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His Dark Materials (Trilogy)
Lyra soon finds herself at the centre of world shaking events, but unlike so many fantasy books, Philip Pullman has come up with a series of astounding, interlocking adventures, full of wonders, creatures, and worlds that will keep you guessing for the full length of the trilogy. All the main characters in the three books are fully fleshed out, with distinct personalities and motivations. There is a fairly large cast of characters, but the author deftly weaves their stories together, often to great dramatic effect.
This trilogy is marketed as children's literature, but this is a much more intense series than Harry Potter is. Battles are deadly, not glorious; good people that you have come to care about die. Certain unfortunate events unfold with ruthless logic. Organised religion is presented in a very bad light, which will turn off some readers. I wouldn't recommend this series to children under 12, but I enthusiastically recommend His Dark Materials to anyone who enjoys fantasy.
The Golden Compass
Lyra is a resourceful and vivacious young girl who lives at Jordan College -- left there by her rich and powerful Uncle, Lord Asriel. Lyra lives a carefree life doing pretty much as she pleases, but she loves adventure and is continually getting into trouble. Then she overhears a conversation about Dust -- a strange substance mysteriously associated with people. Something about Dust is causing great consternation with the Church and other powerful people. At the same time the gobblers are stealing children. Soon Lyra is propelled into the midst of a great conspiracy that takes her far from the comforting halls of Jordan College, and face to face with terrible danger. Lyra's resourceful optimism makes you want her to succeed, and the world she travels through evokes the wonder of things new, and events unknown.
The action will keep children enthralled, and the imaginative twists and turns will surprise and delight adults and children alike. Various peoples and cultures are met throughout the story, and all find a part to play in the epic battle that builds up over all three books.
The Subtle Knife
The Subtle Knife starts off in our familiar world, and introduces a new character: Will. Will is much more serious than Lyra, but their fates are soon intertwined. Will has lived a much more troubled life looking after his mother after his father's disappearance. Someone badly wants something of his father's, and Will's efforts to protect it quickly lead him from home and entangle him in the events started in the Golden Compass. A great war is brewing and Will is destined to play a key role, along side Lyra, in this conflict. A weapon is discovered that will tilt the balance in this war, and Will's search for his father lands him in the middle of the conflict.
Once again the story pulls you into the believable worlds so artfully drawn by Phillip Pullman. Adventure abounds, betrayal, heroic deeds, and dark conflicts drive the story forward.
The Amber Spyglass
The third book in the series draws the story to a satisfying end. Unlike some series, which seem to never end and leave you hanging at the end of each book in search of another sale, the Amber Spyglass reveals the mysteries alluded to throughout the story, and resolves the final conflict. But not before leading you through another set of breathtaking adventures, unforeseen turns, and an epic battle between good and evil.
I highly recommend this series to anyone over the age of 11 who enjoys excellent fantasy. This is a superior children's series that adults will also enjoy for its well-drawn characters, detailed worlds, and intricate plotting.
You can purchase The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber SpyGlass from B&N. Want to see your own review here? Just read the book review guidelines, then use Slashdot's handy submission form.
Apparently the assumption is that people in the US are too stupid to know what the 'Philosophers Stone' or the 'Northern Lights' is/are. Drives me crazy.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Could this be a little more vague? I still have honestly no idea what the heck these novels are about in any way whatsoever.
Saying "the character goes on adventures and meets new people in amazing places" describes about 75% of the books in existence.
"It's a great fantasy book about characters that do things!" I'm not asking for the Cliffs Notes version of the book, but even the blurb on the back dust cover could have told me more about why I'd like to read it that this "review".
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Turtledove has long been talked about on Usenet's alt.history.what-if and is known for his meticulous detailing of historical events. Other books he has out discuss alien invasions in the height of WWII, Columbus finding apemen in the new world, and alien colonization. Check him out -- I picked up all his books at Half Price Books for under $25.
Click here or here.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this series, but I have to say I did enjoy it despite some very upsetting flaws.
Good things: Very well written, beautiful even, in an almost classical sort of way. Strong characters and strong emotions, serious coming of age issues. His compassion for his protaganists is deep.
Bad things: I hate it when people use Everett-Wheeler as a narrative device because EW basically destroys the meaning of human action. Think of it - there is another universe where the characters make all the same choices until suddenly they do something random. Or there is another universe in which the same events happen, except a bee farts in the Andromeda galaxy. Posit parallel universes if you like, but leave EW out of it.
