah to keep talking with (from their POV) this random 11-year-old, but it gets in-universe justified in a way that works for me. (…I mean narratively, not ethically.)
Alice (teen kitchen worker) calls Lyra a “little flirt” for giggling at Malcolm. Not creepy on its own, that’s a joke people make about babies…but knowing that Pullman is planning future Lyra/Malcolm, with more explicitly-creepy stuff in the lead-up…yeah, this is a retroactive big oof.
Malcolm gets to meet Mrs. Coulter! Unlike with Asriel, he gets a bad vibe off her immediately. Well, she’s on track to murder a lot more children than Asriel will, so maybe it’s fair.
(Also, Asriel shows care for Lyra, which biases Malcolm toward him instantly.)
Part 1 ends (at the 54% mark) with the predicted Big Flood hitting. Alice, Malcolm, and Lyra get stranded together in a boat.
Everything I remember being “meh” about this book is on their river journey. Plunging apprehensively onward…
Chapter 16:
Worldbuilding detail: pharmacies are marked with a green cross. (Not sure from context if it’s just a palette-swapped ➕️, or an actual ✝️.)
The dynamic between Alice and Malcolm is really good here. Grudging teamwork.
Malcolm and Aster see a drowned body during the flooding, and wonder “what happens to daemons when you die?”
Surprised they wouldn’t know. Even with no deaths in their close family, surely it’s a thing children are taught about? (They’ve been reading murder mysteries! It never came up?)
Different chat a few chapters ago, they saw Pan turning into a mole, and wondered how a baby daemon knows how to turn into a creature they’ve never actually seen.
That I liked, because it doesn’t seem like there’s a clear, generally-known answer. One adult daemon offered “You just feel mole-y.”
Chapter 17:
Mention of a prophecy about “a boy” that might be Malcolm.
Feels like overkill? Like “he can’t just be a normal person caught up in Lyra’s cosmic destiny, he’s gotta be special too.” (Don’t remember if there’s payoff for this later. Might like it more if it’s good. TBD.)
[Post-reread note: There was not.]
Chapter 18:
Not much to say here except “go Alice.” Previously seen decking Bonneville with a chair, now she gets off a gun at him.
Bonneville mentions “experimental theology” to Malcolm. Guess he doesn’t use “science”…?
Malcolm has been seeing flecks/lights that Hannah thinks are migraine auras. He misheard it as “auroras”. Unsubtle hint that this is Dust’s way of guiding him? Hasn’t been plot-pivotal yet, so we’ll see.
[Post-reread note: It was not.]
Chapter 19:
Reappearance of a trusted ally I forgot was coming back at all! Surprised and delighted.
Kitten!Pan kneads Malcolm’s hand as he rocks Lyra. He thinks “she’s too young to know it’s taboo,” but I expect it’d hurt if she didn’t feel so comfy and cared-for with him.
Earlier hints of “things in the river” now expanded with examples: mermaids, Father Thames, “old gods.”
I know we meet some of these in later chapters. And, look, I’m good with Lyra’s world having more fantastical beings than we already saw. But it sure would be weird if, after all HDM, the message of LBS was “sure, the Magisterium is evil and their god sucks, but science also sucks and will lead you astray, the truth is in following the right religion and trusting the better gods.”
Don’t remember if that’s how it actually ends! Just noting, as of now, the vibes feel odd.
[Post-reread note: Good news, I don’t think that was the message. The possibly-god-ish creatures we meet are no more or less trustworthy than other people.]
Chapter 20:
Evil Magisterium group kidnapped Lyra, after a St. Alexander kid in the refugee group tipped them off. Malcolm hates him, which is fair, but his own family are also so awful to him that I get why he was won over in the first place. Praise and affirmation for a kid who isn’t getting any at home is one heck of a drug.
The daring rescue is quite good! The Alice-Malcolm teamwork is really flourishing by now.
Malcolm’s “aurora” pops up again, but only to highlight the place they were already going. Finding Lyra is all their own ingenuity.
Chapter 21:
Last quarter of the book, and now things get outright magical.
Washing up on the island of a mystery woman with a cloud of butterflies. Malcolm first assumes one of them is her daemon, then wonders if, somehow, all of them are. Hey, I’ve written that fic.
A bag they took off Bonneville has…an alethiometer inside. Malcolm figures it’s the famous missing one.
Explains how conveniently Bonneville always caught up to them! And maybe why he was so convinced that “kidnapping Lyra” was the key to fixing his life in the first place.
They leave the alethiometer with the probably-faerie woman. So I guess from now on it’ll be Missing For Real forever.
At least it’s a more poetic end than “the kids drop it in the water and it gets crushed in the flood.” Getting some One Ring vibes here. It won’t get lost when it doesn’t want to.
Chapter 22:
Oh, they didn’t trade the alethiometer to the faerie, just its nice box? Huh. That’s less poetic, but a savvier move from Malcolm, so good for him.
New batch of probably-faeries, in fancy dress, in the garden of a fancy-but-unreachable manor. They each have a bird, which might or might not be daemons.
Really like the setup of “desolate ruins, hidden just outside the beautiful tranquil sphere of the garden.” Classic Fairyland worldbuilding.
…And Bonneville isn’t dead, again. Ugh.
Unless this is a faerie-thing taking his shape? Others are taking shapes of people familiar to Alice+Malcolm, including at least one who’s dead. Although I don’t remember him being that…and it’s enough of a satisfying twist, I feel like I would?
[Post-reread note: No luck, this is just Bonneville.]
This might retroactively ruin my “oh, nice, the alethiometer justifies how conveniently he always caught up with them” satisfaction.
Will the narrative give him a new justification for this round? TBD.
[Post-reread note: It did not.]
Chapter 23:
Meeting a giant in the water, talking him into opening a set of gates. Fully fairy-tale logic here, with Little Nemo type imagery. This team could make it through the Phantom Tollbooth or survive the Labyrinth, easy.
They figure this guy is the minor god of some tributary, since he works for Father Thames, god of the Thames. Logical enough.
Also, part of their scheme is making him believe Lyra is a princess. Not clear if he’s just gullible, or she has supernatural Princess Vibes that he can sense.
Back in normal reality, a witch! Most human person they’ve met all day, but with her Arctic-tern daemon not in range at first, poor Malcolm assumes otherwise.
(Briefly wonders if her branch of cloud-pine is her daemon. …I’ve written that fic too.)
Okay, I know from HDM why the witches would have an interest in Lyra. What I’m not sure of is, why didn’t this one try to either (depending on clan) guide her to safety, or kill her?
She shields them with what H2G2 would call a Somebody Else’s Problem field, but then just flies off again. Hmm.
[Post-reread note: Yeah, this never gets resolved or comes up again. Why even put her in the book??]
Chapter 24:
Alice swiped a bunch of food from the faerie garden party, and the whole crew eats some now. I’m surprised it’s still food-shaped, outside that sphere of magic influence. They’re not hesitant to eat it, hm.
