 "Superb children's fantasy" | 2010-03-12 |
| - Reviewed By 6nomad9 from CA, USA |
| Just wanted to add my voice to the chorus. One book in, His Dark Materials is shaping up to be an outstanding trilogy. It is no hyperbole at all to say that Pullman is the inheritor of the Tolkein/Lewis mantle. I can only hope the next two HDM books will be as imaginative and as beautifully written as the first. Only one note in TGC struck me as off: the explicit anti-Church language (not the message). (To those reviewers who say such language -- and the sentiments it expresses -- are not much in evidence, or of only trivial importance in the novel, I can only ask: did we read the same novel?) As I say, it's not the message I object to -- Pullman is entitled to his views on religion, and he does a brilliant job of dressing up what is -- by one reading at least -- a critique of theology and of institutionalized religion in the garb of a children's story (much as C.S. Lewis did before him, albeit from a very different perspective). What bothered me, rather, was Pullman's insistent invoking of the "Church" itself, and reference to the (albeit slightly tweaked) Genesis story of the Bible. Having set his story in a parallel universe, Pullman had the option -- indeed, one that on many occasions he exercised -- of creating new institutions out of whole cloth, and of modifying or renaming others. In the case of the "Church" in TGC, I think Pullman would have struck a far less preachy tone -- while still getting the full force of his meaning across -- had he named this institution something else ("Magisterium", a word he uses in another connection, comes to mind as one fine candidate). An anti-Magisterium (or the like) rant, in TGC, would -- to my ear -- have sounded less in-your-face grating than an anti-Church rant did. As criticisms go, though, this one, for me, amounts to no more than the tiniest blemish on an otherwise gorgeous piece of porcelain. TGC is a truly brilliant novel. |
| |
| "One of the greatest, smartest fantasy novels that I've ever read" | 2010-01-01 |
| - Reviewed By Robert Moore from Chicago, IL USA |
Wow! I just finished reading this for the first time, completing it only a few minutes before midnight and the beginning of 2010. I have to confess that I only recently learned about the series, but I instantly was interested in it after hearing about the premise. I was hooked immediately and read the entire book in less than twenty-four hours. I'm going to say very little since with 1,500 reviews no much remains to be said. I'll merely add that the book reminds me a lot of Keith Roberts's PAVANE and Alan Moore's THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, with perhaps a little bit of LORD OF THE RINGS thrown in (mainly Frodo's quest, which is similar to Lyra's). Everything in this book clicked for me. I loved the daemons, the armored bears, the assumption of millions of parallel worlds, the witches, the Gobblers, the Gyptians, and all of the major characters. I've already started THE SUBTLE KNIFE and it will unquestionably be the first book that I finish in 2010.
I would just ignore those giving this book low ratings (and there aren't many). They are aberrations. I can't imagine many literate individuals who won't be absolutely blown away by this. Not just fans of fantasy and SF, but people who love wildly imaginative works of fiction. Some Christians (and for the record, I'm an orthodox Christian, a former Southern Baptist [I left the convention after it became more and more progressively stupid -- the proclamation that wives were to be subservient to their husbands passed on the annual convention few years ago along with the incessant unbiblical idiocies of Richard Land made me give up and the SBC and become an independent Baptist instead) are bothered by the anticlerical tone of the book. But frankly, I am just not bothered by that. If one's faith is so fragile that reading a book that doesn't like Christianity can threaten it, one doesn't have much of a faith to begin with.
I don't know where this will rate among the best fantasy that I have read since I have all of one book and most of a second to go, but based on what I've read so far, I would have no trouble putting this up with C. S. Lewis's NARNIA, Tolkien's LOTR, and Rowling's Harry Potter books as the best fantasy that I have ever read. |
| |
 "What's the hype about?" | 2009-12-09 |
| - Reviewed By Ion Zone from Deep Space |
People aren't going to like me for not liking this series, but though I normally really love big thick books, this trilogy has more problems than I can list here, the main one being how boring it is, first one is 0k, second one takes forever and a lot of the plot points don't make a great deal of sense when you think about it, why is she explicitly attracted to murderers, for example (that's a little creepy to be honest).