Ugly things: It was mentioned that "organized religion" is presented in a bad light. More accurately, Mr. Pullman appears to be some sort of rabid pagan with a massive chip on his shoulder. But that is his right. What bothered me was how he spent the first book describing a particularly ugly situation created by the church and condemning it, then had one of his protaganists (Asriel) do exactly the same thing (kill innocents for power) and portrayed it as virtue. As ethics, this is hypocricy, pure and simple. I suppose his characters are entitled to be hypocrites, but there is something smug and self-righteous about his presentation that goes beyond that and pissed me off.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
A quick and careless reading of the books leads people to think Pullman is only attacking organized religion and particularly the Catholic Church. But the Church in his stories is actually a composite of the most authoritarian elements of both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism (notably, Calvin is basically called a terrorist). Plus the Church in the book's principal alternate world also performs the functions of the orthodox scientific establishment in our world: there's no distinction between theologians and scientists, theology is in fact experimental, but theorizing is rigidly subject to the authority of the hierarchy. Theology/science at the Oxford of the alternate world is hampered by political infighting, personality clashes, money grabbing, power trips... sound anything like university departments you've seen?
Pullman's trilogy has been called the anti-Narnia, and it's definitely that. Like William Blake, he rereads Milton to make Satan the good guy (sort of: the Satan figure in the trilogy is attractive but flawed). And the best key to what Pullman's up to is Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Namely:
Read it with Blake in mind, and it's not just a kiddie book. That said, Pulllman's trilogy is often unsatisfying for the lack of internal consistency and coherence in its imagined world, and there are some (to my mind) howlingly bad insertions, like the obligatory descent to the realm of the dead. He wants to have his myth & his science too, and that doesn't always work.[SPOILER] the point was that lord asrael's anti-church AND the established Church were BOTH evil. they were mirror images of each other. both strove to enslave all creation for their tyranny.[/SPOILER]
Pullman is condeming THOSE THAT SEEK POWER, and those who seek to subjugate others.
this is a fantastic and complex trilogy, miles beyond harry potter. it's more violent and far, far more intellectually stimulating. there's some heavy shit that goes down.
i can see how the first book might be mistaken for just another teen novel. although i enjoyed it immensely, it is lighter fare than the other two. the trilogy gets increasingly darker and stranger as it goes. i can also see how christians would get pissed at the portrayal of god and many of the forces of Heaven and Hell, but see my comment above - he's not condemning christianity per-se, he's using christianity to condemn tyranny.
i could live a little longer in this prison
My wife and I read to each other before bed, and this was one of the series we went through a few months ago.
The Golden Compass is a great little book. The world that Pullman creates is intriguing and detailed and self-consistant. It's when, in Subtle Knife, he gets into parallel worlds that the whole framework falls apart. And Amber Spyglass is just awful - it has the dubious honor of being one of three books that we had to throw away. The whole Dark Matter connection is just stupid. You hear me, Pullman? If it's magic, then let it be MAGIC. Don't try to justify magic by tying it to science in a poorly considered manner. Cripes - it's worse than if Tolkien had said the reason the Ring corrupted the wearer was because it was made of unshielded plutonium with a mercury coating.
Honestly, it was just insulting, the turn into absolute stupidity that book 2 took.
Read Golden Compass and make up your own story for the rest of it. You'll be far more satisfied.
GMFTatsujin
An interesting article by the author of the trilogy can be found here. I looked for it on the Guardian site, but couldn't find it. Anyhow, in the above, he says of the basic message of _The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe_, that "...it's propaganda in the service of a life-hating ideology. But that's par for the course. Death is better than life; boys are better than girls; light-coloured people are better than dark-coloured people; and so on. There is no shortage of such nauseating drivel in Narnia, if you can face it."
I remember hearing him say in an interview that the Trilogy was his response to the Narnia series -- he intended the message to be that life is good, joy is good and a girl can be a hero. Oh, and authoritarian life-hating religion is bad.
I enjoyed the Trilogy myself, as did my wife, but we can't figure out why it was called "His Dark Materials." Just being dense, I'm sure.
-Craig
Corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Perhaps this review isn't all that relevant to Slashdot. I actually found that this trilogy covers the same theological ground as many of the D.C. horror comics such as Hellbazer and Preacher in which the God of the Bible is not necessarily the creator of the universe but actually one political faction pushing its own laws, and fighting against another political faction with a different agenda. In other words, what happens if you read the Bible as divine propaganda rather than as divine truth. While The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a revision in Gospels, Dark Materials starts with Milton and touches on Dante. In the process Pullman tackles some of the more difficult problems in theology such as the nature of sin, and what really triggered "the fall from grace."
