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

His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass) | Philip Pullman | Do not miss this wonderful adventure!

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His Dark Materials...

	His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass) Philip Pullman Laurel Leaf, 2003 average customer review:based on 1079 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Forget Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and especially The Chronicles of Narnia

I wasn't going to post a review of `His Dark Materials' (HDM) because there are so many already. This was my second reading of HDM and I liked even more the second time. But after reading some of the positive and negative reviews I felt as if I could add something to the discussion on three issues and add some comments of my own on Pullman's apparent themes. Two of these issues are, in my opinion, trivial and the third might be, but it is interesting nonetheless.

If you look on Amazon or blogs or other book review sites you will see both positive and negative comparisons of HDM to `Lord of the Rings' (LOR). This is one of the trivial issues: HDM has no relationship whatsoever to LOR other than both are long books broken into three parts and are the basis for some pretty good movies.

The second of these trivial issues are the positive and negative comparisons to the `Harry Potter' series (HP). The HP series are mostly for and about children and are about magic as in `Hocus Pocus' magic. HDM is about children but I would hesitate to say that Pullman wrote it for children. Pullman in interviews has said that he dislikes the label of `children's literature' as it implies `not for adults.' The themes in HDM are very adult, but I suspect that an intelligent young adult would respond to them and the adventure aspects of HDM would appeal to most younger readers as well. More over HDM is not about magic at all; it is science fiction (a genre Pullman also dislikes) in the best sense. The so-called `magic' is merely what someone might call the physics of alternate Universes.

The last issue, and it may or may not be trivial, is the objection to HDM by Christians. There is no doubt that Pullman intended HDM to be a counterbalance to C.S. Lewis's slobbering exaltation of Christianity (and the superiority of male Anglo-Saxons) in `The Chronicles of Narnia' (CON) and in general a condemnation of some of the practices the Catholic Church. However most of the criticism you see about HDM seems to come from the politically conservative Christian right that interprets any and all criticism of religion as profanation of Christianity in general. I would add that there are also positive reviews of HDM solely on the basis of being anti-religion as well.

I do find it interesting that some of the negative reviews of HDM by Christians are really very long and well written. It makes me wonder why someone would say that HDM was a not a good book when it obviously stimulated them to write several pages on it. I suppose that it upset them and they don't like to be upset by what they read. That is strange as it is one of the points Pullman makes in HDM. In passing he mentions that the church has imprisoned a scientist for coming up with what seems to be a valid description of multiple dimensions in String Theory. These negative reviews seem to follow a general trend on the Internet of a group of Christians who spend a lot of time sniffing out heterodoxy and attempting to stifle it.

My last observation is why I think HDM is exception SciFi and why you should read it and get your kids to read it as well. What Pullman has done is to take the implications of String Theory, Chaos Theory, the theories about Dark Matter and Dark Energy in modern theoretical physics and asks the question of what a world would look like if these theories were true. What if there are other Universes and what would happen if we could travel between them? This is really, really interesting and I think Pullman has done an exceptional job here. The fact that he uses the influence of religion as one vehicle may or may not have been a major issue here, but it does not detract in any way from the fascinating SciFi aspects of this book.

You can read this in three parts as it was published, but like LOR it is best considered as a whole work. HDM is available in a number of editions and I read, this time, the omnibus of all three volumes. If you don't know anything about modern physics it will not detract from the enjoyment of the book as just SciFi or fantasy.

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Do not miss this wonderful adventure!

I initially learned of this series after hearing it compared to the Harry Potter books. I adored Harry's adventures with his friends and wanted more of the same British magic. After reading both I realized that Phillip Pullman's work can in no way be compared to J.K. Rowling. Both authors are spectacular in their storytelling, but are so different in their styles and objectives for their works that comparing and contrasting them would do neither justice.

Philllip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy is a complex work of courage, love and betrayal, and conveys to the readers a wide diapason of human emotions and personalities. My initial impression of The Golden Compass (book 1 in the series) was that it was an anti-religious book and the propaganda behind it almost turned me off the entire series. I have to admit that I was utterly wrong in making such a conclusion so soon and am glad that I made myself suspend my skepticism and read to the end. True believers in a cause, be it eternal salvation or something entirely different, are sometimes blind to reason since they see nothing but the burning beacon of their faith directing their paths of righteousness. Their deeds might appear wicked in the eyes of the atheists among us, but are they truly so? Can you compare the actions of Father Gomez in his mission to kill Lyra and spare Will, who is in his eyes an innocent, to a common murderer? Does his unwavering belief absolve him of sin or condemn him even more? What about Ms. Coulter, who did unspeakable things in her life until she finally found the bliss that is maternal love? Does her final sacrifice make all the other deeds accidental?

