His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass)

I've never read anything by Pullman. I don't know why, his titles didn't strike a spark of curiosity in me. Too much for children, I said to myself. Then, by mistake, I bought this trilogy. It stayed quite a while gathering dust in my kindle, then, again by mistake, instead of opening the book before or after, I opened it. I started reading it and I couldn't stop myself. I saw the dawn a couple of times, because the tome is very full-bodied, and tonight I finished it, leaving a couple of tears on the pillow. I believe that Lyra and Will, and Pantalaimon and the demons in general - personification of the most intimate part of the human being, capable of changing shape until the child with whom they are born becomes an adult - the bears, show more the witches and all the incredible procession of characters in these books will always remain with me. Perhaps the best fantasy - and coming of age novel - I've read since Lord of the Rings. show less

I embarked on this with some misgivings, because the Librarything thingie said I would absolutely hate it. I shall now take those estimations with a big pinch of salt. All three volumes were totally absorbing and exciting, I loved them from beginning to end and read all three volumes within a week. I very much like the notion of all these superimposed worlds just a slit in the fabric away one from the other, and felt very much at home in the Oxford scenes which gave a sense of reality (Oxford being a place dear to my heart; I lived in Museum Road not far from the Pitt Rivers Museum). If I had to say something negative it would just be that everything is a little too pat - every time one of the main characters is in mortal danger, show more another one swoops in to save them in the nick of time (except for those who get their just deserts, of course). My edition has pretty illustrations by Peter Bailey. show less

This trilogy is marketed to younger readers, I suppose because it's a fantasy book and the protagonists are a boy and girl on the cusp of being teenagers. The themes of free will, the nature of the soul, and corruption of faith and power are rarely explored so thoroughly in any book, let alone in books for "children." Despite the more mature themes, the books are enjoyable because of strong characters, great villians, amazing alternative world building, thrilling action, and many moments that invoke real emotion. If you read this as a kid, I strongly suggest reading it as an adult.

One of Pullman's many incredible inventions here is that characters have an animal companion that represents their conscience and perhaps their soul. Not only show more does a particular animal give us a hint about a character, but the animals talk and the relationship one has with their "soul" can be tremendously affecting.

I'm not going to summarize the story except to say it starts out as a relatively simple fantasy adventure and eventually our heroes find themselves with crucial parts to play in an actual war between creation and it's creators. Along the way are magical items, wise witches, talking bear-kings, bad parents, soul-sucking specters, scientists who communicate with angels, and all manner of fantastic creatures. This is truly an incredible work of the imagination. show less

I somehow missed this trilogy when the first book (The Golden Compass) came out in 1995, but was so immediately beguiled by the HBO-BBC series that I read the entire trilogy without stopping. Fascinating, engaging, and made more compelling by daemons and their humans fighting an evil theocratic government obsessed with power. Finding out His Dark Materials was “number 8 on the Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books list for 2000-20092007 and the Catholic League campaigned against The Golden Compass, declaring that it promoted atheism and attacked Christianity, in particular the Catholic church” was icing on the cake. Now I can proudly declare the presence of a “banned book” in my personal library.

After hearing about all the controversy surrounding the much-hyped movie "The Golden Compass", I made the conscious decision to read the books and decide for myself whether the hubbub that I had been hearing about was really all it seemed. Shortly afterward, I picked up a volume with all three books in one and set to reading it almost immediately.

The volume itself is lovely. It’s paperback, making it a reasonable weight to tote around when necessary. Its cover is a lovely shade of blue, and on the front, artwork of a little girl on a very large polar bear’s back. I like polar bears, so that’s a plus one right there. (Just because you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover doesn’t mean I can’t be predisposed to enjoying show more it because of a polar bear, come on!) Of course, the cover itself, the back cover in particular, did nothing to really prep me for the story at hand, nor excite me or make me worried about what was to come once I actually delved into its pages:

"Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, changed the face of fantasy publishing with its stunning originality. The complete trilogy went on to become a bestseller in dozens of countries around the world, critically acclaimed and showered with prizes. Together, these novels –The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass– are renowned for their beautiful storytelling, epic scope and dearly loved characters."

That’s the first paragraph. Are you hooked on the plot yet? Do any of the characters intrigue you yet? Yeah, me either.

"Captivating children and adults alike, it is a tale born of witch clans and armored bears, shining angels and magical devices, haunted otherworlds and the shocking destinies of Lyra and Will, two children at the center of a more-than-mortal battle. This edition presents Philip Pullman’s entire His Dark Materials trilogy in a single volume–a celebration of this astonishing work, now a beloved classic."

By far, this has got to be the most useless back-of-book summary that I have ever read. It gives little of the plot and names a grand total of two of the characters. Obviously one can expect witches, angels, bears, magical devices - whatever those might be, some place haunted and destinies of two characters which might just be shocking. That’s what the book tells me, so I must prepare myself to be shocked, right? There could have been much better use of this space to tout the book’s merits by telling about the book, not by spewing superlatives and overwrought praise.