First book is 0k action-wise, but highly prejudiced and ever-ready to caricature, the second and third are the same, but overlong, very slow, and very boring with little in the way of good action, to the point that I barely finished them, I'm not sure what the hype is about really, controversy couldn't make Dan Brown a good author, but he's still better than Pullman, who seems to hate rather a lot of people in a way I can only describe as xenophobic.
Mild Spoilers:
In the second book her original friend, who she travelled half way round the world for, is discarded, with hardly a thought, for her new, and more-or-less identical, companion (I noticed that an awful lot of the characters feel copy-pasted, most of the white bears are paper-thin and all the antagonists seem to run on bile with no real convincing motive or personality).
The final battle, as well as all the action, feels distant and rather mellow-dramatic, as did everything in the second book. The trilogy doesn't seem to end as much as peter out, I left this series feeling unsatisfied and slightly puzzled, to be honest I've put it in a box upstairs and will probably forget about it totally. The characters and plot were unmemorable, nobody really seemed motivated to do anything, but did it anyway (Which is roughly how I felt when I finished the book).
Overall, this averages out as one of the most boring trilogies I have read. |
| |
| "Complex and interesting" | 2009-11-06 |
| - Reviewed By Rhiana Jones from San Francisco Bay Area |
| This book was excellent. Much better than I expected. I started reading it because I just had to see what the fuss was about. Actually I couldn't see the problem with this book at all. I didn't really classify it as a children's book after reading it, but only because I thought it was at a much higher reading level than other similar books such as Harry Potter or The Chronicles of Narnia. I thought the story was excellent, complex and interesting and the characters were extremely 3 dimensional. The movie was a wash out in comparison to the book. |
| |
 "Dark and Complex Children's Literature That Is Never Condescending" | 2009-09-30 |
| - Reviewed By M. Richardson from TN |
Northern Lights (or The Golden Compass, as it is called in America, for whatever reason) has quite a reputation behind it. Like JK Rowling's hit Harry Potter series, this book has caused some significant turbulence with specifically Christian audiences. The controversy involving this book (and series, incidentally) exists on a far deeper and more interesting level than the controversy regarding Harry Potter. By this, I mean that complaints about Harry Potter tend to be very shallow, focusing on the surface aspects of the story (witches and wizards, magic, etc.). A close reading of that series reveals a set of underlying assumptions that conform perfectly with cultural Christian norms. The anger over Pullman's book, on the other hand, and the series at large, actually has some merit, in that it is philosophically radical for a work of children's literature. I will, in this review, however, only speak of Northern Lights.
Pullman's Northern Lights is set in an alternative universe which mixes entirely original fantastic elements with a warped overlay of our own world. The word "steampunk" has been used to describe the level of technology here, and it seems to fit. The Earth seen in the book seems to geographically correspond to our own Earth, although different settings can be dramatically different in the details. So, right at the start, you have an innovative setting. The most significant fantasy aspect of this world is that all humans are accompanied by their respective daemons. These daemons take the forms of animals, but they are not pets. They are soulmates with their humans in the most fundamental sense: either the daemons are outward manifestations of peoples' souls, or they share one soul. Either way, the connection between person and daemon is the private and fundamental relationship in the lives of the people of this world. It is considered enormously taboo to touch another person's daemon, as this seems to be the most offensive invasion on another person's Being that is possible. Daemons and humans feel the other's pain.
Imagine, then, what terrible, inhuman horror it must be if someone severs the invisible link between you and your daemon. What could possibly justify this? Is it moral to inflict this kind of pain for any conceivable reason? When does respect for individual human welfare collide with the 'greater good' of scientific advancement? How far can one morally go in the pursuit of knowledge?
These are the kinds of tough moral questions at the center of this remarkable novel. Pullman confronts his (mostly) young readers with vexing moral dilemmas at every turn with a quiet and unsentimental respect for their ability to reason them out with their individual minds. This is echoed throughout the novel as well, where the heroine Lyra must navigate the morally-ambiguous adult world in order to stop the 'Gobblers,' who have been abducting children throughout England, and rescue her friend Roger from their grips. She asserts her independence of mind and action against all people, mostly adults, who seek to brainwash her to follow their philosophy.