I didn’t mention before, but the faerie woman with the butterflies breastfed Lyra, and Malcolm+Alice were immediately suspicious. So they have some idea of the dangers of eating unseelie food…
[Post-reread note: Yeah, this goes nowhere.]
Getting foreshadowing now that Bonneville is a ghost, which would be fine by me!
…Nope, he’s alive, hyena daemon and all. Dammit.
Malcolm, almost in these words: “I need an adult”
Valid, buddy.
Anyway, we’re trying to murder him again, and this time the hyena vanishes, so I guess it finally took. About time.
Bonneville grabbed Alice’s daemon to force her to follow him, so Malcolm followed to help, while his own daemon stayed to guard Lyra. Forced to endure the distance pain because they had no one else to rely on. That was a good heroic sequence there!
Mixed feelings about the rest. Alice already beat this guy twice, and yet he gets to keep coming back, until the boy character takes him on? Malcolm succeeds with an oar when Alice couldn’t with An Actual Gun? Not my favorite twist.
There’s been an air of SA around Bonneville for a while. He got shunned from academia over an unspecified sex crime, which got mentioned so much that I figured it was setting up a dramatic reveal of the details, but now it seems like maybe not?
Point is, it’s not unexpected that he tries to assault Alice. (Vague about the extent of it, since Malcolm’s POV doesn’t fully process what he sees.)
But before now, all his creepiness was a means to the end of kidnapping Lyra. And here it seems like he forgets all about Lyra, his main goal is to assault Alice.
We know why Lyra was worth a massive multi-day boat chase: she’s Mrs. Coulter’s baby, and he wanted her influence on his side.
But why is Alice worth that?
There’s no nice way to put this, sorry in advance: why not go after any of the thousand closer teenage girls who would be easier targets? This is so much work to attack a specific girl! Predators are lazy!
I can sure imagine it being about “revenge for those two times she nearly killed him.”
But: He doesn’t show that. There’s no “haha, now you’ll be sorry for everything you did to me!” type gloating. Can’t think of anything that foreshadowed his priority-switch away from Lyra. This is just me retconning in a reason, not the book giving one.
One chapter left to go.
The list of “points I expect this book to leave unresolved” has gotten pretty long. On first read, I remember thinking they were left hanging for the sequel to pick up! They…were not.
Here goes nothing…
Chapter 25, thread 1:
I do like that they’ve washed up in a graveyard this time. Coffins in a stone mausoleum give them justifiably-still-dry wood to build fires with.
Malcolm apologizes a lot to the skeletons. Good kid.
…It’s just occurring to me that I would’ve loved a reveal that the hints about ghosts were foreshadowing “the ghosts of the graveyard, moved and affirmed by Malcolm’s respect, rise up to help him kill Bonneville.”
Doubly so if this was Ghost Bonneville, seeking revenge on Alice for killing him. That unfinished business could have guided him after Alice, and Malcolm would need the supernatural help of the graveyard ghosts to kill him double-plus-dead.
Feeling a little cheated we didn’t get this now, ngl :(
Back on the morning after the flood, Hannah deduced that Malcolm would try to take Lyra to Asriel’s address.
Good payoff: her allies have had boats looking for the canoe ever since. They even found Asriel first, got him in a boat, and so they found the canoe on the water! Probably would’ve fallen apart before the kids reached him, so instead, he reaches them. Moments before a Magisterium boat does, even! A good dramatic rescue scene.
Bad lack-of-payoff: Did Hannah’s cool secret alethiometer come to anything at all?
She didn’t use it to figure out where Malcolm was going, she just deduced that from the evidence + how well she knows Malcolm.
[Post-reread note: I didn’t comment at the time, but this was in chapter 17. Which is also Hannah’s last appearance in the book. She gets mentioned in chapters 18 and 22, but never shows up on-page again.]
To be clear, I like that bit! Their friendship is genuine and important. Giving it that kind of plot payoff was good!
But there was never a different plot point that she did need the alethiometer for.
There was also plenty of setup about how difficult it is. It takes a lot of study and cross-referencing. Hannah doesn’t have the magical intuition that Lyra does.
So you could’ve made the payoff out of that instead. It answered something for her, she’s poring over the books looking at the symbols…and we, the readers, can connect them all to the bizarre events of Malcolm and Alice’s Excellent Unseelie Adventure. But Hannah doesn’t have that context. At last, she despairs. “I can’t do it! This is out of my league! It’s so obscure and complicated, only a genius could figure it out.”
[Cue Lyra’s leitmotif from HDM playing in the background.]
Heck, drop the whole Special Bonus Witch Prophecy, let Hannah deduce “a boy is going on a journey carrying a treasure” from the symbols she reads. She just can’t interpret anything more helpful, like “pick him up at this date and time.”
Oh, and! About that prophecy! Why didn’t it say “a boy and a girl”?
Alice was integral to Lyra surviving this trip. She did half the carrying! What gives, prophets? Behind every man is an unacknowledged woman, even in a witch prophecy??
Chapter 25, thread 2:
Alice gets to yell at Lord Asriel about how great Malcolm is, so don’t you dare disrespect everything he’s done.
I like this! Well-earned!
Alice has never hesitated to tell off Malcolm when she has a problem with him. So this reversal, telling off someone else in his defense, is really fulfilling. And you know she means it.
From here they get to Jordan College, via Asriel flying a gyropter. (Helicopter.) I’m retroactively surprised Malcolm+Alice haven’t heard any before. Wouldn’t they be used for rescues? And to survey the flood damage?
They gyropters also have earmuff/microphone setups to communicate over the rotors. Which has me retroactively wondering why nobody else has used radio. Not to communicate, not for news reports, not to play music in the pub…
I was vaguely assuming the tech didn’t exist here! Now…huh.
Asriel basically dumps the kids at Jordan (literally, the last scene is Malcolm collapsing on their carpet) and immediately biffs off to the North. A+ parenting, right there.
Most of this journey has been “washing up at a sanctuary, feeling safe for a short time, then having to flee”, so it’s a little anticlimactic to end on “but THIS time it’ll be fine, no worries, roll credits.”
I’d feel better if Hannah was here to greet them! Which would also salve the lack of Hannah in the back half of the book. She got a few scenes, chapters ago, then totally disappeared. Unsatisfying.
(And just imagine if Hannah had brought Malcolm+Alice’s parents! We didn’t actually meet Alice’s before, but we met Malcolm’s, and surely all of them deserve that reunion!)
One more anticlimax: Asriel tells the kids “never talk about this, not with anyone but each other, then you’ll be safe.”
Not buying that at all.
Their school is full of junior Magisterium spies. Teachers were getting fired. A local guy stood up to Church agents at the pub once, then he and his family had to flee the district.
The town knows which kids went missing during the flood. And which one had a canoe.
What stops the Church from kidnapping these kids the minute they get home, and forcing the intel out of them?
…on a more upbeat note, why not give the kids clearance to talk about it with a whole circle of specific adults Asriel trusts? Farder Coram counts. Hannah deserves to.
