Scholastic His Dark Materials: Northern Lights

First impressionsI couldn’t remember the Golden Compass film well, but I did suspect I’d start with the impression I’d be reading a book only for children. I was wrong on this, finding Northern Lights to be intellectually satisfying for adults, with some of the most beautiful in depth descriptions I’ve ever read (see below). I did eventually get the impression I was reading a story authored by a teacher. There are scientific elements, inventions reminiscent of the steampunk genre, and religious influences in the form of institutions and verse. There were strong themes of the promise of mental discovery and the threatening yoke of conformity. Where beliefs are a good thing, it’s in the presence of magical fantasy and wonder.Premise of the storyLyra is a child living in the prestigious Jordan College, though many of her habits are less than prestigious. She’s adventurous, and naughty, with a keen sense of curiosity that can get her into trouble. When all the children are going missing, the Gobblers are blamed and Lyra is determined to go north. In fact, whatever the reason, Lyra seems determined to go north.CriticismSome of the passages of Lyra interacting with the bears were the most fascinating and engaging in the story. I did wonder how she was able to trick some of them as easily as she did when they were known for not being tricked. Did I miss something?Beautiful descriptions‘Looking up at the stone pinnacles of the chapel, the pearl-green cupola of the Sheldon Building, the white painted Lantern of the Library.’‘Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can imagine, and they sweep us all into the current.’‘The bleakest barest most inhospitable godforsaken dead-end of nowhere.’‘Then, with a roar and a blur of snow both bears moved at the same moment. Like two great masses of rock balanced on adjoining peaks and shaken loose by an earthquake, that bound down the mountainsides gathering speed, leaping over crevasses and knocking trees into splinters, until they crash into each other so hard that both are smashed to powder and flying chips of stone: that was how the two bears came together.’Concluding commentsIt’s as wonderful as Harry Potter and as bewitching as Terry Pratchett, covering misfortune, tragedy, outrage, and heroism. I’d certainly feel enriched continuing with the series.I was super impressed by the magical feeling of turning of every page, and my estimation of Philip Pullman’s writing is high. I’m confident his other books are also stellar reads!

