Sat, Sep 09, 2006

: The Golden Compass

Author: Philip Pullman

This is the first of the “His Dark Materials” trilogy, a scientific-fantasy series from English writer Pullman. I hadn’t heard of it but it’s apparently good and they’re making movies of them, so I wanted to read the series. This first book is quite impressive. It takes place in a parallel universe to ours, so things are similar yet not. Pullman brilliantly gets us involved right from the first page, with young Lyra sneaking into a meeting room at Oxford where she’s not supposed to be, where she oversees a plot to kill her uncle. That sets her off on a series of adventures, where the improbable happens quite regularly, yet there’s no disbelief at all as Pullman makes it convincing. The story is quite dark — people die regularly, sometimes brutally — but it is a brilliant novel with fantastic fantasy elements and a high-speed non-stop storyline.

Topic: [/book]

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