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• Title: The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, Book I)
• Author: Philip Pullman
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Year of Publication: 1995
• Pages: 399

I started this book around the end of September, back during Banned Books Week. I got several pages into the book and then stopped; it was slow going. I started to read a couple pages each day and put it back down again. I brought it with me on my weekend trip to NYC and could not put it down. Not for one second.

On the hour long flight to the city from Rochester, I had read upwards of a hundred pages. For me, this was huge. I read slowly, making sure I catch every word, every meaning. But I could not read this book slowly after the first hump. It’s just impossible. I wanted to know what was going to happen so badly, so passionately, that my eyes flew across the pages—sometimes in bliss, sometimes in near-panic. So I put it down when I had to, and picked it up at every opportunity. I finished the book the next night, and was pleased to remind myself that it was the first part of a trilogy. “Yes!” I thought. “More, more, more!”

Pullman prefaces this story by explaining:

The Golden Compass forms the first part of a story in three volumes. The first volume is set in a universe like ours, but different in many ways. The second volume is set in the same universe, along with the one we know. The third volume moves between many universes.

Besides the fact that (most) every human in the universe of this book has a dæmon, there are some additional differences to our world as well. The world in which Lyra comes from is like a steampunk version of our world today, with zeppelins and all. There are also witches who live upwards of 100 years and armored bears who speak.

This story is told in the third person. The narrator seems to be omnipresent, but our protagonist, Lyra, catches his eye the most. She is 11 years-old and full of character: clever, mischievous, confident, good-natured. She is the daughter of very important people, though she doesn’t know much about them, having been raised by Scholars at Oxford.

Despite the differences between the world in the book and ours and the other fantastic elements of the story, it is easy—effortless, even—to suspend belief. It is easy to wonder what kind of dæmon one would have in real life. It is easy to believe in Lyra’s importance, to care about her well-being, and to feel as though one were in her world with her.

This book is absolutely marvelous. The writing is impeccable. I think it would be a great choice for a young adult reader, as there are some difficult words, but not many, and I think it would be a great choice for an adult as well. The story is told simply, but the story itself is complex. The story in this world is rich and believable and awesome. 5/5

On to part 2: The Subtle Knife!

Tags: book review, fantasy, His Dark Materials, young adult

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