Fierce and almost feral LYRA BELACQUA is a ten-year-old orphan being raised within the confines of Jordan college OXFORD under the eyes of the Master, and LORD ASRIEL – who is supposedly Lyra’s uncle. Philip Pullman’s trilogy HIS DARK MATERIALS – the first book NORTHERN LIGHTS begins in Oxford England. Lyra doesn’t like confines and as she roams around the sacred rooms of academia and often tears across its roofs with her best mate ROGER the kitchen boy, the reader can see that it’s an Oxford and an England which is recognisable, but has some strange differences. Boys and girls drink and eat chocolatl – yes, with an ‘l’, the non-English pronunciation, they have ‘night-ghasts’ instead of nightmares. There are lights called anbaric lamps, naptha lamps, and if you listen carefully to the night sky you can hear the chug of zeppelin engines. There are the ‘landlopers’ of the Oxford colleges but on the other side of the social coin are the canal basin and ‘claybeds’ inhabited by the boat folk, the ‘gyptians’ and Lyra spends her time in both of these camps. But the strangest thing is that the people we meet are not alone in this world, they each have their own personal daemon, always an animal and with the ability to change form, Lyra’s is called PANTALAIMON. Daemons are like the soul of their human, each can’t live without the other, they are inextricable, and this it soon appears to the reader is the main dramatic question of the novel, someone is trying to separate humans from their demons. Children disappear – sometimes landloper children, at other times it’s gyptians. Rumours abound, but it would appear that an organization called THE OBLATION BOARD, hinted at having connections with the MAGISTERIUM - the supreme world Church at Geneva - are hiring ruffians called the GOBBLERS to kidnap children, and cart them off to a place called Bolvanger near the arctic circle where experiments are taking place. When her pal Roger goes missing Lyra swears to make it her mission to find out more, rescue him and all the other children. But before the adventure really gets going there’s a couple of other things you need to know. One is that – and you’ve probably guessed already – Lyra isn’t an orphan, and by the time this fact is revealed the reader has already met both of her parents, two truly sinister characters who are to play a pivotal role. Secondly, Lyra was actually reared by the gyptians – hence her off beat diction of things like “he’s a-coming/ or going,” or “you e’nt what you says you was,” giving the impression of someone trying to imitate a character somewhere between a pirate and Just William, half toff half oik.But this novel is a far cry from Treasure Island or William in Trouble. Its age rating guide is ’12 or older.’ I would suggest a lot older! Oh, it’s CS Lewis all right in much of its style and thinking, but it’s not Narnia, it’s more like Lewis’s Space trilogy, a book which many readers mistook for young person’s literary fare. The concept of The Church being responsible for an attempt to cut the souls out of children is elegantly incendiary enough, but Bolvanger has all the descriptive power and anodyne deception of a – modelled for film propaganda - Nazi concentration camp but in reality, inhabited by an experiment-happy Dr Joseph Mengele. Yes, it’s a great read, but it’s literature for mature adults.One more thing, I enjoyed the earlier scenes; the setting up of the contrasting social structures of Oxford, the concept of Lyra’s quest, the dialogue between Lyra and Iofur Raknison – king of the armoured bears – one of the funniest and wittiest pieces of dialogue I’ve read. But when it came to witches flying on broomsticks – oh, don’t get me wrong I like paintings of ‘floating witches’ but on small canvases painted by Francesco Goya – exploding zeppelin’s and more, I realized that I was seeing it all in terms of computer-generated images. And that could well be one of the big questions of post-post-modern literature. Is it so necessary to write so filmically? Do we have to let CGIs colour our pictorial thinking? Are our pens driving the CGIs or are they driving us? Ursula le Guin (for most of her life) and CS Lewis didn’t need to ask that question because CGIs hadn’t been invented. And that is the main reason I will not be progressing to book 2 of His Dark Materials. Having had a taste of Pullman – heavily flavoured with CGI 'flashbacks' I may well instead revisit CS Lewis’s Space trilogy Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, books which I read in the 1990s when I was in my forties. It could be that I find the answer to my questions there.

You are required to suspend belief in almost any novel that you read and enjoy the journey. Every book has it's plot flaws which you set aside and you believe in it and immerse yourself in that world. Even Pride and Prejudice has an unrealistic plot and some characters behaving in unrealistic ways. But you read it because you enjoy the plot and because your belief is not stretched too far. In addition the best books also operate a deeper level raising some more fundamental questions.This book is readable -- the plot is relatively pacey and, at some level I was interested to see how it turned out so I can see why others find it a good read, but for me it was completely unbelievable, and it only operated on a superficial level raising no deeper questions at all.The author creates a semi imaginary world which just didn't hang together to me. I'll not spoil the plot by giving many further details but I suspect Mr Pullman is not a scientist so that when he uses scientific concepts such as the Aurora, or Dust it simply doesn't work. Then he mixes this pseudo-science up with pseudo religion and pseudo mythology and seem to have come up with a simple tale of a young child out to save the universe (so the same as Star Wars then!?)One example to illustrate the lack of credibility -- Lyra and the gyptians (a few hundred people in total I believe) decide to travel to the North in a (large) boat which they charter to cross the German Ocean. They are able to do this despite the close attention of the people who are trying to catch them -- people who are super-clever, who know that the gyptians have Lyra, who know exactly where they gyptians are (in the fens) and who know exactly where they are headed. And to cap it all the gyptians are apparently uneducated canal-boat people...My 19 year old daughter has read it an thoroughly enjoyed it so I checked the ending of the trilogy with her and was able to confirm that it wasn't going to get any better so I gave up about 200 pages in.My daughter said Harry Potter was much better.I myself have really enjoyed the following Imaginary/Sci Fi works which I would recommend ahead of this one: -Foundation Trilogy by AsimovFahrenheit 451 by BadburyDune by HerbertDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by DickLord of the Rings by Tolkein

