Northern Lights

In his Carnegie Medal Acceptance Speech, given in 1996, Philip Pullman contends that "There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book." His subsequent remarks about the importance of story, its centrality to both children's and adult literature, will be most welcome to anyone who grows tired of the sort of "literary armageddon" that certain critics, ala Harold Bloom, envision when faced with the adult consumption of children's books.

These are exactly the sort of bold words one would expect from the author of His Dark Materials, a juvenile fantasy trilogy inspired in part by the works of Milton and Blake, and which takes up the cause of challenging certain show more long-entrenched theological and religious beliefs; among them the perfection and immortality of god, the justice of religious authority, the concept of original sin, and the role of free will.

The Golden Compass is the first book in Pullman's trilogy, and opens in Oxford, in a "universe like ours, but different in many ways." It follows the adventures of a young girl named Lyra, who, together with her daemon Pantalaimon, finds herself swept up in an extraordinary adventure, the consequences of which will be more far-reaching than anything she ever could have imagined.

With a sinister and all-powerful church, known as the Magisterium; a mystery involving kidnapped children and the terrible rumors as to their fate; a sea voyage to the far north; a fascinating cast of characters including gyptians, armoured bears, and Siberian witches; this book offers more than enough narrative excitement to keep any reader enthralled. The theological and philosophical controversies of Lyra's world provide a fascinating undercurrent to the story, particularly the concept of dust - a mysterious substance with great significance for the future of individual people, individual worlds, and the general universe....

This is my third time reading The Golden Compass, which I first encountered when I was given an advance reading copy of it back in 1996. I have found each reading to be an incredibly rich and rewarding experience, and have been struck by different aspects of the story every time. As there are over 1,000 reviews for this title, I will avoid any more general summary, and focus on some of my specific observations this time around.

First, this work always reminds me of the fact that adults too frequently undervalue the intellectual capability of children, their curiosity about and ability to grasp complex ideas and realities. Given that Pullman explicitly makes this point, when writing of Lyra's desire to learn about Dust, I find it ironic how often adult reviewers of this series will speak of its sophistication as somehow astonishing, "in a children's book." I must conclude that they have either failed to grasp this key point, or are seeking to assuage their own insecurities.

Pullman's books have stirred up quite a bit of controversy, due to their sharp criticism of orthodox theology and religious institutions. While I do not find his arguments arbitrary or unfounded, I had to chuckle when I realized that much of what is considered "theology" in Lyra's world would be considered science in our own. Is Pullman being ironic, or is he intentionally implying that scientific institutions are as susceptible to corruption as religious ones?

Finally, I consider Pullman's conception of the "daemon" to be a stroke of pure genius! The physicality of the soul in this world provides an extended, and very useful, metaphor for examining the human soul. It also allows the reader to truly witness the horror of spiritual violence, in a way impossible under any other circumstance. The complicated relationships between people and daemons, both their own and others, and between the daemons themselves, gave me much to ponder, this time around. show less

His Dark Materials has been on my to-read list for many years. I saw the film and was underwhelmed (despite the excellent casting). However, the imminent release of a new book in the series spurred me to try it, and I read the entire trilogy in two days.

Lyra is a wild girl who lives at Jordan College with scholars, in a world that is familiar but also very different from ours. Her world has a steampunk quality to it, not as advanced as our world, but it also has magic. Here, each person is paired with a “daemon”, a kind of animal familiar that is connected to them. When Lyra and her daemon Pan overhear a discussion between her Uncle Asriel and the scholars about Dust (capital “D”!), it will set her on the adventure of a show more lifetime. For Dust is directly connected with the Gobblers; evil people who are stealing children for some sinister purpose. And the Gobblers have taken her friend Roger.

As is common in fantasy, much of the trilogy is spent on a quest (or on the run). When Lyra is taken from the college by the beautiful but deadly Mrs. Coulter, the Master of Jordan gives her the titular golden compass – an alethiometer. The device reveals the truth to those who know how to read it; and Lyra is inexplicably able to do so without the necessary books or training. She goes on the run after learning that Mrs. Coulter is working with the Gobblers. It will be up to Lyra to save the missing children, with the help of an unlikely crew.

Overall, I thought this book was brilliant. I loved how Pullman wove his story with concepts of theoretical physics and very subtle religious allegory. The world building is downright exquisite. Lyra is a likeable, if somewhat cliché, protagonist. We’ve all met her ilk in other YA fiction, but her world helps her to stand out. In this world, the difference between children and adults will change the course of the universe.