It took support, intel, and prep from several sympathetic adults to get these kids through the flood. If we ended with Asriel setting up a group of supporters to get them through whatever danger the Church brings down next, I’d feel reassured!
But nope.
So that’s La Belle Sauvage. Really strong start! Faceplanted in a whole lot of ways by the end.
Might need a new thread for the “and ANOTHER thing that never got resolved–!” reactions that will undoubtedly hit me over the rest of the night.
(TSC is checked out. Will start that some time soon.)
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Re-listen Liveblog: La Belle Sauvage
Doing a re-listen of books 1-2 in the Book of Dust trilogy, since book 3 just came out.
I just finished the first one, La Belle Sauvage, liveblogging it on Mastodon and on Bluesky, Here’s a roundup post.
(I haven’t read this book since it came out in 2017, and I deliberately didn’t reread my original 2017 reaction post to LBS until now. Feel free to look through both, see which things I had different reactions about, and how many times I just noticed the same thing twice.)
La Belle Sauvage, chapters 1-3:
This starts off so strong. Like Lyra opening TGC, Malcolm is an active, curious, fun kid! We get a ton of worldbuilding through the places he explores, and a ton more through “noticing what the adults pointedly aren’t telling him.”
Not sure how well a reader could follow the background mystery if you didn’t know all the names and references from HDM. But if you have, it’s really juicy. Malcolm obvs has no idea, and it’s great how he fills the gaps with wild speculation.
Our one glimpse of baby Lyra so far was super charming.
Chapter 4:
Detour into the POV of Farder Coram.
In retrospect, a lot of this is an excuse to recap things we know from HDM, but the writing is engaging enough that it’s hard to mind.
[Note after rereading my original reaction post: Huh, this annoyed me a lot more the first time around. Apparently it gets a lot more tolerable when you haven’t been deep in the original HDM recently.]
Chapters 5-6:
Hannah Relf, and the whole field of “alethiometry as a serious academic discipline” that she belongs to, is barely in HDM. Really cool to see it showcased with her younger self in action here.
The way Malcolm gets roped into her spycraft is a little contrived, but I’ll allow it. Hannah’s ongoing stress about the morality of it helps.
(Made more sense when adults were recruiting Lyra, she wasn’t just an unusually-sharp 11-year-old, they also knew she was part of an Important Prophecy.)
The first titles Hannah lends Malcolm turn out to be “The Body in the Library” and “A Brief History of Time.”
Anybody out there written “HDM AU of Agatha Christie”? It’s canon now.
Chapters 7-9:
Getting into the League of St. Alexander plot now, and, oof, still hits hard. An upsettingly realistic story of a group of kids being manipulated into turning on each other, and on the actually-supportive adults in their lives.
Reminds me of the school sections in Nona the Ninth. There’s high-stakes politics and espionage happening around them, people are getting killed, we have a small group of good teachers trying their best to get normal lessons to the kids in spite of it all, and the whole thing is from the POV of the kids, who aren’t officially being told much, but they know something is up. Lots of urgently passing rumors, on the level of “well, my dad says he heard such-and-such, so I reckon that means…”
Very different setups, but still, lots of parallels! And both good.
Oh, one more thing!
This St. Alexander appears to be an in-universe creation, but the Church official who tells his story also talks to the kids about Jesus – not in detail, just mentions of things like, their job is to spread The Love Of Jesus(TM).
I checked out the HDM ebooks just to text-search them. The name “Christ” never comes up. The name “Jesus” only comes up in TAS, and it’s from Mary Malone. (Talking to Lyra — no mention of whether Lyra recognizes the name.) Nobody ever mentions Christmas or Easter, either.
The Magisterium is explicitly Christian — TGC has Lyra mention someone being “baptized as a Christian.” (After that, the term disappears until, again, Mary in TAS uses it.) So this felt like a worldbuilding point, that their doctrine specifically de-emphasizes Jesus. No obligatory prayers, no lip service to “what would Jesus do,” no framing their actions in terms of “following the Word of Christ,” no references at all.
…And now we’re in LBS, and this random person is telling a group of elementary-school kids “of course this is a Proper Country where we follow the Good Word about Jesus,” like of course that’s a common thing they’ve all heard of.
Is this difference also a worldbuilding point? Or is it a Doylist thing where, in writing HDM, Pullman wasn’t ready to antagonize Jesus’ fans that directly, and now he is?
(So far, no idea! TBD if anything in future chapters will make it clearer.)
[Post-reread note: They did not make it clearer.]
Chapters 10-11:
Lors Asriel! HDM readers know in a few years he’ll murder a kid Malcolm’s age for a military advantage, but here, Malcolm doesn’t pick up anything sinister at all. Personal charisma on full blast. Don’t remember if Malcolm ever learns different, or not.
[Post-reread note: Well, not in this book, at least.]
Stray daemon details that caught my eye:
- The shop teacher’s woodpecker daemon drills holes in scrap wood as a nervous tic
- Malcolm’s unsettled Aster can take chimera forms, like an owl with duck feathers, but only experiments with that when nobody else is watching
- Hyena daemon urinates in the road, while looking at Malcolm. Makes him feel so dirty/violated that he’s too embarrassed to tell anyone until his next meeting with Hannah
Are we supposed to believe daemons have been doing that (just, you know, normally in private) all along? Not sure I buy it.
[Post-reread note: There’s an upcoming journey with baby Lyra in which Malcolm is constantly aware of how often she needs to be fed and changed. The idea of feeding/changing Pan is never even mentioned. So, yeah, I don’t think it’s a general daemon bodily function. I think it’s is a skill this specific daemon has cultivated to freak people out.]
Chapters 12-13:
Oh, huh. Argument at Malcolm’s family pub, the phrase “scientific management of resources” gets thrown around. A slip from Pullman, or was “experimental theology” supposed to be a term from Church-controlled circles, not common in the general public?
[Post-reread note: For now, I think it was just a slip from Pullman.]
Argument is about the upcoming plot-point flood.
Seems worth noting that the “modern, scientific” proponents are all characters who are going to be proven wrong. The Right Understanding comes from “the ancient wisdom of the gyptians who know how to read the signs” and “one guy’s granny.”
Hannah gets access to a contraband alethiometer! From the description, this is the one Lyra will eventually get.
Contrast to the Bodleian Library one she was using officially. Don’t think I realized there were different models before this. With only 6 ever made, I figured they were a matching set.
The Bodleian one has full-color symbols! The stolen one has plain black ink lineart.
Idle theorizing: all 6 were originally made with black lineart, but that faceplate was damaged and replaced at some point. The new artist either was told to paint the new symbols fancier, or just had fun with it.
End of this latest chapter refers to Bonneville (the guy with the hyena daemon) as “a physicist.”
So much for my half-baked theory that maybe “experimental theology” was a replacement term for “physics” specifically.
Chapters 14-15:
Higher-up spies encourage Hannah to keep talking with (from their POV) this random 11-year-old, but it gets in-universe justified in a way that works for me. (…I mean narratively, not ethically.)
