First book of Dust. By Pullman. Plot is a bit contrived. Malcolm and Alice are endlessly chased by guy who knows about Rusakov field. That he is a great scientist and yet so evil somehow didn't seem realistic. Alice was great though. Malcolm was good. This was a book about people interacting and it was pretty good. In an Iliad sort of way. Books should be about interacting. I'm mistaken in trying to write about the red plain. All the things that haunt my mind aren't really proper material for a story.

So there's a flood that goes on forever. Rusakov with his hyena chases them forever. Alice reminded me of S. The way the daemons in the previous book wouldn't be seen for a month as a punishment also reminded me of S. It's been years and she still keeps popping into my mind. ....too much. Whenever I wake up in the middle of the night it seems like somehow she pops into my mind. Oh well.

Then Jesus the Good Man, Christ the Scoundrel. Halfway through. Don't know if I will finish. Got the idea. Organization and Miracles are bad and so on. I agree.

Read Pullman's Dark Materials.
May have read it before but there was really something wrong with me back then. Still is probably. But much less so. Some day I will reach that point! If I don't die first.

Liked this a lot. Don't usually care for heroines and I think actually I started liking it more when Lyra was joined by Will. I think that was starting with book 2.

I liked that the fate of everything depended on two people falling in love. You could say that is the most true thing really. Falling in love or at least (or better) falling into like. People coming together. Not literally. Though they can I guess.

And then there are the daemons. It's a nice idea. I'm curious to look up if that represents something specific for Pullman. There is his idea of death. And of course his anti-religious viewpoint. A lot of good stuff in this series. There is a similarity to CS Lewis. But it is better than Lewis.

Curious to see the movie now and then read his related books. His evolution stuff with the mulefa was well thought out. I kept expecting something to happen with those evil water birds. That and the evil priest (Gonzalez/Gomez?) almost didn't really serve a purpose. Almost something that could have been cut out.

But the birds taking a shit on the mulefa's settlement is the one thing that I very clearly remembered (and their seed wheels) from having read this so long ago. I must have been in a very strange place when I previously read this. I dimly recall sort of skim reading a lot of books; searching for I don't know what. Some vague thing that I guess doesn't exist. Though I certainly loved Jack Vance around that time.