This illustrated edition (with the UK title "Northern Lights") is superb. It's an oversized hardcover with lush, full page illustration throughout. Absolutely worth the price. Also available with the US title, Golden Compass. show less

I've had books #2&3 in this series sitting on my borrowed books shelf for ages. Plus, this is the book Karen credits with the beginning of her obsession with polar fiction as a genre. It was high time I finally read this.

Okay, I know I'm very late on the Philip Pullman train, but this book was incredible. It felt startlingly original even as some pieces and themes felt familiar. The variety of settings was awe-inspiring, and the melding of science/magic/religion intriguing. I want to know so much more about this world -- it's theology as much as anything else. I loved the polar bears that can't be tricked, the witches, the gyptians, pretty much everything about the daemons (I want a daemon), the northern lights.

I need to read the rest show more of this series very soon. show less

Lyra is an orphaned girl who has been living at Oxford College for as far back as she can remember. The book begins as she is surreptitiously making her way to a forbidden room accompanied by her daemon Pantalaimon. In this world, which closely resembles our own some time in the late 19th century, everyone has a personal daemon—a manifestation of the soul—which takes the shape of an animal and accompanies it's human everywhere. The two hide to listen to Lyra's uncle, an explorer just returned from the Arctic North where he has discovered the physical manifestation of a mysterious substance called Dust. There are children all over England going missing and the rumour is that they are taken by the 'Gobblers' who perform mysterious show more experiments on them. When Lyra's close friend Roger disappears, she vows to find him and rescue him along with all the other missing children, said to be held by the Gobblers (or 'General Oblation Board') who are performing cruel experiments on them at a research facility in the North. Along the way in this fascinating fantasy world we meet the beautiful and treacherous Mrs. Coulter and her golden monkey daemon, both of whom are determined to keep a tight control over Lyra when she is taken on as Mrs. Coulter's apprentice. There are boat people called gyptians, armoured talking bears, there are good witches and evil witches and an air balloon, and of course, there is the Golden Compass—or 'alethiometer', a rare instrument which has the ability to answer any question, as long as one knows how to decipher it's mysterious symbols—which Lyra must keep from falling into the wrong hands at all costs.

I saw the movie version of this story a couple of years ago and thought it was great, and I absolutely loved this book, which is ostensibly geared toward children, but with a level of sophistication to keep adults wanting more. There is a great adventure filled with plenty of thrills and hurdles along the way, and there are philosophical matters to ponder, to do with the nature of the human soul and the role that religion plays in our search for greater understanding of the universe. There are brilliantly evil people, and there are heros you just want to cheer on. I didn't want this magnificent tale to end, but lucky for me, there are two more volumes in the trilogy still to discover. Once that's done, I'll probably want to read them all over again. show less

i first read this in college around when the ill-fated movie adaptation was coming out. i had seen the trailers and was thirsty for more fantasy type stuff, which it turns out was literally the entire cynical motivation for making the movie because they totally lotr-ed it up. the book is actually much more a response to narnia (which itself received the lotr-ification treatment in its film adaptations), but has a much different aesthetic/genre that the movie largely ignores, but we’re not here to talk about the movie rn i’m just setting the context of my first reading.

i was in the middle of reading it when the catholic church & others started calling for boycotts, and that was back during my misguided religious phase so at that show more point i was like “well, fuck.” but i was already in the middle of the book and i was really enjoying it so i kinda shrugged it off & decided that i enjoyed it but i didn't like that the church was the bad guys, and it was ok to enjoy something i disagreed with.

obviously now the anti-church stuff is a feature for me rather than a bug, so i was interested to see how i would feel about the book now with that in mind. and uh yeah, i do love that aspect of the book, very much so, yes. but it’s also so far in the background that a reader could be forgiven for it not being one of their biggest takeaways if they’re not paying close attention? like, by the end of the book it’s pretty fucking obvious that that was the entire point, but that turn happens in literally a line of dialogue at the end of the book (which i fucking love), but it’s not difficult to see in retrospect why even at my most brainwashed (not the fun/kinky kind, the boring religious kind) i was able to shrug it off and enjoy this as a silly little adventure yarn. which btw makes it pretty fucking hilarious that the church was so fragile about it, but whatevs!

but yeah, even though i don’t think it’s actually going to change anyone’s mind, that last interaction between lyra & pantalaimon that i alluded to earlier was everything to me this time. when pan says, “if they [the church] think dust is bad, it must be good!” and i forgot that that point was made that explicit in this book. it’s possible to miss its import if you’re just caught up in the breezy adventure the rest of the book has been, but it just absolutely turns the world upside down. i fucking love it.

also, another thing that hit me on a completely different level this time was this passage:

"his hands, still clasping her head, tensed suddenly and drew her toward him in a passionate kiss. lyra thought it seemed more like cruelty than love, and looked at their dæmons, to see a strange sight: the snow leopard tense, crouching with her claws just pressing in the golden monkey’s flesh, and the monkey relaxed, blissful, swooning on the snow."

