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4.07 AVERAGE
4.07 AVERAGE
I first read this book when I was little, and I don't think I'm surprising anyone by saying that it has a very different emotional impact when read as an adult. I remembered very little about the plot so I'm looking forward to rediscovering the rest of the story.
No, I don’t think The Golden Compass deserves one star. It was actually an okay read. However, The Golden Compass is not a stand-alone book. It ends on a massive cliffhanger and you have to read the other two books in the His Dark Materials series to know how the story ends. Those other two books are of such poor quality that I cannot, in good faith, give The Golden Compass a high rating because I cannot encourage anyone to get invested in a series that was such a disappointment to me. The two sequel books – The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass – are boring and unpleasant novels that I struggled to finish over the course of several weeks while I was able to get through The Golden Compass in about two days.
This is not an experience unique to my adult self. I originally read the series as a 13-year-old girl and I loved The Golden Compass to the point that I was able to recall all of the major plot points before I got to them on this re-read. All I could remember about the sequels was that I disliked them and was upset by how they portrayed religion. Someone recently told me this was one of their favorite series, so I decided to revisit and see if 13-year-old me was right.
She was. In fact, she liked The Golden Compass way more than I did because it’s clearly aimed at a younger audience. As an adult, book one was just okay and the other two were even more terrible than I remembered, but given how boring they are, I’m not surprised I’d forgotten so much.
There’s a lot to unpack here and, since this series is one story told in three parts and not simply three connected stories, I’m going to do a mostly spoiler-free review for the whole series because you should know what you’re getting into should you pick up this book. Most of the issues I’m going to talk about don’t come into play until book two, which is why The Golden Compass is such a strange novel. While it’s the first part of the story, it’s completely different in terms of the tone and the type of story you think it’s telling. My biggest issue with the series is the way the author handled religion and that’s barely mentioned until book two. It’s also my largest issue, so I’ll save that for end and talk about the “lesser” flaws first.
The first flaw is that the characters are not consistent from novel to novel. A character will be evil in one and the nice in the next. Strong and independent in one, then weak and subservient in the next. None of these changes are explained, they just happen because that’s what Pullman needs to character to be like in order for the plot to work. It makes for an inconsistent story and character connections that have almost nothing to back them up. The most spoiler-light example I can think of is that one character claims that a girl he’s met is “like a daughter to him.” It’s a lovely sentiment, but the two characters barely interact. I think we see them talk a grand total of five times and they’re all largely superficial interactions. Nothing is shown to make me believe that he views her as a daughter and that’s just one of a dozen examples I could have picked.
The second flaw is how drawn out the tale is. So much time is dedicated to useless padding or needless side plots. This could easily have been a two book series and nothing of substance would have been lost. To give an example of this, there’s a part of the tale where a character gets hurt and pages upon pages are dedicated to trying to heal the injury. In the end, said injury is healed by a random person happening upon the injured party and fixing the injury. In other word, all those pages of tension were a complete waste of time and the characters could just as easily have done nothing. This pattern of time wasting tension that could easily be cut out dominates books two and three to the point where I started playing the game “if this got cut out, would the story change?” Strange? Yes, but it was the only way I could make book three remotely enjoyable.
The third flaw was the chosen point of view. The vast majority of this tale is told through the eyes of Will and Lyra, two 12-year-old children. Will and Lyra are important to the story, but they don’t take an active role and almost everything they do is a side-plot to the main conflict. It’s like reading a story about a jewelry heist where the focus is on where the jewelry is and what’s happening to it or what the security guard watching the jewelry is up to. Yes, the jewelry is a key part of the tale, but you’re missing all of the details that make the story interesting. Without knowledge of the greater conflict that’s driving everything, you’re missing a ton of important context that would make you actually care about what’s going on. With that context missing, you’re left more confused than invested.