Alice (teen kitchen worker) calls Lyra a “little flirt” for giggling at Malcolm. Not creepy on its own, that’s a joke people make about babies…but knowing that Pullman is planning future Lyra/Malcolm, with more explicitly-creepy stuff in the lead-up…yeah, this is a retroactive big oof.
Malcolm gets to meet Mrs. Coulter! Unlike with Asriel, he gets a bad vibe off her immediately. Well, she’s on track to murder a lot more children than Asriel will, so maybe it’s fair.
(Also, Asriel shows care for Lyra, which biases Malcolm toward him instantly.)
Part 1 ends (at the 54% mark) with the predicted Big Flood hitting. Alice, Malcolm, and Lyra get stranded together in a boat.
Everything I remember being “meh” about this book is on their river journey. Plunging apprehensively onward…
Chapter 16:
Worldbuilding detail: pharmacies are marked with a green cross. (Not sure from context if it’s just a palette-swapped ➕️, or an actual ✝️.)
The dynamic between Alice and Malcolm is really good here. Grudging teamwork.
Malcolm and Aster see a drowned body during the flooding, and wonder “what happens to daemons when you die?”
Surprised they wouldn’t know. Even with no deaths in their close family, surely it’s a thing children are taught about? (They’ve been reading murder mysteries! It never came up?)
Different chat a few chapters ago, they saw Pan turning into a mole, and wondered how a baby daemon knows how to turn into a creature they’ve never actually seen.
That I liked, because it doesn’t seem like there’s a clear, generally-known answer. One adult daemon offered “You just feel mole-y.”
Chapter 17:
Mention of a prophecy about “a boy” that might be Malcolm.
Feels like overkill? Like “he can’t just be a normal person caught up in Lyra’s cosmic destiny, he’s gotta be special too.” (Don’t remember if there’s payoff for this later. Might like it more if it’s good. TBD.)
[Post-reread note: There was not.]
Chapter 18:
Not much to say here except “go Alice.” Previously seen decking Bonneville with a chair, now she gets off a gun at him.
Bonneville mentions “experimental theology” to Malcolm. Guess he doesn’t use “science”…?
Malcolm has been seeing flecks/lights that Hannah thinks are migraine auras. He misheard it as “auroras”. Unsubtle hint that this is Dust’s way of guiding him? Hasn’t been plot-pivotal yet, so we’ll see.
[Post-reread note: It was not.]
Chapter 19:
Reappearance of a trusted ally I forgot was coming back at all! Surprised and delighted.
Kitten!Pan kneads Malcolm’s hand as he rocks Lyra. He thinks “she’s too young to know it’s taboo,” but I expect it’d hurt if she didn’t feel so comfy and cared-for with him.
Earlier hints of “things in the river” now expanded with examples: mermaids, Father Thames, “old gods.”
I know we meet some of these in later chapters. And, look, I’m good with Lyra’s world having more fantastical beings than we already saw. But it sure would be weird if, after all HDM, the message of LBS was “sure, the Magisterium is evil and their god sucks, but science also sucks and will lead you astray, the truth is in following the right religion and trusting the better gods.”
Don’t remember if that’s how it actually ends! Just noting, as of now, the vibes feel odd.
[Post-reread note: Good news, I don’t think that was the message. The possibly-god-ish creatures we meet are no more or less trustworthy than other people.]
Chapter 20:
Evil Magisterium group kidnapped Lyra, after a St. Alexander kid in the refugee group tipped them off. Malcolm hates him, which is fair, but his own family are also so awful to him that I get why he was won over in the first place. Praise and affirmation for a kid who isn’t getting any at home is one heck of a drug.
The daring rescue is quite good! The Alice-Malcolm teamwork is really flourishing by now.
Malcolm’s “aurora” pops up again, but only to highlight the place they were already going. Finding Lyra is all their own ingenuity.
Chapter 21:
Last quarter of the book, and now things get outright magical.
Washing up on the island of a mystery woman with a cloud of butterflies. Malcolm first assumes one of them is her daemon, then wonders if, somehow, all of them are. Hey, I’ve written that fic.
A bag they took off Bonneville has…an alethiometer inside. Malcolm figures it’s the famous missing one.
Explains how conveniently Bonneville always caught up to them! And maybe why he was so convinced that “kidnapping Lyra” was the key to fixing his life in the first place.
They leave the alethiometer with the probably-faerie woman. So I guess from now on it’ll be Missing For Real forever.
At least it’s a more poetic end than “the kids drop it in the water and it gets crushed in the flood.” Getting some One Ring vibes here. It won’t get lost when it doesn’t want to.
Chapter 22:
Oh, they didn’t trade the alethiometer to the faerie, just its nice box? Huh. That’s less poetic, but a savvier move from Malcolm, so good for him.
New batch of probably-faeries, in fancy dress, in the garden of a fancy-but-unreachable manor. They each have a bird, which might or might not be daemons.
Really like the setup of “desolate ruins, hidden just outside the beautiful tranquil sphere of the garden.” Classic Fairyland worldbuilding.
…And Bonneville isn’t dead, again. Ugh.
Unless this is a faerie-thing taking his shape? Others are taking shapes of people familiar to Alice+Malcolm, including at least one who’s dead. Although I don’t remember him being that…and it’s enough of a satisfying twist, I feel like I would?
[Post-reread note: No luck, this is just Bonneville.]
This might retroactively ruin my “oh, nice, the alethiometer justifies how conveniently he always caught up with them” satisfaction.
Will the narrative give him a new justification for this round? TBD.
[Post-reread note: It did not.]
Chapter 23:
Meeting a giant in the water, talking him into opening a set of gates. Fully fairy-tale logic here, with Little Nemo type imagery. This team could make it through the Phantom Tollbooth or survive the Labyrinth, easy.
They figure this guy is the minor god of some tributary, since he works for Father Thames, god of the Thames. Logical enough.
Also, part of their scheme is making him believe Lyra is a princess. Not clear if he’s just gullible, or she has supernatural Princess Vibes that he can sense.
Back in normal reality, a witch! Most human person they’ve met all day, but with her Arctic-tern daemon not in range at first, poor Malcolm assumes otherwise.
(Briefly wonders if her branch of cloud-pine is her daemon. …I’ve written that fic too.)
Okay, I know from HDM why the witches would have an interest in Lyra. What I’m not sure of is, why didn’t this one try to either (depending on clan) guide her to safety, or kill her?
She shields them with what H2G2 would call a Somebody Else’s Problem field, but then just flies off again. Hmm.
[Post-reread note: Yeah, this never gets resolved or comes up again. Why even put her in the book??]
Chapter 24:
Alice swiped a bunch of food from the faerie garden party, and the whole crew eats some now. I’m surprised it’s still food-shaped, outside that sphere of magic influence. They’re not hesitant to eat it, hm.
I didn’t mention before, but the faerie woman with the butterflies breastfed Lyra, and Malcolm+Alice were immediately suspicious. So they have some idea of the dangers of eating unseelie food…
[Post-reread note: Yeah, this goes nowhere.]
