His Dark Materials

Philip Pullman

This is a great series if you like magic, parallel worlds, talking animals, and lots of action. The...more

This is a great series if you like magic, parallel worlds, talking animals, and lots of action. The first book The Godlen Compass is coming out in movie form in December, so it helps to be prepared by knowing the plot and characters. I am not sure if this movie is only the first book or the entire trilogy. I abhor people who tell too much of the plot in reviews, so I have not given anything away in this review. Basically, a young girl unaware of her special abilities and true parentage is involved in myriad escapades with and without human / animal companions. Of course, evil exists and tries to thwart her at every turn as she tries to make the right choices. The secret is that she must find her own way without anyone telling her what to do, or she will not be able to save the world. Apparently, everyone magical and non-magical knows that she is a special person. Magical DUST (which represents the life force for GOOD) is almost another character in this series. It known only by "special" people who have plans to use it for pleasant and unpleasant ends. The Golden Compass is a compass that only tells the truth through hands that move through a variety of symbols, each of which have many layers of meaning. It is the last remaining compass like this in the world and the main character not only has it, but is able to read it without the normal years of training and the "how to" book. The Subtle Knife is a knife that can cut windows from one world into the next and can only be wielded by someone that the knife chooses. A male child companion of the main character is eventually the possessor of this powerful knife which is also deadly against all types of magical villans. Of course, everyone wants to possess this knife!! The Amber Spyglass is a scientific invention built to identify and determine "up close" what DUST actually is and why the world is coming to a bad end without it. This magic DUST of good life feelings and actions is pouring out of all the worlds, leaving only BAD people to be in charge...unless someone can change this scenerio. This is an enjoyable series with very creative situations and characters. The action is non-stop and harrowing most of the time. However, if you have any strong Religious beliefs, you might be upset at how creation, life, death, and religion are portrayed throughout this series. Arif Aziz   hide

Fantastic fictional story. These are my comments I posted on a blog for the series: I read...more

Fantastic fictional story. These are my comments I posted on a blog for the series: I read the books. If anyone has an ounce of faith in Christ that's truly their own and not based on their parents' faith or someone else's then they wouldn't be effected by the books unless they chose to be. Let's stop being so weak-minded and easily offended. If people are going to greatly alter their beliefs based only on a fantasy book then they wouldn't have made strong believers in Christianity or anything else for that matter. I'm not saying we shouldn't be open to new beliefs and being wrong, but that we shouldn't be credulous, gullible and passive about our beliefs to the point that we believe every fiction book we pick up. Come on! 2 By the way. The two children who represent Adam and Eve don't kill "God", in fact he dies by accident because they were trying to help him. They didn't know it would kill him. Another by the way: I would've intentionally killed him. The God of that story is nothing like the God I know and have fallen in love with. I would've gladly killed him. 3 Another by the way: Near the end of the last book I stopped and had one of the best prayer times I’ve had with God in a while because it inspired me so much. 4 I know I've basically said this already but humor me for a sec. In a way, he's not attacking Christianity, because the behavior of the "Church" and the "God" he describes aren't Christlike and ARE wrong and NOT CHRISTIANITY. The God he describes in the books isn't the God Christians believe in. I think most Christians would hate the "God" of his story and want to kill him as well. He wasn’t even truly God anyway. He lied to everyone about it. He was a selfish, tyrannical, cruel and megalomaniacal angel. I'D KILL GOD IF HE WAS LIKE THAT AS WELL. He's almost supporting Christianity by making clear what it is that Christianity ISN'T. 5 Suzanna Cook said, "By the way Michael, that great that you had good prayer time with God, but I that's not going to happen with everyone. In what way did it inspire you?" Suzanna, I don't have a lot of time to comment right now, but I feel like you missed my point. I probably didn't make it clear. My point is actually the same point you made in the above statement. I mentioned the prayer time to make clear that we can't assume the books will effect everyone the same way. We should be far more careful and less hasty to slap a "good" or "bad" onto something until we're more fully informed, have been circumspective about it, and have had an open mind and heart. How each person is effected by something is usually far more THEIR fault than the thing supposedly "affecting" them. How each person is determining whether something is "good" or "bad" is different anyway. That’s just as much God's fault as it is ours in my opinion. He didn't give us perfectly clear directions in the Bible; a section entitled, "How to determine which books should be red and which movies can be watched" He left it quite vague. Oh, there's 'principles'. but don't waist time mentioning them to me. I teach them in the Church and I believe I understand their value, but everyone still applies them differently and comes to different conclusions by them. Lets just admit that God made it hard for us all to find and agree on what the truth is in these more peripheral matters of life. They're still worth giving time to, but lets always keep the more important things of life and our faith more important, you know? I'd like to explain this following statement but won't really. I think God's less interested in what decision people make IN THIS MATTER as he is in HOW they make the decision. He doesn't believe it's either wrong or right to read the books or watch the movies. I believe he has a different opinion of wrong or right (in these peripheral kind of issues) for each person based on many things (their reason for doing it, the effect it will have on them, who and how they'll influence by doing it, etc.) It's not the same answer for each person. I believe stealing is always wrong for everyone, but deciding whether or not to play a video game for an hour is right or wrong for different people for different reasons. There's countless things involved in why it could be right or wrong. There's no universal answer for it. Lets stop acting like there is.    hide

Warning: lots of spoilers ahead. First off, the books are incredibly well written. Most...more