Being so late to this book means I have heard A LOT about this novel from other readers I know, one of my bff’s was quite forceful that this should be my next read when I was pondering over my tbr. So here we are book lovers!What did I like:It has been a looooong time since I’ve read a book where the MC is so young, so I did find Lyra quite testing and petulant at times. I had to remind myself that I’m used to young adult or adult adult MC’s so I simply can’t hold her to the same expectation. That being said, the representation of Lyra as a character is wonderful and after a number of “she’s only a child” internal prompts & deep breaths through the first quarter to half of the book I did start to bond with the tenacious little girl and root for her. By the end of the book it was quite refreshing having the innocence of a little girl as the MC with her single minded driven attitude.I really enjoyed the Gyptian community in this book and it was during these chapters I felt there was genuine relationship building, especially between Lyra and some of the Gyptian’s themselves. At the beginning of the book Lyra seems very disassociated with the adults in her environment with little to no true relationships with any of them but whilst she is with the Gyptian’s she builds some solid bonds with the likes of Ma Costa, John Faa and Farder Coram. I felt this was also a sound representation of community, with camaraderie, warmth and spirit.I am an animal lover, so of course I have a soft spot for Iorek Byrnison.The plot itself is genuinely well written and a treat to the imagination. From reading, it became quite clear why readers from so many age ranges loves this book, there is something for everyone. From all the books I’ve read so far this year this one has the most beautifully described detail that you could close your eyes and experience it in your inner eye. The level of world building and description that has gone into this book is what I think makes this novel so engaging to all ages, I’ve found with more “adult-y” books you can sometimes miss out on that detail which for me is where the magic happens. I want to immerse myself in the story.Every part of the story flows beautifully into the next, everything had purpose. No dull, dragged out sections. I found everything progressed at a really good rate with a decent amount of action/drama. Every character we meet is diverse in characteristics and adds a little something to the story. The end definitely leads on to the next book, if I was old enough to have read this in 1995, I’d have been gutted to have to wait the 2 years before the next book comes out.Philip Pullman is such a highly acclaimed writer, there isn’t much I can add that hasn’t already been said. His way of writing is quite unique and not a style I’ve seen replicated or similar anywhere else yet. The second and third book are patiently waiting in my wishlist to be purchased, next to Ruby in the Smoke (I borrowed it from the Library when I first read it) which I’d love to reread.What I wasn’t so keen on:This was an enjoyable read for me, so there wasn’t anything I really disliked. As I mentioned I had to remind myself child MC’s don’t behave like older MC’s. With my challenge for 2020 to read a more diverse range of books I will hopefully come to meet many different MC’s and not trip up on something so basic as this again.Iorek and Lyra had a tight relationship from when they met, like there’s a connection. It was obvious what Lyra’s thoughts and feelings were towards Iorek but I’d have loved to find out his feelings towards her. Were his actions inspired by duty or genuine affection?I’d have liked a bit more explanation in the last sections of the book as to what’s going on and why, but with end of the book the way it was maybe I’ll find out in the second book.

The Golden Compass is the first book of the dust series by Philip Pullman. It is incredibly well-written and a real treat for the imagination. The book is really descriptive and has the perfect balance between what’s real and what’s magic. I love magical realism and there are plenty of fairytale elements in The Golden Compass. Lyra, a boisterous little girl growing up in Oxford college with very few female role models (hence being easily enchanted by Mrs Coulter) is whisked away on a journey she does not realise is incredibly dangerous for her. It’s a mystery, it’s fast-paced and packed with well-developed characters that you fall in love with. I’d recommend this to absolutely anybody and I might read the rest of the series too!