The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman was a fantastic fantasy novel.  The story started off a bit slow, using almost a third of the novel showing Lyra and Roger's journeys through out Oxford and Jordan College and at length explains the child rivalries and seemingly inconsequential activities that take place in Lyra's “normal” life; To the impatient reader this could be conceived as tiresome. But, actually in retrospect turns out to be a very fun literary device by the end of the novel.  Pullman reveals several of Lyra's key character traits in this “Oxford” chapter, showing how she's very much a liar, rough, adventurous, and not really one for learning, unless it's to her particular interests.  Most importantly, the beginning sets up the very strong bond between Lyra and Roger, which really comes in to play in this book's epic climax where Lord Asriel severs Roger's daemon, killing him and releasing the energy he needed to complete the opening to the parallel world in the sky.

The book, though it's published with children as a target, has quite an intricate plot with many twists and turns and some surprisingly violent and entertaining subject matter.  Once the story picked up and got out of it's Oxford scene I was at the edge of my seat with every plot twist from the discovery of the “General Oblation Board” to the deception of Lord Asriel and the action packed battles between armored bears.  Which brings me to my favorite character, Lorek Byrnison, is by far one of my favorite characters in a fantasy novel ever. Almost all of the story elements that are driven by Lorek or that he plays a main role in the segment were definitely the most enjoyable to read.  His nobility and sense of righteousness later on in the story make him like-able and his brutal nature as an armored bear is very appealing to people that like action and fantasy, I mean what could be more completely amazing than a huge polar bear that can talk and is clad in rusty battle-worn armor. Undoubtedly my favorite scene is when, Lorek despite being seemingly outmatched, destroys Lofur Raknison in a bloody match, ripping his lower jaw off and slicing open his fur and devouring his heart, regaining his rightful throne.

Lyra wasn't one of my favorite fantasy main characters as she is basically just a small girl that isn't really the image of a hero in my mind, and is often times dependent on many of the other characters to help her in every point of her journey.   She isn't without merit however, she has an interesting ability to be convincingly deceptive, a skill often times reserved for the villain.  In addition to her sly talking abilities she is armed with a not so conventional tool as well, the alethiometer. She alone knows how to interpret it and by the end of the book she definitely knows how to use it well, taking advantage of it's ability to tell basically any truth, she whittles her way through several situations such as her imprisonment with Lofur.

Before reading The Golden Compass I had heard about it being anti-catholic or just anti-religious altogether and it was met with a lot of scorn especially after the movie came out.  I honestly wasn't sure what it was really talking about until the end when most of the theory about dust and the parallel worlds are discussed at length between Lyra and Lord Asriel, and then I understood what it was they were talking about in a way.  But, really it could be conceived as a novel about religion in ways, so I'm still unsure as to why it was met with so much disdain.  Being agnostic, I don't particularly care if it's religious or not, just as long it's a still a great novel, and Pullman's novel is just that.

I'm glad I didn't give up on this novel as I almost did in the beginning Oxford chapters, because I really ended up enjoying the novel as a whole and appreciating the bountiful and subtle foreshadowing that riddled the beginning of the story by the time I got to suspenseful ending.  In the end, the Pullman's novel really impressed me and just as reading The Hobbit last week made me want to read the Lord of the Rings, I'm now compelled to embark on a journey through the rest of the His Dark Materials trilogy.

-Dan