His Dark Materials, what can I say? There are many plot points and settings which strongly resemble The Odyssey. Specifically, there are the clouded mountain, the angels, and the underworld.
The clouded mountain, a mountain so secretive that its tops is always shrouded in clouds. This is almost exactly the description furnished of the home of the Greek gods, Mount Olympus. To complete this parallel, the Authority (or God) and his angels live atop the mountain.
The angels are spoken of as having fooled with mortals for years. They are treated as the more minor Greek gods, with the Authority doubling as Zeus.
The underworld is the greatest copy from Homer’s description I have ever seen. That dread, grim place which Homer recounts is if anything only made grimmer in prose. There is the area where living souls may enter, though they may not see the dead souls there. There is the grim, cheerless land of the dead, a prison camp, not a reward. It is a place where souls, once sentenced go about as they did in life for eternity only aware that they have lost something, knowing that they can never reclaim it. Such is Homer’s underworld, and thus is the underworld portrayed in the His Dark Materials trilogy.