Why I’m giving that parallel is that the later books in this series occasionally reference a massive war with enormous armies gathering over the course of a few weeks. The books give us no idea how the armies were called which made the whole thing come across as hard to believe. One of the factions gathers together and then builds a massive fortress within something close to a week or two of the war starting without showing any pre-war communication between the groups that form the army. Characters get the power to control other creatures, make startling predictions, or create fantastic machines, but we’re never told how they do these things. It left my suspension of disbelief well and truly shattered because I kept asking “wait, how did they do that?” The story isn’t going to tell you. All of the attention is on Will and Lyra who are barely aware the war is happening. This book is supposedly a direct response to The Chronicles of Narnia, but those books had the children as commanders of armies or explorers who were in the thick of events, so the reader knew exactly what was happening and why. There was none of this off-screen, copout BS that makes His Dark Materials a chore to read.
This brings us to the series final flaw: its clear hatred of Christianity.
Look, I’m all for literature playing with religion or criticizing it, but that’s not what’s going on here. There’s nothing playful about this and there’s certainly nothing even resembling a critique. Pullman chose to create a completely different world from our own and have it be run by “evil” Christians. This is a terrible way to critique something that actually exists because you’re removing all of the context and creating your own version that has nothing to do with reality. This would be fine if he was just critiquing organized religion in general, but Pullman pulls direct quotes from the bible and bases everything off of Christian doctrine, so it’s clear that this is all about Christianity and how evil it is.
Even there he falls flat on his face. All of the evil things the church of this world does are things that you don’t see in our world. There’s no critique of things like the crusades or things the bible actually says. Instead we see people in this fantasy church behaving like cartoon villains over issues Pullman has made up that don’t have a real-world parallel. There’s no bible-based motivation behind what they do. Scripture is never quoted. They just vaguely mention that it’s God’s will.
There’s also no gray area. The church is evil with not a shred of good. Not a single member is shown as having any issues with the atrocities being committed. No one in the church helps the poor or tries to do any good in the world. They’re all hateful people warped by greed and fanaticism. It’s as realistic an interpretation of Christianity as the evil enemies of the environment in the old Captain Planet cartoon.
What makes it even more absurd is that Pullman created a fantasy world where the church is supposedly a powerful entity with far-reaching influence, but he forgot to make the church powerful. The church of this world says certain people and species - like witches - are evil and should be eliminated. Yet, those same peoples and species are thriving. The church isn’t doing anything to hurt them. In fact, the church even works with them! We also never see anyone praying, going to church, or even being afraid to criticize God. You know, the things you’d expect to see in a world controlled by an evil church. All that we have to go on to support this evil-church theory is a few over-the-top scenes with evil men plotting evil things and Pullman’s word. I suffered through all three books and was never convinced that the church had any more power than the government in this word. To be frank, they came off as some-sort of mafia. An organization with power, yes, but certainly not one that could do whatever they wanted.
He also rewrites a lot of Christianity to suit his purpose. Things like Angels and God work differently here than they do in the Bible. For me, it was just further evidence that this book didn’t know what it was doing since, once again, Pullman was criticizing something by fundamentally changing it. If you are Christian, though, I could see these elements being deeply offensive.
To give another parallel, this reads like someone writing a book “critiquing” Islam by writing all the Muslims characters as terrorists, then never giving any reason why they’re attacking people beyond hate and a claim that the Koran says to do it while barely quoting the Koran. It’s a childish, hateful way to view the world and completely inappropriate, especially in a book aimed at children.
This unsophisticated view of religion combined with the series other flaws made the books a chore to read and that I can’t recommend this to anyone. The only reason I suffered through the whole thing was because I know this is a well-liked series and I wanted to give a strong reasoning for my dislike instead of just ending midway through book two and claiming the whole series was bad.
I’m going to be posting essentially identical reviews for all three books and then adding a spoiler tagged ending section where I rant about that specific book’s flaws for every book save this one. As I mentioned at the start of this review, The Golden Compass doesn’t have major flaws in and of itself. The reason it’s getting the rating it is and why I posted a review that’s more a review of the other two books than it is a review of this one is that you can’t read The Golden Compass and walk away satisfied since the book ends on a cliffhanger. There’s not even a sudo-ending given before that. You have to suffer through books two and three to know what happens and they are not worth it by a long shot, which makes The Golden Compass just as unworthy in this reader’s opinion.
This is not an experience unique to my adult self. I originally read the series as a 13-year-old girl and I loved The Golden Compass to the point that I was able to recall all of the major plot points before I got to them on this re-read. All I could remember about the sequels was that I disliked them and was upset by how they portrayed religion. Someone recently told me this was one of their favorite series, so I decided to revisit and see if 13-year-old me was right.