Getting foreshadowing now that Bonneville is a ghost, which would be fine by me!
…Nope, he’s alive, hyena daemon and all. Dammit.
Malcolm, almost in these words: “I need an adult”
Valid, buddy.
Anyway, we’re trying to murder him again, and this time the hyena vanishes, so I guess it finally took. About time.
Bonneville grabbed Alice’s daemon to force her to follow him, so Malcolm followed to help, while his own daemon stayed to guard Lyra. Forced to endure the distance pain because they had no one else to rely on. That was a good heroic sequence there!
Mixed feelings about the rest. Alice already beat this guy twice, and yet he gets to keep coming back, until the boy character takes him on? Malcolm succeeds with an oar when Alice couldn’t with An Actual Gun? Not my favorite twist.
There’s been an air of SA around Bonneville for a while. He got shunned from academia over an unspecified sex crime, which got mentioned so much that I figured it was setting up a dramatic reveal of the details, but now it seems like maybe not?
Point is, it’s not unexpected that he tries to assault Alice. (Vague about the extent of it, since Malcolm’s POV doesn’t fully process what he sees.)
But before now, all his creepiness was a means to the end of kidnapping Lyra. And here it seems like he forgets all about Lyra, his main goal is to assault Alice.
We know why Lyra was worth a massive multi-day boat chase: she’s Mrs. Coulter’s baby, and he wanted her influence on his side.
But why is Alice worth that?
There’s no nice way to put this, sorry in advance: why not go after any of the thousand closer teenage girls who would be easier targets? This is so much work to attack a specific girl! Predators are lazy!
I can sure imagine it being about “revenge for those two times she nearly killed him.”
But: He doesn’t show that. There’s no “haha, now you’ll be sorry for everything you did to me!” type gloating. Can’t think of anything that foreshadowed his priority-switch away from Lyra. This is just me retconning in a reason, not the book giving one.
One chapter left to go.
The list of “points I expect this book to leave unresolved” has gotten pretty long. On first read, I remember thinking they were left hanging for the sequel to pick up! They…were not.
Here goes nothing…
Chapter 25, thread 1:
I do like that they’ve washed up in a graveyard this time. Coffins in a stone mausoleum give them justifiably-still-dry wood to build fires with.
Malcolm apologizes a lot to the skeletons. Good kid.
…It’s just occurring to me that I would’ve loved a reveal that the hints about ghosts were foreshadowing “the ghosts of the graveyard, moved and affirmed by Malcolm’s respect, rise up to help him kill Bonneville.”
Doubly so if this was Ghost Bonneville, seeking revenge on Alice for killing him. That unfinished business could have guided him after Alice, and Malcolm would need the supernatural help of the graveyard ghosts to kill him double-plus-dead.
Feeling a little cheated we didn’t get this now, ngl :(
Back on the morning after the flood, Hannah deduced that Malcolm would try to take Lyra to Asriel’s address.
Good payoff: her allies have had boats looking for the canoe ever since. They even found Asriel first, got him in a boat, and so they found the canoe on the water! Probably would’ve fallen apart before the kids reached him, so instead, he reaches them. Moments before a Magisterium boat does, even! A good dramatic rescue scene.
Bad lack-of-payoff: Did Hannah’s cool secret alethiometer come to anything at all?
She didn’t use it to figure out where Malcolm was going, she just deduced that from the evidence + how well she knows Malcolm.
[Post-reread note: I didn’t comment at the time, but this was in chapter 17. Which is also Hannah’s last appearance in the book. She gets mentioned in chapters 18 and 22, but never shows up on-page again.]
To be clear, I like that bit! Their friendship is genuine and important. Giving it that kind of plot payoff was good!
But there was never a different plot point that she did need the alethiometer for.
There was also plenty of setup about how difficult it is. It takes a lot of study and cross-referencing. Hannah doesn’t have the magical intuition that Lyra does.
So you could’ve made the payoff out of that instead. It answered something for her, she’s poring over the books looking at the symbols…and we, the readers, can connect them all to the bizarre events of Malcolm and Alice’s Excellent Unseelie Adventure. But Hannah doesn’t have that context. At last, she despairs. “I can’t do it! This is out of my league! It’s so obscure and complicated, only a genius could figure it out.”
[Cue Lyra’s leitmotif from HDM playing in the background.]
Heck, drop the whole Special Bonus Witch Prophecy, let Hannah deduce “a boy is going on a journey carrying a treasure” from the symbols she reads. She just can’t interpret anything more helpful, like “pick him up at this date and time.”
Oh, and! About that prophecy! Why didn’t it say “a boy and a girl”?
Alice was integral to Lyra surviving this trip. She did half the carrying! What gives, prophets? Behind every man is an unacknowledged woman, even in a witch prophecy??
Chapter 25, thread 2:
Alice gets to yell at Lord Asriel about how great Malcolm is, so don’t you dare disrespect everything he’s done.
I like this! Well-earned!
Alice has never hesitated to tell off Malcolm when she has a problem with him. So this reversal, telling off someone else in his defense, is really fulfilling. And you know she means it.
From here they get to Jordan College, via Asriel flying a gyropter. (Helicopter.) I’m retroactively surprised Malcolm+Alice haven’t heard any before. Wouldn’t they be used for rescues? And to survey the flood damage?
They gyropters also have earmuff/microphone setups to communicate over the rotors. Which has me retroactively wondering why nobody else has used radio. Not to communicate, not for news reports, not to play music in the pub…
I was vaguely assuming the tech didn’t exist here! Now…huh.
Asriel basically dumps the kids at Jordan (literally, the last scene is Malcolm collapsing on their carpet) and immediately biffs off to the North. A+ parenting, right there.
Most of this journey has been “washing up at a sanctuary, feeling safe for a short time, then having to flee”, so it’s a little anticlimactic to end on “but THIS time it’ll be fine, no worries, roll credits.”
I’d feel better if Hannah was here to greet them! Which would also salve the lack of Hannah in the back half of the book. She got a few scenes, chapters ago, then totally disappeared. Unsatisfying.
(And just imagine if Hannah had brought Malcolm+Alice’s parents! We didn’t actually meet Alice’s before, but we met Malcolm’s, and surely all of them deserve that reunion!)
One more anticlimax: Asriel tells the kids “never talk about this, not with anyone but each other, then you’ll be safe.”
Not buying that at all.
Their school is full of junior Magisterium spies. Teachers were getting fired. A local guy stood up to Church agents at the pub once, then he and his family had to flee the district.
The town knows which kids went missing during the flood. And which one had a canoe.
What stops the Church from kidnapping these kids the minute they get home, and forcing the intel out of them?
…on a more upbeat note, why not give the kids clearance to talk about it with a whole circle of specific adults Asriel trusts? Farder Coram counts. Hannah deserves to.
It took support, intel, and prep from several sympathetic adults to get these kids through the flood. If we ended with Asriel setting up a group of supporters to get them through whatever danger the Church brings down next, I’d feel reassured!
