Once you start it, you won't be able to switch it off!
Advantages:
breathtaking in scope and imagination
Disadvantages:
heavy themes for the 'juveniles' it is apparently written for
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
I am a confessed addict of good fantasy yarns, where an author’s breadth and vividness of imagination combined with talent for telling a great tale have the power to truly transport you to another world. But it is a long time since I read a book, or to be fair series of books, that entertained, enriched and moved me as much as they Philip Pullman ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy, which concludes with The Amber Spyglass. This novel came to increased critical attention in recent weeks as the first children’s book to win the coveted Whitbread prize, and the judge’s courage and innovation is to be highly commended. [In an attempt to write an opinion in any kind of context this will have to be as much about the earlier stories, Northern Lights and The Subtle Knife, but I don’t do spoilers – I want to make you go and read them for yourself!]
This series genuinely straddles the border between adult and juvenile fiction, and although the main characters are 12 and 14 I wouldn’t regard this as suited for every child this age. I know I would have loved to get my hands on it then, and any intelligent, imaginative and sensitive ‘young adult’ in this kind of age will get a tremendous amount out of reading these stories, but if you are thinking of buying these for your son or daughter my advice would definitely be read them yourself first. As an adult you will honestly enjoy and be engaged by these books, and will be able to respond to the issues and conversations they will inevitably provoke in the young minds they go on to touch.
For, despite the rollicking plot and endearing characters, this story does not address juvenile themes. There are those amongst the religious fraternity who will regard the contents as the darkest blasphemy – the misguided bigots who tried to ban Harry Potter will be having kittens – but many more thoughtful people of varying faiths will be challenged and inspired by the tales of remorseful angels, enslaved icons and the true meaning of the Kingdom of Heaven.
The stories tackle death too, in varying dignified, significant and very powerful ways, as well as perhaps the most challenging for the critics, adolescent sexuality. If you can’t handle this don’t read it, but by closing your mind you are missing a phenomenal literary experience.
I said I don’t do spoilers, but I won’t spoil anything with a bit of background: the books are based in a theory of alternate universes, and the main protagonist Lyra is a young girl growing up in an Oxford similar to, yet with striking differences to our own. She has no idea of her fate and significance as she embarks on her long journey, but her warmth of character and ready empathy, often expressing itself as an ability to say the right thing at the right time, carry her through various challenges and help win some very unusual friends. When you meet her parents you understand a little of her essential make-up, but also her clear need to make her own path in life and across universes… she has a clear sense of right and wrong which guides her choices, and can lead her into difficult situations.
In the second book we meet Will, a boy from our own universe, and the remainder of the trilogy explores their developing relationships as they learn to move between worlds, face their own life-changing experiences and seek answers that can only be obtained from their respective fathers.
The emotional journeys these characters take changes them from children to adults, who must make great sacrifices for the good of all the living things across the universes – the power is given them to do the right thing, once they have learned and grown enough to understand where Heaven can truly be found. The culminating thread of the story owes much to Milton’s Paradise Lost, and the myth/creation legends of many cultures and religions, making The Amber Spyglass truly the most masterful and greatest in scope of the trilogy – as, for the concluding part it should be.
Amongst a host of absorbing and beautifully portrayed minor characters are men, women and children from many worlds, witches, bears, harpies and ghost-like Deaths. But the most significant ‘others’ of Lyra’s world are the Daemons, an animal-like alter ego that every human has as a companion and ‘other half’ throughout life. Their role in the unfolding story is greatly significant, as they are part of what makes us ‘human’, in the sense of being intelligent active entities. In some ways I found the whole background of the daemons frustratingly under-explored, in an adult novel or series of novels Pullman could have wandered down some more literary cul-de-sacs and gone into their role and etiology in more detail… but such things detract from a plot that needs to hold it’s momentum, and at the time you really are sufficiently taken up with the storyline not to bother about any lack of detail or consistency.
It isn’t very often a series like this comes along, I owe a vote of thanks to my brother-in-law for introducing me to these wonderful books, and if I can persuade you to give them a try I will feel delighted and vindicated. I warn you, and those around you, that you will want to blast through all three in one go, then pick up Northern Lights and start over… Enjoy.
which dazzles everyone who reads it, children and adults alike. After the originalNorthern Lights, he kept up the quality inThe Subtle Knife, the second title in ...
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