Jadenim wrote:
Similar; I read His Dark Materials in my mid-twenties and enjoyed it, but knew that if I’d read it ten years younger it would have blown my mind.
Slightly off topic, but have you read the new two books that connect to HDM, La Belle Sauvage and The Secret Commonwealth? I'm part way through the second, and funny enough given your comment, one of the things that's really gripping me is how they offer a much more 'grown-up' take on that world. Not just in terms of the content (a fair bit more swearing, violence, adult themes) but in the whole perspective. The politics are more intricate and nuanced, the characters and their relationships more complex, and to some extent it sits at a weird but fascinating cross section of the childlike wonder of the original books and the fact that the original audience of those books is far more mature now. Especially the second one, which plays this whole shift out in a older, more cynical and nuanced Lyra very different from the typical, if very well-written, character she is in HDM. So if you enjoy that story but are looking for a more adult take on it (or just want a bloody good read),100% recommend reading them.*
As for myself and the topic, while I'm tempted by the obvious answers like
LotR or Star Wars, I saw both of those at the perfect time to have sparked a childhood's worth of imagination and inspiration, and that's not something I'd ever trade for the more complete understanding I might get out of them now (I can watch them again and get that anyway). Instead, I think I'll probably go with something a little more recent and pick the Mass Effect trilogy.
The entire thing passed me by for a long old time, and when I finally did find it, it was looking for something cheap to play on a wifi-less Xbox; I found ME3 for a fiver, looked up a trailer and saw cool spaceships and aliens and shooty bits and figured it was worth a punt. When I actually played it, I was blown away by the scope, the scale, the characters, especially the
RPG elements. Until then, the closest I'd played to a proper
RPG was Skyrim, and long before that (when I could barely understand it) KOTOR, so the focus on narrative and the ability to influence that kind of blew my mind. Combined with a setting that was way more in depth than I'd expected, the whole thing was amazing, and I immediately went and tracked down the first game to play through from the beginning instead of finishing ME3...
And of course, I was ever so slightly disappointed. ME1 is not a bad game by any stretch, but it has not aged gracefully, and even though it was getting on for half a decade old itself at this point, ME3 felt so much more modern and polished and shiny by comparison that revisiting the previous game was almost a chore. For every moment of joy I got from seeing a character first show up or a plot be set in motion that I was familiar with, there was a frustration with the clunky controls, dodgy animation, comparatively bland visuals... ME3 felt when I booted it up like a sci-fi blockbuster, the decade-old ME1 by comparison felt like the low-budget TV spinoff, and I've never really got past that, playing both 2 and 3 through many more times than I've finished 1.
So to wipe all that from my mind, pick up ME1 and and then be consecutively impressed by the improvements of the sequels while still appreciating the merits of the original game, as well as experiencing the full story from the start, that I'd love to have done.
*Also on the book thing, damn I regret not reading much Redwall as a kid. Everything else, from HDM to Harry Potter to
LotR to Narnia, I read at the exact right time to get the best out of them, but Redwall passed me by for a reason I've never quite figured out. I'm sure I could read them now and still appreciate them, but I certainly missed the boat on them as a kid.
