His Dark Material I: Northern Lights - Philip Pullman > Reviews > A Daemonstrably Good Book

Author's product rating:   

Would you listen to it again?	Absolutely
Story	Outstanding
Characters	Outstanding
Listenability	Once you start it, you won't be able to switch it off!

Advantages:	Very well written, imaginative storyline, wonderful descriptive passages
Disadvantages:	Can't put it down

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

“The Aurora blazed all of a sudden into brilliant life. Like the long finger of binding power that plays between two terminals, except that this was a thousand miles high and ten thousand miles long: dipping, soaring, undulating, glowing, a cataract of glory.”

This is how Phillip Pullman describes his Northern Lights in the book of the same name.

My Brother in law is from Aberdeen and the very mention of the ‘Northern Lights’ brings a tear to his eye and a unique rendering of “The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen mean home sweet home to me...” I’ve never actually seen the brilliant display myself but the pictures I’ve seen on the net of the ‘Aurora Borealis’, as the lights are properly known, show that Pullman’s description is no exaggeration - the author has described the phenomenon perfectly and I can now fully understand my brother in law’s feelings.

Unfortunately I can’t download the picture into my review, but you very welcome to take a look at it on http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/Curtis/pom.jpg. It was taken in Alaska by one Jan Curtis, the state meteorologist for Wyoming and is a truly incredible picture which really sets the scene for this absolute classic which ranks alongside Tolkein and C.S.Lewis’ and knocks J.K.Rowling’s Harry right back into the sorting hat.

Philip Pullman is undoubtedly one of the best contemporary authors around and his tremendously well-written books are the product of his incredible imagination and immense descriptive powers. The winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award and the Smarties Award of the Carnegie Medal, for some reason he has been ‘pigeon-holed’ as a children’s author, but this or the remaining books of the trilogy appeal to a whole spectrum of ages and are incredibly multi-layered. There’s something for everyone in them. This is seriously good literature, a heady mixture of Dickens, Mark Twain, C.S.Lewis, Milton, Ian Fleming, Aesop, Tolkein, Macbeth and Dr. Who.

On one level this a really good story moving at a relentless pace. It has such an original storyline with lots of powerful descriptive scenes and really exciting characters. The opening chapter grabs you by the throat immediately and the book is difficult to put down. So much so that I actually read it in a couple of days which, bearing in mind that I normally take longer to read a book than the author did to write it, is some achievement.

The heroine is Lyra, a wild and resourceful child with a wonderful colloquial accent who is consigned to the care of the scholars of an Oxford College. In the opening chapter she is drawn into the academic intrigues of the infamous Lord Asriel and then into the national outbreak of kidnapping thought to be the work of the ‘Gobblers’. The scenes here are very impressive because the action takes place in the ‘gothic’ colleges of Oxford in what the reader assumes to be the twentieth century, yet this is clearly a very different world than the dreaming spires we know.

Before you know it she has fled the clutches of the mysterious Mrs. Coulter, lives among the ‘gyptians’ or gypsies of the fen country, takes part in a dangerous rescue mission to Lapland, befriends an armoured polar bear who is an exiled warrior from the ice-Kingdom of Spitzbergen, takes a trip with a crazy ‘Richard Branson’ like balloonist, is held prisoner at a an evil medical establishment reminiscent of the Nazis, and finally engineers a coup in the Kingdom of the bears before slipping into a parallel universe. Not bad for a twelve year old and an awful lot of action in only 399 pages!

But there’s more to this book than just a good read. It has real depth. The world which Phillip Pullman describes is truly imaginative. It is a world where the truth can be devined by use of an alethiometer and everyone has a ‘daemon’, a visible soul, which takes the shape of any animal at will. A world where bears can speak and craft magical armour. A world where armies of witches patrol the skies armed with bows and arrows and the establishment is obsessed with ‘Dust’ an enemy to some or a source of enlightenment to others, depending on your point of view.

It is a very moralistic book, without being patronizing. There are some amazingly sad and poignant episodes in it, made all the more potent because they’re about pure fantasy something we should find difficult to relate to and yet something Pullman really makes us believe in. It can be shocking and intellectually funny but above all it is truly bizarre, in that it merges scientific theory with theology, philosophy with quantum physics and mythology with politics. It can be a very challenging book, full of allegory, a bit like Tolkein or Animal Farm - read into it what you want to read into it. There’s something for everyone.

I understand that they’re going to make a movie of it. If they do it right that will be some achievement as the book has so much spectacle, majesty and fantasy in it that even your imagination has to work overtime – goodness knows how they’re going to transfer that onto the ‘silver screen’.

Believe me, this beautifully written book, which is the first part of the ‘Dark Materials’ Trilogy is destined to be one of literatures classics. I guarantee that before long Phillip Pullman’s characters: Lyra Silvertongue, Will Parry, King Iorek Byrnison, Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel will be as well known as Harry, Ron and Hermione, et al.

If you haven’t read it, give it a try. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. If you have teenage children tell them about it, reading it will be the prefect antidote to the pre-dominance of Soaps - it should be a must for every school library. And if you’ve got time, have a look at those pictures I referred to; they really are amazing.