Don't Miss

• Powell's Books
  at Portland Farmers Market
• Indiespensable™:
  Into the Beautiful North
• Frommer's Great Walks: Save 30%
• Summer Vacation Education Sale
• Go Play Outside!

More at Powell's

• Featured Signed Editions
• Rare and Collectible Books
• eBooks | Audio | DVDs | Blu-ray

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Review:

Review:

Review:

Review:

Review:

Synopsis:

Synopsis:

About the Author

What Our Readers Are Saying

Add a comment for a chance to win!

Average customer rating based on 3 comments:

icesk8r, March 10, 2008 (view all comments by icesk8r)
The Golden Compass is amazing it takes you on a journey that changes the way you look at things forever. If you read the first book you just have to read the 2nd and 3rd as well.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(3 of 5 readers found this comment helpful)

report this comment

K Bloom, December 24, 2007 (view all comments by K Bloom)
The Golden Compass is stunning - it's full of unique ideas and an incredible landscape. It hardly feels like magic, and science of a sort underlays most of the ideas in the book. But it's thrilling and full of rich, deep, funny characters who continually step out of the page and into three dimensionality. It makes Harry Potter seem positively workaday, but, on more reflection, Potter and Lyra (the star of this book) are two sides of a coin. They're both headstrong, but Harry has to fight his battle against ultimate evil inside a framework. Lyra's world is falling apart and so rules have been broken already - she has to use all means at her quite extensive disposal! I'd also recommend reading Tino Georgiou's bestselling novel--The Fates--if you haven't yet

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(7 of 12 readers found this comment helpful)

report this comment

thomasn528, November 27, 2007 (view all comments by thomasn528)
Pullman's books have subject to some angry scrutiny by some Christian and other believers, and this is intended to provide an alternative point of view.

Pullman's "Dark Materials" series is, it's true, in part an attack on _organized_ religion -- on the worldly power it wields when it takes a bureaucratized, theocratized, Catholic Church-like form. True, Pullman goes further, arguing essentially that if such organized religions are truly representative of God... well, then there's a problem with God, too.

But much more importantly, the series is a discussion of the consequences of an obsessive focus on eternal life after death rather than on a productive life before it. And they are a discussion of what it means to grow up and understand that. Indeed, Pullman is more ally than antagonist to Christians (and other believers) in one very important way: he doesn't dispute the notion of a "soul" -- rather, he extends and elaborates on it with the daemons accompanying humans in the alternate universe he describes.

But for those who believe the books are necessarily an "attack on Christianity," there's arguably an even more important point about Pullman's books: there is no mention whatsoever of Jesus in any of his discussions of either the Church or its ethereal counterpart, the Authority. Indeed (or instead), the chief protagonists Lyra and Will play a Christ-like role when they make a great but utterly necessary sacrifice at the end of "Amber Spyglass" -- moreover, after essentially "harrowing" Hell, admittedly with a decidedly different goal in mind than Jesus had in the New Testament.

To me, Pullman's books are ultimately not so much an attack on religion as an alternative vision of spirituality: sentience and mature purpose are the great goods of the universe, to be cherished, husbanded, and multiplied. That, it seems to me, is not such an awful vision for a Christian -- even for a conservative Christian -- to contemplate.

Pullman himself has called his books an attempt to kill God, and God's death is indeed ultimately part of the story -- though a strangely lesser part than one might think. But if your faith in God is unshaken by evil in the real world, it ought to be unshaken by a fantasy trilogy as well. Meanwhile, readers of all faiths (or lacks thereof) would do themselves out of a singular feat of the imagination and a powerful challenge to their beliefs about "children's books" -- if nothing else -- if they don't give these books a fair chance.

(adapted from comments at
http://tinyurl.com/35ywbh)

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(21 of 30 readers found this comment helpful)

report this comment

View all 3 comments

Product Details

ISBN:

9780440238133

Author:

Pullman, Philip

Publisher:

Laurel Leaf Library

Subject:

Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Magic

Subject:

Children's 12-Up - Fiction - General

Subject:

Adventure

Subject:

Fantasy - Epic

Subject:

Magick Studies

Subject:

Special Interest - Adventure

Subject:

Children s All Ages - Fiction - Fantasy

Subject:

Action & Adventure - General

Subject:

Missing persons

Subject:

Fantasy

Subject:

Fantasy & Magic

Subject:

Kidnapping

Copyright:

2003

Edition Number:

Reprint ed.

Edition Description:

Paperback

Series:

His Dark Materials

Series Volume:

01

Publication Date:

September 9, 2003

Binding:

Mass Market Paperbound

Grade Level:

- Up

Language:

English

Pages:

351

Dimensions:

7.09x4.33x1.02 in. .41 lbs.

Age Level:

12-UP