Small gripes about poor packaging, which in the scheme of things is not all that important. I found the back summary laughable, however well-meaning it was. Onward, noting of course that from here there will be spoilers.

The novels took me longer than planned, and I can’t place just why. Were it a case of it not being as interesting to me, I’d have picked up another book and set this trilogy aside for awhile. However, I plugged away at it, and read large chunks, but might have gone two or three days in between reading. I still haven’t been able to place just why. I cannot blame it on the writing - I quite enjoyed Pullman’s style. He wrote about the normalities of Lyra’s world (often referred to as Lyra’s Oxford to differentiate later from the Oxford that Will and other characters from that area know) without explicitly stating, “This is X and this is why. People just do it this way, because that’s how it is done.” It seems that the rights and wrongs of that world come naturally through storytelling, through the occasional thought of a character or an action which comes as a surprise to a character. I really liked how that was done. Additionally, Lyra’s Oxford is incredibly interesting in the inclusion of dæmons, witches, armoured polar bears which talk, and the allusion to magic in addition to the very widespread influence of a church very much like the Catholic church of “our” world. The character Lyra is, quite obviously, the main focus of the story but the story is not told entirely from her point of view, which is something I enjoyed immensely. It’s a rich world of fantasy, and it’s full of things which lend themselves to roleplay - something which, of course, is important to me. The first book sets up Lyra’s world nicely, which makes it all the more interesting when one gets to The Subtle Knife and gets to learn about, well many other worlds. The first world we encounter is Will’s world, which is far closer to the world that we’re used to. Secrecy and treachery abound, and the same censorship that Lyra’s Oxford suffers from in terms of “Dust,” or “dark matter” or “sraf” or whatever you want to call it exists there, too. Dust is by far the largest part of this plot three-book plot. We are also introduced to the once-beautiful city of Cittàgazze, from which adults must flee due to somewhat mystical beings called Spectres. These beings feast on the Dust and attack the adults as a result. Adults are more affected by this Dust than children, you see. That’s the main controversy over it. The church, at least in Lyra’s Oxford, thinks it is Original Sin, and therefore must be eradicated before children reach puberty and their dæmons settle, which is the point at which children become young adults and those same young adults become “infested” with the Dust. Convoluted plottage, at best, but it was thrilling to read.

The plot goes on that there is a destiny about Lyra. Whether Will figures into it officially or not is difficult to say, but Lyra is the one about whom the prophecy is most specifically spoken. The religious aspects of the book, while apparent, don’t seem to take it over, and by the middle of The Subtle Knife, I was wondering where the controversy was going to come in. The church in the novels, in any of the universes, is corrupt and overbearing. It has political aims and priorities which far overshadow the general ideas of the religion itself. Through the story of The Amber Spyglass, this is clear - it is not the religion which is at fault, nor the faith or beliefs: it is the corruption riddling the whole organization from the top man (er, angel) on down.

In the end, and this is a HUGE spoiler for the plot, so don’t read the rest of this paragraph if you don’t want to be spoiled, Lyra and Will, as the representations of what I can only call Re-Eve and Will as Re-Adam, join together in love. Whether this is sexual love or merely the beauty of love itself is left ambiguous, but as the characters are twelve and thirteen at this time, I’m choosing to believe that the love is innocent and pure, involving kisses and true, unabashed affection and nothing further than that. This is my personal choice and is not based on signs in the novel that might direct either way. My brain just can’t handle thirteen-year-olds having sex, you see. At any rate, the recurrence of the Adam and Eve situation turns out to be not sinful, but beautiful. There is no shame in it, and from it comes Dust. The church got something right in that regard, that the dust was a result of Adam and Eve in Eden. However the story played out from there it is difficult to say, but that’s something better left to the church to sort out on its own.

The long and the short of it is that Dust comes to people once they reach the age of awareness. Lyra and Will became aware of themselves as people, of each other, of the world as they came of age and fell in love in the land of the Mulefa. The end of the story is a source of debate over at HisDarkMaterials.org, where I have fallen in to the forum with delightful ease. Some find the ending, where Will and Lyra must ultimately separate and go to their separate worlds, else risk an early death of one or the other of them - people can’t survive for too long away from their own world, you see. The ending can be considered the absolute end, where Will and Lyra may never see each other again and will never co-mingle until the two of them rejoin as particles of Dust in the land of the Mulefa after they come through the Land of the Dead. I’m being very vague here in terms of what these places are, and this is for a reason - I can’t give the whole plot away. It not only would take too long but would be unfair to anyone who hasn’t read the novels and is reading on this far anyway. At any rate, I choose to view it more hopefully: they are apart for now, but from the things that an angel told them before they had to part for good, I believe that they will be able to rejoin one another somehow in the future. They must first complete their tasks in their respective worlds first, aiming to build up the Republic of Heaven (as opposed to the Kingdom) and making the world a better, more positive place. It is insinuated that someday one or both will learn a way that they can travel to see each other without creating rifts in the fabric of the worlds and without creating Spectres as a result (which come about each time the subtle knife is used to cut a way into another world). The ending need not be sad, and I do believe that they will be together again someday. Not to mention, young hearts do mend and while their love may never die, the pain will slowly ease away.