But nope.
So that’s La Belle Sauvage. Really strong start! Faceplanted in a whole lot of ways by the end.
Might need a new thread for the “and ANOTHER thing that never got resolved–!” reactions that will undoubtedly hit me over the rest of the night.
(TSC is checked out. Will start that some time soon.)
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By Steel Druhm
Written By: Nameless_N00b_87
It’s hard to believe Gojira’s From Mars to Sirius will be celebrating its twenty-year anniversary next year. The now famous metal quartet from Bayonne, France has ascended the metal hierarchy since the release of their landmark record, culminating this year in a mainstage spot in the opening ceremonies of the 2024 Summer Olympics. But as a longtime fan, I feared that their performance, no matter how awe-inspiring, would add further fuel to an ever-growing wildfire of imitation by a legion of aspiring musicians seeking to emulate their captivating sound. Enter Septaria, one such young aspiring band from Southern France who are ready to unleash their debut album Astar.1 The foursome has garnered somewhat of a buzz with their existential blend of Gojira’s modern metal and Slowdive’s dreamy post- rock, resulting in the group becoming the latest signees to Guillaume Bernard’s2 Klonosphere label. Let’s find out if these young lads can escape the shadow of their Godzilla-like influences and carve out their own path.
Septaria wastes little time channeling Gojira’s signature sound. From the rhythmic staccatos and pummeling double-kicks of From Mars to Sirius, to the double octave pitch shifts highlighted on Magma‘s “Centaure,” to the harmonic tremolos and melodic tapping of L’Enfant Sauvage, the Gojira tropes dominate Astar’s drawn-out runtime with lackluster results. And to cover the vocal inconsistencies that shredders Hugo Thevenot and Maxime Ayasse produce, the duo run their ethereal cleans, guttural roars, and reverberating screams under thick layers of reverb and delay while toying about with periodic bouts of throat singing and ethnic chants. Drummer Hugo Leydet, who offers his best impersonation of Mario Duplantier’s heavy grooves in both performance and tone, teams up with the low rumble of Baptise Trébuchon’s bass to round out the quartet’s familiar backbone. Though clearly talented, Septaria fail to show much originality outside of a few strong swelling and groove-laden moments peppered throughout Astar that provide a glimpse of the ensemble’s artistic vision.
Septaria’s overindulgence and lack of originality make Astar’s excessive length unjustifiable, bloated, and monotonous. Clocking in at 68 minutes, Septaria’s twelve lengthy, Gojira-inspired tracks rely on post-rock’s epic builds stretched out beyond necessity, resulting in a listless and tedious listening experience. “Being,” for example, is an immense ten-minute track that takes forever to arrive at its apex before the energy dies against four minutes of atmospheric feedback and ominous bass tones. Elsewhere, the lifeforce of Ledet’s hypnotic drumming in “Skys Words” deflates in the song’s bloated second half, offering an uninspired, spacey, and drawn-out construction that clashes with its grandiose form. And the cacophony of whammy bar manipulations and screams of “Saggitarius” shatter all momentum after its midpoint. Meant to offer respite, Septaria attempts to combat Astar’s bloat through strategically positioned intermezzos (“Abyss,” “Persephone”) intended to break the record’s flow into more palatable portions. Instead, these diversions quickly devolve into filler, serving as stagnant pools of rogue riffs.
Astar’s stronger moments appear when Septaria rely on their post-rock and groove-laden core to drive creativity. The dreamlike and celestial bridge that triggers the ending in opener “Moment Présent” signals that these Frenchmen have the capacity to write catchy, somber, and atmospheric grooves with emotional impact. Astar’s best moment arrives with the closing of “Embers” where Ledet’s back-beat shuffle coalesces with Thevenot’s and Ayasse’s harmonic tapping and ominous low tremolos to create a head-bobbing groove. Despite these highlights, however, Septaria’s hesitancy to escape the comfort of their predecessors’ shadow stifles their creativity, leading them to eventually revert to a predictable, borrowed riff.
Septaria is a young band that possesses loads of talent and ambition. However, Astar falls victim to Septaria’s overindulgence and lack of originality. This reliance on a well-established formula, coupled with the inability to craft compelling and concise compositions, results in tedious and underwhelming listen. Astar is a testament to Septaria‘s potential, but it is potential that remains largely untapped. I’m left disappointed with what could have been with Astar, and hope Septaria strives to step outside of the confines of imitation with their next steps.
Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 192 kbps mp3
Label: Klonosphere Records
Websites: septariaofficial.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/septaria.band
Releases Worldwide: November 15, 2024Show 2 footnotes
- Stylized as A*. Seriously… – Dolph ↩
- The guitarist and founding member of art rock band Klone. ↩
#20 #2024 #Astar #FrenchMetal #Gojira #KlonosphereRecords #Nov24 #PostRock #PostMetal #ProgressiveMetal #Review #Reviews #Septaria #Slowdive
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Floating – Hesitating Lights Review
By Dear Hollow
Back in ’22, your favorite AMG staffers butted heads and said “yeehaw” in a Rodeö whose scores were disappointing, very good, and everything in between. The band was a little Swedish oddity called Floating, whose collision of sounds compiled a library of post-punk’s sneering rhythms, post-metal’s ponderous hugeness, and doom’s lurching intensity, at heart beating with dissonant death metal blood inspired by Demilich and Ulcerate. I found myself on the more favorable side, a little put off by its inconsistencies and experimental quirks, but ultimately excited to see more, and my wish has been granted in follow-up Hesitating Lights.
While entirely more streamlined, a major difference between its predecessor, The Waves Have Teeth, is the heart that beats within it and the crescendo that it embodies. While it uses much of the same tricks, it feels more like a post-punk band doing death metal, punky blastbeats meeting an unfuckwithable bassline, providing the backbone of each track – a flaying guitar and scattered synth forming the amorphous flesh. A tale of two halves, whose stylistic differences are tasteful in a gradual shift from punky energy to death metal disintegration, Hesitating Lights soars in its carefully orchestrated experimental attack, leaving a bit more to be desired, but remains a step towards the greatness that Floating is clearly capable of.
The first half of Hesitating Lights deals in a post-punk style that is both impressively simple and mind-warping. Bass is the starting point in its rich and warm intensity that undergirds a deathened attack that is allowed to waver into various textures of dissonance and darkness, ethereality and irony. Taking cue from the ambivalent bumbling of acts like Cocteau Twins and Siouxsie and the Banshees, warm bass pairs with cold guitar in a collision that feels simultaneously ominous and energetic, taking cues from Ulcerate in contemplative sprawls and blastbeats (“I Reached the Mew,” “Cough Choir”), while motifs of dissonant stings and chiming tones inject a dose of morbidity apt to the descriptor “deathpunk” (“Grave Dog,” “Exit Bag Song”). The first half feels like a carefully curated experiment in punk percussion and bass and death metal melodics and vocals. The result is unique and atmospheric – a bit that feels too safe periodically, but its careful composition shows Floating’s songwriting prowess.