In a way, the Dark Materials trilogy is related to the Lord of the Rings in that the Lord of the Rings is basically the results of a writer playing with language and history, while the Dark Materials trilogy is the results of a writer playing around with theology. At any rate, it surprises me that Dark Materials has not received the same level of hostility as Harry Potter which never gets political beyond vague mumblings about anti-muggle prejudice.
I think that shoving this trilogy into the "young adults" category is rather a misnomer. In fact, I find a disappointing that the best works of fantasy writing including the Earthsea series and a fair number of works by Ray Bradbury get shoved into the "young adults" shelves and never get taken seriously. Granted there are some serious flaws. The entire talking companion animal idea has become a personal pet peeve of mine, but Pullman does manage to do something different with it.
While these three books are targeted at the juvenile audience, it is likely that they'll get additional attention from older F&SF readers because of the success of Harry Potter.
I must say that I thought "The Golden Compass" was quite well done. It's original, dark (so much so that I kept the book for a few years before giving it to my Harry Potter-loving niece), and inventive.
The two sequels, however, I found very disappointing. Rather than inventing a parallel universe with it's own rules and logic, Pullman succumbs to the same draw that ruins much of science fiction on TV - he want's his world to be "real," and starts throwing in concepts from particle physics to "explain" his universe.
If you cringe every time they say things like "his DNA is reconfiguring" on Star Trek, you'll probably have the same reaction to the "explanations" in Pullman's last two books.
Better choices for fantasy: the "Earthsea" books by Ursula LeGuin (especially for kids), and for older readers, Stephen R. Donaldson's two "Thomas Covenant" trilogies.
One of the problems in describing Pullmans books is that they're not about anything. I don't have the reference offhand, but he has written at least one place that he wishes a return from all sorts of experimental fiction towards just writing good stories.
However, it is not really true that his books don't have themes. Most of his work is about the process of change and growing up, in particular about the end of adolescence. The protagonists of His Dark Materials are children when the story begins and young adults when it ends - the story, on one level, is about puberty. However, it is the plot that drives his stories forward.
What in my opinion makes his mark as a writer that Slashdot readers should be interested in, is his plot devices - the Alethiometer, the Subtle Knife, and the Amber Spyglass, and above all, Dust, the Dark Material. I see fodder for .signature files, role-playing campaigns, and - yes - two of my computers are named Lyra and Pantalaimon.
But to give a summary of what the books are about - that would be as impossible as to sum up what the Lord of The Rings is about. It's not just about this bad ring that has to be destroyed, and the struggles to destroy it, is it?
His Dark Materials appeals to imagination, first and foremost. It is an immense work, it shows an imagination and a playfulness second to none. The setting of the story is in a parallell universe where (I hope I'm not giving away too much now)
- The Calvinist Church won against Luther - Calvinist authorities in Geneva rule the world.
- Consequently, there are strict rules against science, which is here called experimental theology
- Electricity exists, but there are strict limiations to its applications, so there is electric light and telephones, but no radio
- And there is no USA - North America conists of independent countries.
- People wear their souls outside their bodies. They're called daemons.
And, oh yes, magic exists. Lyra, the protagonist, visits our world, and other parallell worlds. OK, there is a quest, which I suppose is what makes it fantasy. And there are incredible plot twists.Just trust me. Give it a try. I'll take that chance that there are slashdot readers who don't like it, because I think that most of you will. These are not children's books - as a 35 years old psychologists I think I should have noticed if they were.
BTW, his Sally Lockhart series, set in Victorian London, and his other books, especially The Butterfly Tattoo and The Broken Bridge are also highly readable, for entirely different reasons.
-- Rolf Lindgren, cand.psychol
In a certain kind of literature, including most of the Dead White Guy canon, plot is kind of beside the point. The stories are taken from folklore, popular history, and religious tradition, so everybody already knows the story. It's all about the presentation.
That being said, I didn't care for this trilogy either. Not because it was written for kids -- given the kind of "grown up" fiction most Slashdotters read, we're in no position to be snobbish. Just wasn't a very imaginative telling.
But tell me this. If unoriginal stories badly told are Uncool, why is that idiot Harry Turtledove so popular?
The book was apparently called The Golden Compass in the States because Pullman changed the title after submitting the manuscript to his U.S. publishers (Scholastic). See the FAQ on this fan site.
The situation has also been explained in various interviews Pullman has given, available through a Google search.
(The Harry Potter books, however, were indeed changed because American kids are considered too dumb to be able to absorb words from another English-speaking culture, though -- see interview with Arthur Levine (the U.S. editor) and the ``Word Gallery'' for a list of the changes.)