She was. In fact, she liked The Golden Compass way more than I did because it’s clearly aimed at a younger audience. As an adult, book one was just okay and the other two were even more terrible than I remembered, but given how boring they are, I’m not surprised I’d forgotten so much.
There’s a lot to unpack here and, since this series is one story told in three parts and not simply three connected stories, I’m going to do a mostly spoiler-free review for the whole series because you should know what you’re getting into should you pick up this book. Most of the issues I’m going to talk about don’t come into play until book two, which is why The Golden Compass is such a strange novel. While it’s the first part of the story, it’s completely different in terms of the tone and the type of story you think it’s telling. My biggest issue with the series is the way the author handled religion and that’s barely mentioned until book two. It’s also my largest issue, so I’ll save that for end and talk about the “lesser” flaws first.
The first flaw is that the characters are not consistent from novel to novel. A character will be evil in one and the nice in the next. Strong and independent in one, then weak and subservient in the next. None of these changes are explained, they just happen because that’s what Pullman needs to character to be like in order for the plot to work. It makes for an inconsistent story and character connections that have almost nothing to back them up. The most spoiler-light example I can think of is that one character claims that a girl he’s met is “like a daughter to him.” It’s a lovely sentiment, but the two characters barely interact. I think we see them talk a grand total of five times and they’re all largely superficial interactions. Nothing is shown to make me believe that he views her as a daughter and that’s just one of a dozen examples I could have picked.
The second flaw is how drawn out the tale is. So much time is dedicated to useless padding or needless side plots. This could easily have been a two book series and nothing of substance would have been lost. To give an example of this, there’s a part of the tale where a character gets hurt and pages upon pages are dedicated to trying to heal the injury. In the end, said injury is healed by a random person happening upon the injured party and fixing the injury. In other word, all those pages of tension were a complete waste of time and the characters could just as easily have done nothing. This pattern of time wasting tension that could easily be cut out dominates books two and three to the point where I started playing the game “if this got cut out, would the story change?” Strange? Yes, but it was the only way I could make book three remotely enjoyable.
The third flaw was the chosen point of view. The vast majority of this tale is told through the eyes of Will and Lyra, two 12-year-old children. Will and Lyra are important to the story, but they don’t take an active role and almost everything they do is a side-plot to the main conflict. It’s like reading a story about a jewelry heist where the focus is on where the jewelry is and what’s happening to it or what the security guard watching the jewelry is up to. Yes, the jewelry is a key part of the tale, but you’re missing all of the details that make the story interesting. Without knowledge of the greater conflict that’s driving everything, you’re missing a ton of important context that would make you actually care about what’s going on. With that context missing, you’re left more confused than invested.
Why I’m giving that parallel is that the later books in this series occasionally reference a massive war with enormous armies gathering over the course of a few weeks. The books give us no idea how the armies were called which made the whole thing come across as hard to believe. One of the factions gathers together and then builds a massive fortress within something close to a week or two of the war starting without showing any pre-war communication between the groups that form the army. Characters get the power to control other creatures, make startling predictions, or create fantastic machines, but we’re never told how they do these things. It left my suspension of disbelief well and truly shattered because I kept asking “wait, how did they do that?” The story isn’t going to tell you. All of the attention is on Will and Lyra who are barely aware the war is happening. This book is supposedly a direct response to The Chronicles of Narnia, but those books had the children as commanders of armies or explorers who were in the thick of events, so the reader knew exactly what was happening and why. There was none of this off-screen, copout BS that makes His Dark Materials a chore to read.
This brings us to the series final flaw: its clear hatred of Christianity.
Look, I’m all for literature playing with religion or criticizing it, but that’s not what’s going on here. There’s nothing playful about this and there’s certainly nothing even resembling a critique. Pullman chose to create a completely different world from our own and have it be run by “evil” Christians. This is a terrible way to critique something that actually exists because you’re removing all of the context and creating your own version that has nothing to do with reality. This would be fine if he was just critiquing organized religion in general, but Pullman pulls direct quotes from the bible and bases everything off of Christian doctrine, so it’s clear that this is all about Christianity and how evil it is.