It’s only after the first act that Floating begins to fly off the rails in tasteful death metal dominance. Centerpiece of “Hesitating Lights / Harmless Fires” is a tour-de-force of the more synth-driven experimental tendencies, a patient sprawl that refuses easy categorization into either territory. A nearly post-metal crescendo anchored exclusively by the rumbling bass guitar descends into a noise rock climax not unlike Gilla Band or Lightning Bolt. Beyond that, tracks begin to utilize a cascading riff technique in which guitar rhythms fall apart incrementally across repeated iterations, leading to tasteful slivers of melody and ominous buildups (“Still Dark Enough,” “The Waking”), while doom makes a dirging appearance in the most pitch-black moment of the album (“The Wrong Body”). But even aside from more experimental flair, each track in the second half features a kickass riff that gets the head bobbing and anchors the track in some semblance of reality.
I felt like The Waves Have Teeth was a carpet bomb of ideas with glimpses of its deathpunk actualization shining through. Hesitating Lights feels like a much more fleshed-out beast, with the real teeth to speak of. The shifts between the more post-punk- and death metal-oriented halves can feel jarring, and perhaps that gradual descent into the abyss can be accomplished with a bit more finesse, but it shows the duo’s amorphous quality in a fantastic display for a young band. Ominous death metal atmosphere and rebellious punk energy are harnessed with a kickass bass performance and a shapeshifting percussion in a tidy thirty-six minutes, and it’s infectious. While certainly not the opus magnum Floating is capable of, you should have no hesitation in picking up Hesitating Lights.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Transcending Obscurity Records
Websites: floating-label.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/floatingdeathmetal
Releases Worldwide: July 11th, 2025#2025 #35 #CocteauTwins #DeathMetal #Demilich #DissonantDeathMetal #Floating #GillaBand #HesitatingLights #Jul25 #LightningBolt #NewWave #postPunk #Review #Reviews #SiouxsieAndTheBanshees #SwedishMetal #TranscendingObscurityRecords #Ulcerate
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Friendly reminder: I’m still seeking submissions for the next zine I’m curating, titled “Ritual as Resistance: Defending the Sacred.”
Length: 125 words, give or take
Deadline: May 11
Email to: cbmilstein {at} yahoo [dot] comPlease share this “call” far and wide!
I’m looking for concrete examples of rituals you’ve held space for and/or participated in; that draw on your own cultural practices and/or ancestral traditions; that blur the lines between sacred and rebellious, or shake up what the spiritual+political feels like; and especially, that are collectively and/or publicly done. (See fuller description in my previous post.)
Here’s a sample of one that I’ll be using in the zine, as inspiration and to offer a sense of what I want (though please note, I am NOT only looking for Jewish rituals—though we anarchist Jews love our rad rituals!):
“Fascists sticker-bomb your neighborhood. This hurts. Not merely because the memory of eleven people killed at the Tree of Life building—your childhood shul—still lingers, but they’re crafty bigots. They deliberately drop provocative flyers on people’s doorsteps to try to break solidarity between Palestinians and Jews. This inspires you to counter with agitprop. The ritual technology of prayer, in Judaism, allows us to make the most mundane moments holy. The eating of bread and sipping wine. Through the language of our ancestors, we make these acts sacred, connecting us with all who’ve performed them across the axis of time. You arm yourself with new ritual implements: a paint scraper, sharpies, and wheat paste, along with an extending pole for higher spots. Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, even these moments where we cover up white supremacist drek can be holy!”
—Anastasia bat Lilith (@stormbringer_press)(photo: glimpse of an elaborate, bilingual grief and ritual space that I and three beautifully caring anarchists set up for the whole weekend during the May 2023 @montrealanarchist)
#RitualAsResistance
#DefendingTheSacred
#TryAnarchismForLife
#NoSpiritualSurrender (with love and blessed remembrance to Klee Benally) -
Introduction
Are you a single parent struggling to make ends meet? Or perhaps you’re currently unemployed and looking for ways to bring in some extra income?
If so, you’re in the right place. In this blog post, we’ll explore 10 different ways you can make money online from the comfort of your own home, with no investments required.
From freelance writing to virtual assistance and even starting your own online business, there are plenty of opportunities out there just waiting for you to seize them.
So grab a cup of coffee and get ready to discover how you can start earning money online today.
1. Freelancing:
Unskilled individuals can offer their services as virtual assistants, content writers, social media managers, or data entry operators on freelance platforms like Upwork, Freelancer, or Fiverr.
2. Online surveys:
There are websites like Swagbucks and InboxDollars that pay users to take surveys. Unskilled individuals can participate in market research surveys and earn money or gift cards in return.
3. Sell handmade products:
If you have a knack for crafting, you can create handmade products like jewelry, home decor, or clothing and sell them on platforms like Etsy or eBay.
4. Online tutoring:
If you possess knowledge in a particular subject, you can offer online tutoring services through platforms like Tutor.com or Wyzant, assisting students and earning an income.
5. Online transcription:
Transcription platforms like Rev or Scribie provide opportunities for unskilled individuals to transcribe audio or video content in exchange for payment.
6. Become a virtual call center agent:
Companies like Arise or Liveops hire remote call center agents who can handle customer inquiries or support from the comfort of their homes.
7. Start a blog:
By creating valuable content focused on a specific niche, you can monetize your blog through advertisements, sponsored posts, or affiliate marketing. You can start a blog at Blogger.com for free.
8. Become an online seller:
Platforms like Amazon, eBay, or Shopify allow individuals to become online sellers. You can either sell unused items or source products from wholesalers and sell them online.
9. Website testing:
Companies like UserTesting pay individuals to test websites and provide feedback on user experience. No particular skills are required, just a computer and an internet connection.
10. Content creation on YouTube:
Unskilled individuals can create and upload videos on YouTube on topics of interest. By gaining a substantial subscriber base, you can monetize your channel through ads and sponsored content.
Conclusion
These are websites that pay users to take surveys and can participate in market research surveys and earn money or gift cards in return.
Platforms like Amazon, eBay, or Shopify allow individuals to become online sellers.
Companies like UserTesting pay individuals to test websites and provide feedback on user experience.
Unskilled individuals can create and upload videos on YouTube on topics of interest.
By gaining a substantial subscriber base, you can monetize your channel through ads and sponsored content.
Other Posts:
- How to Make Money Writing on Penpee: Turn Your Passion into Profit!