Warning: lots of spoilers ahead. First off, the books are incredibly well written. Most importantly, it's unique and original, unlike most fantasy writing these days. Rather than steal from writers like Tolkien and others, Pullman actually comes up with creative ideas. So from a literary standpoint, these three books are very, very good. However, they are not children's books. It's not the religious overtones, which I'll get to soon enough. As my friend Cory Watson pointed out in a blog post, it's the sexual overtones. The story is largely centered around concepts of original sin and puberty. By the end of the trilogy, the main characters, a 12 year old boy and girl, discover their sexuality. It's not explicit, but it's blatant. Additionally, there are times when adults in the story interact among themselves or say things to the children that I would never want a child to read. It is for that reason that I have problems with the book. Sexual activity between children that are 12 years old is unconscionable. On to the spiritual/religious aspects. So yes, God dies in the book. When people talked about it, I thought it was an active killing of God. In fact, it's passive. Pullman's concept of God in the book is that he was merely the first angel. Angels coalesced from Dust, a conscious, elementary particle. When other angels formed, Pullman's God claimed to have created them all, which was a lie. Some, knowing the truth, rebelled, following the story line of Milton's Paradise Lost. By the third book, the first angel, known as the Authority (but also referenced by Christian titles: Yahweh, Jehovah, Alpha and Omega--he doesn't beat around the bush), is incredibly old and decrepit. He reminded me of the king from The Princess Bride, in a way. He is kept safe in a sort of coffin-like container to protect him from the elements. During a battle, while he is being flown to safety, the angels protecting him are killed, the coffin falls and breaks, and after a few moments of being exposed to the elements the Authority disintegrates away by the wind. Pullman's concept of God is far from omnipotent, omnipresent. In this world, he is unnecessary and irrelevant. Irrelevant is the perfect word, actually. Pullman in one sense follows Dawkins in his thoughts that religion is evil, but in the end appears to make the claim that God is irrelevant and we should just stop worrying about it at all, because it is powerless in the face of humanity? That may not be the right way to say it, but it feels right now. His church is the stereotypical Catholic church from the Dark Ages (except that it was run by a guy named Calvin out of Geneva--sort of a Reformation gone wrong). They silence heretics, don't bat an eye at killing, and try to run people's lives ("for their own good"). Religion is about what one cannot do, and what the church needs to do to protect people from themselves and from sin. So literary standpoint: excellent book. Sexual activity between children: bad. His religious foundation: false, and I'm sorry for it; I wish he could know the Authority that I know.   hide

The "His Dark Materials Trilogy," by Philip Pullman, comprising "The Golden Compass," "The Subtle...more

The "His Dark Materials Trilogy," by Philip Pullman, comprising "The Golden Compass," "The Subtle Knife," and "The Amber Spyglass." Although ostensibly "young adult" fiction, Pullman's trilogy is a complex investigation into deep philosophical questions by way of a simple narrative firmly entrenched in a fantastic universe of innumerable worlds - some which are similar to the world we know, but others that are entirely different. Pullman's novels are quite dark for the younger reader. He deals with themes such as the loss of childhood innocence, nascent sexuality, death and religion in a way such that, to his credit, he neither alienates the younger reader nor insults those of us in our advanced years (I read these when I was 26). Pullman's books are a mishmash of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition (Adam & Eve), along with wild fantasy elements (armored bears, witches), and tribute paid to classic writing such as Milton's "Paradise Lost." Really quite fascinating and a wonderful story. A word of warning: one must be willing to lose oneself in Pullman's world, at once fantastic yet curiously familiar. Check this trilogy out.   hide

Better than most fantasy that I've read, His Dark Materials is interesting for its philosophical...more

Better than most fantasy that I've read, His Dark Materials is interesting for its philosophical thrust as much as its narrative, if not more so. The two are so intertwined (much like C.S. Lewis or Ayn Rand) that they're a bit hard to separate. As fiction, it is effective, exciting, and fun, and I won't give up any plot details. Some parts are cartoonish to the point of being unbelievable (e.g. the Magisterium in Lyra's earth) and undercut the story, but they aren't severe enough to make the story bad, just less believable from a parallel universe/social evolution standpoint. As philosophy it is fun and effective (whether or not one agrees with it), and that's what I'll address in the rest of the review. Although Pullman has self-identified as an agnostic/atheist, I don't see these books as an attack on the idea of a deity as much as an attack on deity-as-oppressor, or a false god (which The Authority is in HDM), and ultimately the humanism that Pullman embraces is very close to many of the ideals of Christianity (just without the presence of an identified, quantifiable deity). In other words, Pullman's atheism is genuinely humanistic and encourages compassion, charity, the love of humanity, etc, whereas some atheisms (most notably Ayn Rand's) lead to selfishness and a rather sick hyper-egoism that falsely calls itself humanism. His Dark Materials is also much more fun than Atlas Shrugged and seems unlikely to encourage anyone to behave like a sociopath (as Atlas & the Fountainhead do). I contrast HDM and Atlas for a few reasons: 1) HDM and Narnia have been compared extensively, 2) both are narrative-as-polemic, and 3) the reaction of the evangelical community to each: HDM is denounced by Christians although its humanistic ethics are very close to Christian ethics, whereas the ethics of Atlas are widely embraced by many in the American religious right, even though they are profoundly opposed to Christian ethics, and some American evangelicals (e.g. John Piper) have praised Rand (except for her atheism). Ultimately, HDM is a coming-of-age story and is very effective as such. In fact, I can think of only one fantasy coming-of-age story that is more effective, but I won't get into that here (Hint: It takes seven years for the boy in that story to come of age, and it is also about vanquishing a spiritually oppressive tyrant).   hide