His Dark Materials Boxed Set
Philip Pullman (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
2002 Knopf
ISBN: 0375823360
An epic trilogy of a girl & a boy from parallel worlds, racing to save the universe & a mysterious entity called Dust.
For readers 13 years & up, the three books now come in a boxed set, along with Philip Pullman's artwork & the many quotations from Milton, Donne, Blake, Byron, & the Bible that have not been seen before in the individual books.
Come join Lyra & Will & the rest of the endearing, frightful, treacherous & brave characters, as they flee from one parallel world to the next, pursued by those who would snuff out all good & hope in every corner of the Universe.
Book I: The Golden Compass starts in Oxford, England. It isn't, however, quite like the town we know today. Here we meet Lyra, daughter of Lord Asriel & the beautiful & dangerous explorer & agent of the Board of Oblation, Mrs. Coulter. Lyra is approaching her teens & is nosey & a liar, yet she is also wise & brave. When we meet her, she is secretively venturing where she shouldn't. When she overhears a deadly conspiracy being brewed, she sets out to save the day. Along the way she must seek the help of many fascinating people & creatures.
One of the things she steals to help her is The Golden Compass, an alethiometer, which, with much concentration, she can make answer her questions--only truthful ones. For Lyra, an accomplished liar (or spinner of tall tales, which will come in handy when the Harpies get hold of her!), asking for & understanding the truth is a real challenge.
In Lyra's world all children have daemons, spiritual companions who can shape-shift, be another pair of eyes seeing more deeply into a situation & who can & do offer good advice, hers is called Pantalaimon. Their greatest enemies are the Gobblers who seeks sustenance by sucking children's daemons out of them.
There is also Serafina Pekkala & her host of long-lived Witches with wonderful abilities & courage; short-lived Gallivespians who ride on the backs of dragonflies with spurs that can paralyze in moments; there is Jorek Byrnison, a massive warrior Polar Bear who is king of his frozen domain, & there are human adults who travel in to & fro betweem the multi-layered worlds with evil or good intentions. There are also Angels of uncountable ages, a grim & strangling religious government whose powers stretch back to the beginning of time, & the eternal battle between those who were expelled from heaven.
Book II: The Subtle Knife is when we meet Will, who lives in a parallel Oxford. He is the son of an intrepid & famous explorer who has been lost somewhere in the North ever since Will was born, & his fragile mother whom he has had to care for, who has lost her spirit & all sense of reality. After a vicious fight in one world it is he who receives, at great cost to his life & limb, the burden of a knife that can cut windows from one world to another--through time/space--good for rescuing & escaping. Trouble is The Subtle Knife has its own agenda, leaving an invisible trail through which the soul of the universe is draining away.
Book III: The Amber Spyglass is when Lyra meets Dr. Mary Malone in Will's Oxford. So intrigued by the girl's scientific skills is Dr. Malone that she follows Lyra through a window, except she lands in an entirely different world where the loving & peaceful Mulefa, mysterious wheeled creatures, are being remorselessly attacked & whose life-supporting trees are dying.
In this final book Lyra & Will must go to the Land of the Dead & survive, learn some heartbreaking truths about who they are & what love is all about, even as the ultimate battle in the Kingdom of Heaven is played out all around them. It is here also that Lyra will encounter The Temptress who will change everything, again. Here we finally catch a glimpse of the Authorities & the struggles first alluded to in the Bible.
& then there is Dust, a marvelous, ephemeral entity only a few can see & fewer are entrusted to save.
Yes, it is important you start out with Book I because you will want to know where Lyra comes from & why she's on the run. Stay with it for Book II because that's when Lyra meets Will, who will become very important in her life, as they search for honor, compassion & safety, on their way to growing up.
Philip Pullman has composed, like a vast & awe-inspiring painting on the ceiling of a huge cave or a rousing symphony for an orchestra made up of every school band in the world, a magnificent & exciting universe where His Dark Materials struggle for dominance.
His Dark Materials is a memorable, breathtaking heroic adventure where children are honorable, caring & brave as they take on the mantle of responsibility to save those they love & their separate universes as the age-old battle rages between original evil & good.
I have mentioned only a few of the beings who people this exceptionally exciting & thought-provoking series. It is also an impressive, unblinking observation of how we mature from child to adult, & about the origins of our religions.
I have read nothing quite like His Dark Materials & if your nerves are strong, your imagination vivid & you have a questing spirit, you will also be as impressed. Certainly not for the religiously squeamish or narrow minded.
If you'd like to hear the author read his works, along with a cast of many voices & superb sound-effects, then indulge in the audio editions. They are very good listening! The Subtle Knife The Amber Spyglass.
While His Dark Materials is published as Young Adult Fantasy, it is much, much more than that: it is a story about the power of curiosity, scholarship, courage, admiration, adventure & love. As Philip Pullman writes in his Q&A on www.randomhouse.com/features/pullman/philippullman/qanda.html: “Underlying the trilogy there is a myth of creation and rebellion, of development and strife...I don't make this myth explicit anywhere, but it was important for me to have it clear in my mind. It depicts a struggle: the old forces of control and ritual and authority, the forces which have been embodied throughout human history in such phenomena as the Inquisition, the witch-trials, the burning of heretics, and which are still strong today in the regions of the world where religious zealots of any faith have power, are on one side; and the forces that fight against them have as their guiding principle an idea which is summed up in the words The Republic of Heaven. It's the Kingdom against the Republic.”
Highly recommended!
Philip Pullman traveled the world as an RAF brat & finally came to roost in Wales, UK where he purportedly finished growing up. He read English at Oxford & returned there to teach & live. He writes in a shed at the bottom of his garden which contains two comfortable chairs (one for writing in, one for the computer), several hundred books, a six-foot-long stuffed rat which took a part in his play Sherlock Holmes and the Limehouse Horror, a guitar, & a saxophone. He is married with two musically inclined sons.
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