Golden Compass Rant

Since I no longer have as much time for reading, I’ve started getting books on CD to listen to on my commute. My latest book was The Golden Compass.

I tried to read this years ago when it first came out. I didn’t finish it, because I just couldn’t stand Lyra. I felt like I was wading through page after page of her long meandering lies, and finally I just gave up.

However, it’s now the book for my book club, so I got the CDs. The down side to CDs, is that you can’t skim the boring parts, and that, for whatever reason, on this book instead of the narrator doing all the voices, they have an entire cast of voice actors reading all the parts. Normally this would be okay, except the girl read Lyra was naturally whiny, and bursting with passion for her part. So her lines sounded like something like this:

Lyra: *Gasp!* but PAN, I was HIDING in the RETIRING closet, *Gasp!* EVEN though I’M a GIRL! *Gasp!* and NOW we HAVE to WARN Lord AZ-RE-AL!!

It was really annoying. Although I did appreciate her dedication to pronouncing every syllable of Lord Azrael’s name.

So, I hate Lyra when I read her, and now I hate her in Audio. I should see the movie just so I can complete the Trifecta of intense character dislike.

The other hard part came later, when you met the Queen of the Witches, Serfina-Pickapeckapickledpeppers or whatever her ridiculous name was. She had these long boring conversations with the aeronaut about free will vs. destiny.

Normally I’m all for philosophical discussion, except that one side was being voiced by a British man attempting a Texas drawl, and the other side was being voiced by a British woman who was going for what I think was an Imperial Russian accent, but sounded more Swedish until she finally gave up and settled for sounding like Mary Poppins.

I would be driving, cringing as they went on and on and on, and I would be like, I’ll just skip to the next track, I mean nothing too exciting could happen in the next three minutes right?

*Skip*
*Blah blah money blah blah Texas blah choice blah blah*
* Blah blah witch witch witchey blah destiny blah*
*Skip*
“Blah blah balloon blah blah choice blah?”’
“blah blah witch destiny blah blah”
Skip
“Blah blah choice blah!”
CURSE YOU PULLMAN!! IT”S FREAKING SIX IN THE MORNING! GET TO THE POINT ALL READY!!!

My other big issue, beside the whole “dust is the original sin”’ macguffin which made No Sense, was the fact that everyone kept brining up how Lyra found the bear’s armour.

They go North, they have to hire the bear, he says “Only if you find my armour.” Lyra walks off, asks her magic 8 ball, golden compass, and then walks back and tells the bear where it is. He goes gets it. The End.

From that point on, How Lyra Found the Armour is mentioned by someone every 15 minutes, as if it’s the greatest feat since Hercules defeated the Hydra.
Seriously, why is this her major accomplishment? I mean, I used my GPS to get to the Kennedy Center, but I’m not about to list it on my resume. Then to make it even more annoying, shortly after this rather minor episode Lyra engineers a mass jail break, burning the facility down behind her. And even after that everyone’s like “Lyra, she found the bear’s armor!”

If I was her, I’d be mad.

The best parts of the book happened whenever Mrs. Coulter (or possibly, Mrs. Gooter?) was around. In my mind, she always looks like Nicole Kidman (Thank you previews!) and she was a pretty awesome bad guy.

Phew. All right. Now that I have that all out I can sit back and enjoy the try outs for American Idol.