Now, about this controversy. I’ve heard all sorts of things about how Philip Pullman wants to “kill God in the minds of children,” and how he is quoted as saying that his books are about killing God. I don’t see that really in the novels. To a degree, yes, but in the circumstances of the novel, it is completely blown out of proportion. His novels are not about not believing in God, nor are they about the final and irreversible banishment of the church. His novels are about hope, love, honesty, and being true to the better qualities that every person can embody. He does not at any time blaspheme against the church itself unless a retelling of the story of Adam and Eve can be considered blasphemy. The public statements of church officials particularly in the United States but with additional representatives around the world are sensationalist and most of them are unfounded. It is the same way with this as it is with the Harry Potter novels. One person in good position to get his or her word heard by many others with similar beliefs defames the series and voila! Suddenly there are boycotts and book burnings. Respecting the right of the individual to decide for himself, I wish these people actually would decide for themselves rather than letting a mass forwarded email decide for them. This is the kind of ignorance which the church in the novels was trying to achieve, and the very same ignorance which can deny people from reading very interesting stories, as a result of some unfounded rumors and quotes taken out of context.

The long and the short of this is that I find the controversy ridiculous, and quite enjoyed the novels. They’ll be staying on my shelf for some time to come. show less

I’ve had this on my shelf and my To-Read Queue for quite a while since I bought the Folio Society’s wonderful edition of the trilogy. My kids really liked it and had told me that I would as well. Other than that, I knew that it offended some people for the way the Christian church is portrayed in the series.
Good literature and stories make you think and moves you, sometimes out of your comfort zone. And this series definitely did that for me. Ironically, since this was originally published by Scholastic Books, the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books, this book really hammered home for me how casual we can be of our children’s lives. I was really disturbed by the how the governments, the church, show more society, and many individuals in the books were willing to use their children for their own gains. It’s fiction, you say? Er, well yes, but it’s not that far off the mark in a lot of respects. We have nice phrases for it like “collateral damage” when it refers to the high cost children pay in our wars and interventions, “worth it” when it comes to their suffering in sanctions, and closer to home we let children suffer from lack of health care because their parents are unemployed or lack of food because they are born into a “have not” family.
In His Dark Materials, everyone has a daemon, whether it is external, as in Lyra’s world, or internal, as in Will’s. Is this a manifestation of a person’s soul? Or of their spirit? Not sure, but whatever it is one cannot live without it. It’s a cool concept and interestingly developed throughout the book.
The setting is in multiple worlds of the multi-verse, in which it is as if every possible outcome of an action might have happened on different worlds. So you have worlds that seem very similar except for small differences as a result of a slightly different outcome or action or development, and you have radically different worlds where life took a radically different path from ours. Usually it is difficult to move between the worlds but as the trilogy draws to a climax the portals open up with dangerous consequences as the books moves to the final conflict and resolution.
One thing that was disappointing is that I felt that Lyra’s strong female character was developed well through the first book but then she became much weaker in the second and even into the third book as Will’s character seemed to come to dominate.
I definitely will be reading this series again at some point. I admire Pullman for his imagination and guts in picking his “bad guys” at this point in time. show less

Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass) has won all manner of awards, and every one of them seemed well-deserved to me. I decided to read all three books now so they'd be fresh in my mind for the first movie, and enjoyed all three a great deal. The first, The Golden Compass, was probably my favorite of the three, but each of them is quite imaginative. Together they make one of the best fantasy series I've read; I rate them right up there with the Harry Potter canon and Tolkien's works.

Pullman has created some brilliant plot devices through which to explore some of the most contentious issues in human society and retell Milton's great epic Paradise Lost. Alternate show more universes abound in these books, where humans' souls take animal form and accompany them through life as tangible companions, armored bears rule the Arctic and a grand alliance is formed to defeat the nefarious Authority. Through it all, two young people make their way through a dizzying labyrinth of adventures and escapades as they seek to unravel the mysteries of life, faith and Dust (Pullman's term for the force that seems to resemble the Christian concept of "holy spirit").

Some evangelicals and conservative Catholics have decried these works for their portrayal of organized religion, but while Pullman's books are very anti-authoritarian and anti-dogmatic, they are also deeply spiritual and very provocative in their examination of intense theological issues. I thought of them not as anti-religious, but as a direct critique of those who claim that their interpretation of faith is the only "right" way. I found BU religion professor Donna Freitas' take on Pullman's books very compelling, and agree with her conclusion: "It is a beautiful story, and a Christian story. It is a story that could prompt believers to reflect on their faith. It is just not a story that everyone may want you to read."

Absorbing characters, polished prose, and an important message about the role of faith in our lives made these books all the more interesting to me. Highly recommended.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2007/12/books-review-his-dark-materials.html show less