- Resilient Living: A Single Mom’s Guide to Thriving on a Budget
- Crafting Cheer: 16 DIY Christmas Trees from Everyday Items
- Blogging for Beginners: How to Start, Where to Blog for Free, and Earn Money
- Google’s Game-Changing B2B Innovations: A Glimpse into 2023
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#earningMoney #easyWaysToMakeMoney #extraMoney #freelance #freelanceWor #howToMakeMoney #makeMoney #makeMoneyOnline #money #onlineWork #passiveIncome #singleParent #unemployed #waysToMakeMoney #workFromHome #workfromhome #youtube
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What Can You Do with The Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant? A Complete Guide to Every Feature and Capability
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Adobe’s Acrobat AI Assistant is Reshaping Our Relationship with Digital Documents
The PDF is the silent workhorse of the digital world, a universal standard for everything from contracts and research papers to creative briefs. For decades, however, interacting with these static files has been a one-way street. We read, we search, we scroll. But what if you could have a conversation with your documents? The introduction of the Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant marks a fundamental shift in this dynamic. This new reality is not just about convenience; it is about transforming static information into an interactive, intelligent partner. The Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant, integrated directly into Acrobat Pro and Reader, is poised to redefine productivity for students, professionals, and creatives alike by making documents talk back.
This development is timely and relevant. As artificial intelligence becomes woven into the fabric of our daily software, understanding its practical applications is crucial. The ability to instantly distill a 100-page report into a concise summary or ask complex questions of a dense legal contract is no longer science fiction. This article provides a complete overview of what Adobe’s Acrobat AI Assistant can do, offering a clear-eyed perspective on its capabilities and why it represents a significant leap forward in document intelligence.
What Is the Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant?
At its core, the Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant is an AI-powered conversational engine built directly into the Adobe Acrobat ecosystem. It allows you to interact with your PDFs and other documents, such as Word files and PowerPoint presentations, in a completely new way. Instead of just reading, you can now ask questions, request summaries, and generate new content based on the information held within one or multiple files.
A Conversational Interface with Your Documents
The most groundbreaking feature is the ability to “chat” with your files. You can ask for definitions of key terms, inquire about specific data points, or seek clarification on complex paragraphs. The AI provides answers in natural language, directly citing its sources within the document. For instance, you could upload a financial report and ask, “What was the net profit margin in the last quarter?” and receive a direct answer with a clickable link to the exact page and sentence where that information resides. The system also intelligently suggests follow-up questions to help you explore the topic more deeply.
Generative Summaries and Intelligent Outlines
Confronted with a lengthy document? The AI Assistant can generate a concise, one-click summary that extracts the most critical points and headings. This creates a digestible overview or a structured outline, allowing you to grasp the essence of a document in seconds. This feature is invaluable for quickly understanding the core arguments of a research paper, the main takeaways from a meeting transcript, or the key provisions of a business proposal.
Why This AI Assistant is a Game-Changer
The integration of a powerful AI into the world’s most ubiquitous document platform is more than just an incremental update. It signals a new era of information management. How does this Acrobat AI Assistant change the game for knowledge workers?
From Passive Consumption to Active Engagement
The assistant transforms the user from a passive reader into an active participant in a dialogue with the text. This shift is profound. It encourages critical inquiry by making it effortless to probe a document’s claims, compare data points, and connect ideas across different sections or even entirely different files. The ability to analyze multiple documents simultaneously—PDFs, Word files, and PowerPoints—to identify patterns, similarities, or discrepancies is a particularly powerful function for researchers and analysts.
AI-Powered Content Creation and Formatting
Beyond analysis, the Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant is a generative tool. You can instruct it to reformat information into professional outputs. For example, you can ask it to draft an email summarizing a report, create a set of bullet-point takeaways for a presentation, or even compose a social media post based on a press release. A convenient copy button allows you to seamlessly transfer this generated content to other applications, streamlining workflows significantly.
Uncompromising Security and Trust
In an age of valid concerns about data privacy, Adobe has placed security at the forefront. The AI Assistant operates with enterprise-grade governance. Critically, your document content is never used to train Adobe’s AI models without your explicit consent. All answers generated by the AI include intelligent, clickable citations that link back to the source material inside the document, allowing for easy verification and fostering trust in the output. This commitment to attribution and user control is a crucial differentiator.
How to Leverage the Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant
The practical applications of this technology are vast and span numerous fields. Whether you are a student, a business professional, or a legal expert, the assistant offers tailored solutions to common challenges.
For the Professional: Streamlining Workflows
Imagine summarizing a lengthy meeting transcript from Zoom or Microsoft Teams in moments to build an executive summary. Or consider responding to a complex Request for Proposal (RFP) by having the AI extract all relevant requirements and data points from attached documents. Financial analysts can dissect dense reports, and marketing professionals can tailor resumes and proposals to match specific job descriptions—all with minimal manual effort.
For the Legal Expert: Demystifying Contracts
A specialized feature introduced on February 4, 2025, provides powerful contract intelligence. The Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant automatically detects contracts—even scanned ones—and provides a unique interface. It can generate a contract overview, highlight key dates and clauses, spot differences across up to ten different versions, and clarify complex legal jargon. Furthermore, you can request signatures directly within the Acrobat environment, closing the loop on the entire contract lifecycle.
For the Student: A Powerful Study Partner
For those in education, the AI Assistant is a transformative study tool. Students can turn dense course materials into concise study guides, generate quiz questions or flashcards to test their knowledge, and gain a deeper understanding of complex academic concepts. The mobile apps even support voice commands, allowing a student to review notes or ask questions of a textbook while on the go, making exam preparation more efficient and interactive.
Platform Availability, Pricing, and Access
The Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant is designed for broad accessibility. It is available on desktop (Windows and macOS), the web version of Acrobat, and through browser extensions for Chrome and Edge. Mobile apps for both iOS and Android also feature the assistant, ensuring productivity is not tethered to a desk. It currently supports multiple languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese.
Full access to the AI Assistant’s capabilities requires an add-on subscription, which is priced at approximately $4.99 per month. Both free users of Acrobat Reader and paid Acrobat Pro subscribers receive a limited number of free requests to try out the features before committing. Adobe also offers enterprise-level controls, allowing administrators to enable or disable AI features based on organizational policies.
Quick Capabilities Summary
FeatureWhat it DoesChat with DocumentsAsk questions about your file and receive sourced, natural-language answers.Generative SummaryInstantly create outlines and highlight key information from long documents.Multi-File InsightAnalyze and find patterns or themes across multiple documents at once.Content GenerationDraft ready-to-use content like emails, reports, slides, and bulleted lists.Contract IntelligenceAutomatically summarizes clauses, spots changes, and compares contract versions.Study Tools for EducationCreates study guides, quizzes, and flashcards from your course materials.Meeting & Report PrepDelivers recaps of meeting transcripts and analysis of financial reports.Secure & Governed UseFeatures admin controls and a privacy-first architecture that respects user data.The Future of Document Interaction
The Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant represents a fundamental rethinking of how we interact with information. By turning static documents into dynamic, conversational partners, Adobe is not just speeding up workflows but also deepening comprehension. It empowers users to extract value from their documents with unprecedented ease and precision. For anyone who works extensively with documents, contracts, learning materials, or business content, this AI-powered assistant is not just a tool to consider—it is a glimpse into the future of productivity.
Feel free to find other AI and tech-related news here at WE AND THE COLOR.
#AcrobatAIAssistant #AcrobatReader #adobe #AdobeAcrobat #ai #AIAssistant