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Title: The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, Book 1) by Philip Pullman, Terry Brooks ISBN: 0-613-02699-3 Publisher: Bt Bound Pub. Date: October, 1999 Format: Library Binding Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.30 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.63 (1061 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Not that great...
Comment: I fully expect to be hanged, drawn, quartered for this, and possibly stoned too, but nevertheless, I'm going to grit my teeth and say it- I didn't care very much for this book.
Yep, I can see it now, the legions of devoted Pullman fans racing down to tar and feather me. But please, before you begin, hear me out.
This was not a bad book. It certainly was not the worst I have ever read, but it was by no means the best. I have read worse fantasy, but I have also read much, much better books from the same genre. What didn't I like?
Well, first off, the alternate universe thing confused me. Lyra, the heroine, lives in this weird sort of other universe, which is very similar to our own, except that everyone in it has a daemon, a sort of "visible soul." The result of this is that Oxford, London, and zeppelins will be mentioned almost in the same sentence as daemons and anbaric lights. This creates a strange, surreal universe, that contains no depth, reality, or believability. There is no sense of an actual living, breathing world, with the result that the characters cease to be real, concrete people, and their adventures become silly and improbable. Now granted, this is fantasy we're talking about here, so the events in the story are not going to be typical things that could happen to anybody anytime. But compare this world with the wonderful Middle Earth of Tolkien's books. Middle Earth is real, it is concrete. It is replete with different cultures, each with their own language, history, mythology, and customs. It is belivable, so that its characters and their adventures are also belivable. When reading Tolkien, I have no problem beliving that the hobbit Frodo is being pursued by evil black horsemen to the house of wise and beautiful elves. When reading Pullman, I cannot bring myself to believe that Lyra is floating in a hot air balloon above a country full of talking bears. It doesn't ring true.
Another thing I didn't like was the characters. Lyra started out all right, as a fun loving, spunky tomboy. But she quickly lost her sparkle and faded to an unremarkable character. I ceased to care that much about what happened to her. That was the problem I had with most of the characters. They all had some defining traits, yes, but were not nearly as varied and diverse as in other books. And as for Lord Asriel- he's consistently portrayed as being noble and honorable, with pure and academic motives. yet he conceives a child with a married woman he never weds, murders her husband, conducts hideous experiments on children, betrays his daughter, and kidnaps her friend. What's wrong with this picture?
This book was all right. The beginning was very good, and it did hold my interest enough so that I finished it. But even then, by the time I got to the end I was starting to grow bored with the whole thing, read the last pages hurriedly. It gave me a little enjoyment, but I don't feel any pressing need, or really any need at all, to read the sequels. The flatness and unreality of the world and its characters don't encourage me to continue reading this series. My advice to prospective readers? It's all right, but you're much better off with the far superior "Lord of the Rings."
Rating: 4
Summary: A Fabulous Book!
Comment: The Golden Compass is a wonderful book! Being the first in a three book series written by Philip Pullman, it starts the series off with a bang! Lyra, the main character lives in a world much different from our own. In this world every human has a daemon (pronounced demon). A daemon is what you may call one's soul in an animal form. As you can tell from many events in this book, destiny and fate play a large role in all of the series, and it is fun to see how each event leads up to one another, much like in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, if you have ever read that. For a reader of my age group, some parts were hard to grasp at first, but in the end it was all pretty clear. This imaginative adventure will surely have readers of all ages entranced by the clever wording, the amazing creatures that rome the earth, and the mystical places that make up Lyra's world. The second one in the series, The Subtle Knife, was also a superb book and I'm sure the third, and last, in the series (The Amber Spyglass) will be as well, though, I myself have not read it yet.
Rating: 5
Summary: In a World All its Own
Comment: Though at first glance The Golden Compass, the first of a trilogy, looks like a book made for younger audiences, Philip Pullman manages to interweave the separate worlds of childhood and adulthood in a breath-defying manner. Set in a world similar to the one we all know, but with drastic differences, the novel follows the journey of a young girl, Lyra, as she finds her way through adolescence, all the while trying to make new discoveries. There are twists and turns and jumps and leaps as she learns the story of her life and learns that things are not always what they seem.
Usually marketed to young adult readers, the novel helps bring forth the idea of growing up and finding one's self. One of the elements of the novel that caught my eye was that everyone had what was known as a daemon, which is a physical appearance of a person's soul. The dae-mons are there as consciences; and for young readers, it allows them to begin learning about the psyche of themselves. We learn that daemons are capable of changing forms until the stage of adolescence is reached and as is seen with Lyra's own daemon, Pantalaimon, the forms change to match its owner's mood and thoughts. This helps young adults and even children learn that for a good portion of their lives, they will be a mixture of emotions and nothing is ever set in stone. Only when a person is finally old enough to realize what they were meant to do does life begin to settle, which can begin to happen at an adolescent phase. And that is just one example of the way in which Pullman uses symbolism to appeal to his audience.
However, The Golden Compass also delves deeper for adults who pick up the book. The intricacies found in the book that deal with politics and the church and the way in which they are all connected in order to make people "happy" are ideas that often times, only adults will be able to understand completely. There is the sense of enjoyment while reading a novel that not only manages to remind us that we all still have a child living within us, but that can also teach us of the workings of the world through debates, discoveries, emotions, and world views. There are subtleties in even the ideas that seem miniscule at first; while the daemons can be seen as mere physical manifestations of the human soul, it can be further examined and the slight fact that daemons are almost always the opposite sex of its owner is something a bit more complex. The thought that daemons could possibly also be an extension of the soul in terms of one's soul mate is a proposal that only an adult would be able to comprehend, furthering along the simplicity of a child's mind while reading the novel.
Although Pullman's trilogy is often compared to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling, the only similarity I can see is the idea of a world that is similar to the one we know but with differences that cannot be overlooked. While all three novel collections use mythology and fantasy as a background, The Golden Compass manages to allow both children and adults to en-joy the words of the novel in diverse ways, depending on what type of perspective the reader has. Whereas J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series is very clear-cut and to-the-point and J.R.R Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings collection is a deeper delving into the convolution of a mystic world, Pullman merges both those styles in a piece of work that is highly unmatched.
Despite age, the genre the novel is placed in, and its target audience, Philip Pullman de-livers a work of fiction that will become a timeless piece in due time. The Golden Compass is a read that no one should miss because whether it is a child-like fairy tale or a mysterious, dark, and winding story that is being sought after, the book delivers just that. It is a riveting tale that once it has been started, the book will never leave your hands for the mere reason that, despite the cliché, it is too good to put down until it has been finished.
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Title: The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2) by Philip Pullman ISBN: 0345413369 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 28 March, 1998 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3) by PHILIP PULLMAN ISBN: 0679879269 Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers Pub. Date: 10 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Lyra's Oxford by Philip Pullman ISBN: 0375828192 Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers Pub. Date: 28 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: The Ruby in the Smoke (Sally Lockhart Trilogy, Book 1) by PHILIP PULLMAN ISBN: 0394895894 Publisher: Laure Leaf Pub. Date: 12 November, 1988 List Price(USD): $5.50 |
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Title: His Dark Materials Trilogy: The Golden Compass / The Subtle Knife / The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman ISBN: 0440238609 Publisher: Laure Leaf Pub. Date: 23 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $20.97 |
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