This is where the most profound controversy can arise for parents. The book is fundamentally individualist, and takes the often unpopular stance that the judgment of one's individual mind should supercede the dictates of any other authority, be they social, parental, religious, or any mix of these as such. Lyra continually defies all authority, and the influence of this approach to life seems to be making authoritarians of all stripes uncomfortable. The reader is asked to question everything, and many feel that this is dangerous in a work of children's literature. I don't agree, but that element is there, and many will want to shield their children from it. Myself, I recommend reading the book along with your child, discussing the events of the story with them, helping them to not become completely overwhelmed by the moral complexity of this novel.
The plot is an eclectic mixture of different elements. Beyond the previously discussed fantasy and steampunk elements, it also comments on the power of authoritarian institutions over the individual (in this case, a powerful and influential mockery of the Catholic Church), and includes fascinating fictional physics in the form of the mystery substance "Dust" (which seems to be the motive power behind the mysterious alethiometer, a predictive device which is given to Lyra near the beginning of the story, and which she develops a proficiency with).
Someone reading this review might find it curious that I assign a four-star rating to a book that I have written so enthusiastically about so far. I have rated this book four stars, but, given a more comprehensive system, I would have rated it more on the side of 4.5. There are a few cloying problems with the plot that prevent this novel from being perfect. Among my complaints:
1) Beneficial coincidence can in real life, but there are too many times where Lyra escapes mortal danger through sheer dumb luck. It is possible for a person to get lucky while she's imperiled, certainly, but good stories should solve conflicts organically rather than relying on blind chance. One almost gets the feeling that Lyra is never significantly harmed because the story can't allow for her to be harmed. No author wants a reader to get this feeling.
2) The alethiometer feels more like an authorial tool which will allow Pullman to break the rules of his fictional universe when he wants to than a legitimate manifestation of the effects of the story's alternative physics. The alethiometer is a compass-like device which will answer questions by utilizing a series of symbols, which the user must interpret correctly. It's a clever idea, and one can see how an exceedingly clever child like Lyra could correctly interpret the general idea of a scenario through the interpretation of symbols. But there are too many opportunities where this device is used as a way to give the characters understanding that would be impossible for symbols with multiple and complex meanings. How, for instance, is Lyra able to use these symbols to deduce that Mrs. Coulter has equipped her airship with machine guns? Instances like this stretch the credulity of the situation to its breaking point. Moreover, the alethiometer undercuts the book's dramatic evolution more than once. Perhaps a clever idea isn't necessarily a good idea to incorporate into a story.
3) Standard fantasy elements, such as prophecies about Lyra's destiny, or a subplot about a talking polar bear who is exiled by the new polar bear king and then returns to reclaim the throne, mar what is otherwise an original and fascinating work of speculative fiction.
These problems are relatively negligible, though, in comparison to what the book does right. And it does a lot right. It has as much to offer to adult readers as it does to children, and makes for great reading. I highly recommend this novel to anybody who enjoys good literature. |
| |
| "Good start to a series" | 2009-09-19 |
| - Reviewed By Irish of Tickettoanywhere.blogspot.com from Central MA United States |
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman starts off in a world very similar to our own there are schools, children, adults, and religion among other things. The story opens on a young orphan girl living at Oxford College in London, England. Lyra has led a relatively charmed and wild life allowed to roam the college and do what she wants. Lyra is also a very curious child and hates not knowing so one day she sneaks into a forbidden room and the moment she does the life she has always known changes forever.
Soon Lyra is removed from her comfortable life at Oxford and thrust into a journey that will take her from London's High Society to the freezing cold villages of the far North. Along the way she'll meet the cold & beautiful Mrs Coulter who wants to mold Lyra into her own image as well as an outcast bear who will risk all to keep her safe. Everything that Lyra thought she knew will be tested and challenged and she'll have to sift through the conflicting stories in order to figure out the truth. The only person who she can count on is her daemon, Pantalaimon, who is an external part of her soul.
In the beginning this book was a little slow and it often felt like I had walked into the middle of a story that I somehow missed the start of. But once Lyra left Oxford and some of the background of the world was described the story really started to move along. Lyra may only be an 11 year old girl but her sharp mind and quick wit will impress many an adult. She has a knack of knowing just the right thing to say or do in the situations that she finds herself in. Overall The Golden Compass was a very enjoyable book with many memorable characters. I look forward to reading The Subtle Knife - the second book in this remarkable series.
[...] |
| |
Expedited Available