There are so many questions of human nature that this series raises and manages to avoid giving free answers that don't encourage thought and reflection. It shows that not everything in life is black and white and there are as many shades of gray as there are misconceptions, deceptions and misunderstandings within human character. And with all that, the purity of spirit and love shine through in both Will and Lyra as they undertake the most perilous tasks and continuously find themselves battling for the greater good that children should never have to do. Then again, may be it can only take the innocence and ingenuity of a child to accomplish what they managed without loosing themselves in the process.

I will not spoil the ending of the series, but will say that it was as powerfully and beautifully written as the rest of the tale. All three books were fast paced and captivated my interest completely. I would personally not recommend this trilogy to children and in my opinion they were quite a bit darker then the Harry Potter books. On the other hand, the original Brothers Grimm stories are a lot more gruesome and I've read them as a child myself. Whatever you do, don't miss this phenomenal read.

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His Dark Materials

I picked up these books out of morbid fascination after seeing the movie and hearing a coworker talk about the book. I borrowed the first one from her and found my self intrigued so I bought the series and waited anxiously for the post man to deliver it. I found that I love these books! They are together a great work of fiction. They carried me to worlds I had never imagined through perils I would never have known. The characters are engraved in my heart. Each cut and bump and soul wrenching tear made me love them all the more. I wanted so badly for true love to win and triumph over evil and In the end I could barley see through my tears and with no truly happy ending in sight I love these books all the more.

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Good books!

If you Keep with the first book, you discover a great set of books. Also, this set is very durable, more so than other paperbacks!

A far cry from Harry Potter. Children's book? Hah!

Of course, I have never read Harry Potter. So basing my comparison with the first 3 movies of HP, I would say that this goes beyond the Harry Potter genre. Almost everybody reads Harry Potter. But His Dark Materials is not for everyone. To label this as a children's book is a grieve mistake for I am sure the little ones will miss the central message of the author. But as for adventure, it is non-stop and most people from all ages will absolutely enjoy it.

After watching the movie, "The Golden Compass" my sister bought the set. The movie had instilled an interest in me. The bear fight scene "Bears! Who is your King?" cheesed me out, which made me realize how OLD I am. So thinking that the book is targeted towards children, it took me a while to pick this up and finally after 4 months, I continued on with Lyra's adventure. But when I did, my whole week is automatically committed. For five days, my sister saw me flipping book after book after book.

THE GOLDEN COMPASS: I decided that I would start from the beginning. It is a general agreement that the book is always better than the movie, no? Except this time, I think the movie handled some of the scenes in the book much better. The movie moved and switched some of the scenes around but it still worked. Book fans bashed the movie because it left a big chunk of the book's ending. I wouldn't worry about it though because if they included the real ending, then it'll be much more of an excruciating cliff hanger. I don't think I could wait 3 more years to see next sequel. Still, several scenes has been skipped - important scenes and that's why in retrospect, the book is still better. But to put the movie in a better light, when I imagine the daemons and dust and those flying machines, I could refer back to the movie. Nicole Kidman is the perfect Mrs. Coultier! So in essence, the movie gives us a small peek of what goes on inside Philip Pullman's head.

THE AMBER SPYGLASS: Since I've watched the movie, the first book was not as exciting as the second one. The Amber Spyglass made me stay up the whole night. Lyra's new friend and another main character, Will, started off as an annoying character but proved to be as courageous, as smart, as likeable (if not more likeable) as Lyra. Looking back, this book was so jam-packed and I felt like I flew through the pages so quickly.

THE SUBTLE KNIFE: Finally, I think the series' tandem faltered a tiny bit in this last installment of Pullman's epic adventure. After building up so much intrigue and mystery, I was disappointed at the sloppy ending. He easily convinced me of the existence of the imaginary worlds he created but the most human and normal twist in the story fell out flat and forced. For twelve year olds, okay...sure, it's possible...but why can't I believe it? Well, I'm not spoiling anything.

Albeit the weak ending, this series will definitely one of those books I'll keep recommending throughout my lifetime.

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