“strange sight”? idk man, sounds pretty normal to me.

other things i loved included serafina talking about feeling the starlight & moonlight on her skin. even though it wasn’t particularly foregrounded, all the witchy stuff was wonderful. i also loved iorek byrnison. as if having a magical little animal spirit that was part of yourself & you could talk to & cuddle wasn’t enough, lyra also gets a fucking armored bear king protecting her! what a lucky girl!!

and of course lyra herself was a wonderful protagonist. she’s just so fucking good. strong desire to protecc.

in the category of things i didn’t so much love was all the casual, careless racism. like, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t as bad of an offender as the aforementioned lewis or tolkien books, or a lot of its more direct influences like say the works of jules verne, but it still is rather frustrating all the same.

kinda par for the course for stuffy british adventure stories tbh, but again it’s not like outlandishly racist or anything, just… there’s an undercurrent throughout that i wouldn’t feel right not mentioning.

i also think it’s worth noting that while these books are marketed as y.a., they’re probably, uh, a bit heavy for the average kid? like, some genuinely traumatizing stuff happens!! but also idk kids are a lot more resilient than people give them credit for, i know this wouldn’t have fazed me if i had read it when i was 12, just feels worth mentioning that it gets pretty dang dark.

so yeah, if you can shrug off the fairly commonplace racism of someone who seems like he’s trying his best but is too british not to be casually racist, this is a pretty great read. i find it very easy to get sucked in. lyra is such a great protagonist who you genuinely want to be safe, and the writing style hits that really nice sweet spot where it has a lot of inherent personality that leaps off the page, but it’s also still extremely approachable, which is just the perfect recipe to make something compulsively readable. show less

I was worried going into this one thinking I might not like it as much as I did as a younger reader, but why was I even worried? Daemons, witches, fighting polar bears, this book is SO MUCH FUN!

At first I was debating whether I would retain the five star rating in honor of my younger self's first loves, or adjust it accordingly.

I needn't have worried.

This is a masterpiece of world building and character creation and subsequent development. I love worlds that have so much depth and complexity in the believable sense, you could easily imagine living and growing and thriving in them. What makes them even better is that hint of otherworldlyness, that small smidgen of magic and adventure and supernatural that takes realistic events and infuses them with a sense of wonder. Imagination is a wonderful thing, but knowing that there is potential in your dreams being realized is priceless.

And character creation. Lyra is brave, bold, and show more clever beyond belief. She is twelve, yes, so she is brash and childish as she should be. But you cannot deny the complexity and truth of her emotions, and there is never a time where she acts in a shameful or unrealistic fashion. Like many child protagonists, she grows up without real interaction with her known parents, but this was no ploy to attract the reader's emotions or force the character's development to ridiculous heights. She finds her parents, and finds herself past them. There is no love lost nor overwhelming desire to cater to their whims. She has already found the love she craves with others, and is satisfied with loving them in return.

Not to mention all the other characters. The panserbjørne, the gyptians, the witches, the Tartars, the Scholars, the dæmons. It is a veritable feast of descriptive power, and there is no possibility of mixing up the many races and creatures with each other. Each have their own culture and creeds, characteristics so ingrained within that had Pullman made a mistake in describing them, the reader would have realized it immediately. But he didn't. And it is a pleasure to visualize these beings in their full physical form using the many descriptions Pullman so graciously provided.


It's not enough for Pullman to build an amazingly detailed world and fill it with beloved characters. No, he has to have a historical background to encompass it all, a feeling of the past that is fully realized in the descriptions of the political machinations of the Church and those who dwell within it. This may be a children's book, but Pullman does not stint on embellishment of theological arguments and shady dealings.

Finally, the concept of Lyra's destiny. The 'chosen one' trope is in as it says, a trope, but here, this trope is done beautifully. It is made clear that Lyra's future is not one filled with amazing power ups and ultimate happiness. She will suffer in ignorance of her potential, and in suffering she will save everything. An everything that started with her world, one that has been enriched to the point of magnificence, and yet is just the beginning. There are worlds upon worlds outside that of Lyra's view, and her quest is just beginning. show less