 |
| 4.5 stars out of 5 |
Here lives an
orphaned ward named Lyra Belacqua, whose carefree life among the
scholars at Oxford's Jordan College is shattered by the arrival of two
powerful visitors. First, her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, appears with
evidence of mystery and danger in the far North, including photographs
of a mysterious celestial phenomenon called Dust and the dim outline of a
city suspended in the Aurora Borealis that he suspects is part of an
alternate universe. He leaves Lyra in the care of Mrs. Coulter, an
enigmatic scholar and explorer who offers to give Lyra the attention her
uncle has long refused her. In this multilayered narrative, however,
nothing is as it seems. Lyra sets out for the top of the world in search
of her kidnapped playmate, Roger, bearing a rare truth-telling
instrument, the alethiometer. All around her children are
disappearing—victims of so-called "Gobblers"—and being used as subjects
in terrible experiments that separate humans from their daemons,
creatures that reflect each person's inner being. And somehow, both Lord
Asriel and Mrs. Coulter are involved.
The Golden Compass was the last hurrah in my
2016 Summer Carnival of Children’s Literature. It just squeaked in under the wire, as I read it during the Labour Day weekend.
I rate it at 4.5 stars. I found it completely engrossing and hard to
put down. Published about 15 years too late for me to read as a
child—but how I would have loved it! It is a dark novel, full of
mysterious daemons, a threatening Church, plots of uncertain origin,
sinister disappearances, and duplicitous adults.
All the stuff that I still enjoy! Unfortunately for me, this first
of the series came out just as my own life was imploding and I have only
recently recovered enough to get seriously reading again. Twenty years
delay in discovering this marvelous introduction to
His Dark Materials.
No comments:
Post a Comment