Monday, December 31, 2012

Book # 62 His Dark Materials Book 1: The Golden Compass

Progress Book 18.33 of 100-

The Golden Compass is the story of Lyra and her destiny to save her world from destruction. It’s a world similar to ours, but also really different. It reminded me of the television program Sliders and all the parallel universes that exist. Lyra is raised by the scholars of Oxford College. Once a year her Uncle Asriel visits, but otherwise the scholars are her family In this world each human has a spirit called a dameon that is connected to them always. For children their dameon can take any animal form. Once they hit puberty their dameon will stop changing and remain one character until they both die. A human cannot live without their dameon and a dameon cannot live without their human. In this world there are witches who also have dameon’s but they can be separated and live apart from their dameons. Lyra cannot be more than a few feet from her dameon nicknamed Pan without experiencing horrible pain. There is also a race of warrior bears that can speak, but do not have dameons.

Lyra is leading a happy childhood, running around Oxford with her best friend Roger, until everything changes. Her Uncle Asriel has begun researching a new thing called dust and had discovered another world through the Northern Lights. At the same time, orphaned children start disappearing around London. When Roger is taken, Lyra goes on a mission to safe him. Along the way we discover she is the young girl destined to save their world. With the help of the gyptians, Lorek the bear, a witch named Serafina, and a hot air balloon flier named Lee, Lyra sets out to the cold wilderness of the arctic to rescue Roger.

I really enjoyed reading this novel. They style of writing was really easy to follow and I like that there were witches and bears. It was a fun little fantasy world that Pullman created. Lyra also had a natural tendency to find herself in the company of nice people that want to help and end up being crucial in her quest.

I’ll give this part an A- 92%

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