Chapter 18 - Fog and Ice
For no real reason at all, I decided to read Chapter 18 from the 2002 Knopf edition of The Golden Compass, which my mom found at a thrift store for a dollar or two and decided to get for me. It’s in brand new condition for the most part. Actually, I’ll just read my old copy, it’s much easier to hold in my hands due to it being handled and open so often.
Beginning Part 3 of the book, I’d like to complain once again about the way the audiobook is set up. The fourth audio file in the series begins with Chapter 17, the last chapter of Part 2, with Part 3 and Chapter 18 beginning 37 minutes into the fourth file.
Would it have killed them to just put Chapter 17 in the third audio file and then let the fourth and fifth parts make up Part 3?
And of course there’s also an unnecessary fanfare in which we are reminded what series, book, and chapter we are listening to, along with who the author is. Why is this even needed?
Well, on to the material itself.
Serafina Pekkala virtually states outright that Lyra is brining Roger to Lord Asriel without her even realizing it. I’m kind of disappointed that I didn’t figure this out sooner, but what can you do?
I don’t understand how the movie got away with simplifying Iorek Byrnison’s reason for exile as simply having lost a fight with another bear. If losing a fight was all it took to get a bear exiled from Svalbard, then wouldn’t someone get exiled every time there was a fight?
All I can think while reading the part where the cliff-ghasts attack the balloon is how much it must have sucked to be riding in that thing. The depiction of Lee Scorseby’s balloon in the film adaptation as a powered airship the size of a sailing dinghy actually made more sense as a means of travel than to have a static balloon with no means of control or propulsion other than a lucky wind or having witches to pull the balloon in the desired direction.
Ballooning in general has always seemed so reckless to me, it’s like “okay lets go up in a balloon and hopefully we land safely and don’t crash into a cliff or get blown out to sea and perhaps we’ll land someplace nice and have a picnic.
Or in Lyra's case crash land into a frozen wasteland and get captured by sentient polar bears.
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