Even there he falls flat on his face. All of the evil things the church of this world does are things that you don’t see in our world. There’s no critique of things like the crusades or things the bible actually says. Instead we see people in this fantasy church behaving like cartoon villains over issues Pullman has made up that don’t have a real-world parallel. There’s no bible-based motivation behind what they do. Scripture is never quoted. They just vaguely mention that it’s God’s will.
There’s also no gray area. The church is evil with not a shred of good. Not a single member is shown as having any issues with the atrocities being committed. No one in the church helps the poor or tries to do any good in the world. They’re all hateful people warped by greed and fanaticism. It’s as realistic an interpretation of Christianity as the evil enemies of the environment in the old Captain Planet cartoon.
What makes it even more absurd is that Pullman created a fantasy world where the church is supposedly a powerful entity with far-reaching influence, but he forgot to make the church powerful. The church of this world says certain people and species - like witches - are evil and should be eliminated. Yet, those same peoples and species are thriving. The church isn’t doing anything to hurt them. In fact, the church even works with them! We also never see anyone praying, going to church, or even being afraid to criticize God. You know, the things you’d expect to see in a world controlled by an evil church. All that we have to go on to support this evil-church theory is a few over-the-top scenes with evil men plotting evil things and Pullman’s word. I suffered through all three books and was never convinced that the church had any more power than the government in this word. To be frank, they came off as some-sort of mafia. An organization with power, yes, but certainly not one that could do whatever they wanted.
He also rewrites a lot of Christianity to suit his purpose. Things like Angels and God work differently here than they do in the Bible. For me, it was just further evidence that this book didn’t know what it was doing since, once again, Pullman was criticizing something by fundamentally changing it. If you are Christian, though, I could see these elements being deeply offensive.
To give another parallel, this reads like someone writing a book “critiquing” Islam by writing all the Muslims characters as terrorists, then never giving any reason why they’re attacking people beyond hate and a claim that the Koran says to do it while barely quoting the Koran. It’s a childish, hateful way to view the world and completely inappropriate, especially in a book aimed at children.
This unsophisticated view of religion combined with the series other flaws made the books a chore to read and that I can’t recommend this to anyone. The only reason I suffered through the whole thing was because I know this is a well-liked series and I wanted to give a strong reasoning for my dislike instead of just ending midway through book two and claiming the whole series was bad.
I’m going to be posting essentially identical reviews for all three books and then adding a spoiler tagged ending section where I rant about that specific book’s flaws for every book save this one. As I mentioned at the start of this review, The Golden Compass doesn’t have major flaws in and of itself. The reason it’s getting the rating it is and why I posted a review that’s more a review of the other two books than it is a review of this one is that you can’t read The Golden Compass and walk away satisfied since the book ends on a cliffhanger. There’s not even a sudo-ending given before that. You have to suffer through books two and three to know what happens and they are not worth it by a long shot, which makes The Golden Compass just as unworthy in this reader’s opinion.
adventurous
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
This YA story was surprisingly captivating. The attention to detail and world-building I did not expect.
Also Pullman doesn't pull any punches when writing about children characters. Although this is a pretty 'cosy' fanatasy story. Lyra never gets into real danger and events get resolved around her, not by her.
Nevertheless, this book has a lot of cool stuff in it. I love the arctic setting of the story, very underused in fantasy. I love the inclusion of witches and fighting polar bears. The notion of everybody having a pet, a daemon, which is an extension of yourself, is a very neat concept and it isn't an afterthought but plays a large part in the story
The ending was wild. It had a twist I did not see coming and it leaves it wide open to continue for in book 2.
Ultimately I enjoyed this more than I had anticipated.
Also Pullman doesn't pull any punches when writing about children characters. Although this is a pretty 'cosy' fanatasy story. Lyra never gets into real danger and events get resolved around her, not by her.
Nevertheless, this book has a lot of cool stuff in it. I love the arctic setting of the story, very underused in fantasy. I love the inclusion of witches and fighting polar bears. The notion of everybody having a pet, a daemon, which is an extension of yourself, is a very neat concept and it isn't an afterthought but plays a large part in the story
The ending was wild. It had a twist I did not see coming and it leaves it wide open to continue for in book 2.
Ultimately I enjoyed this more than I had anticipated.
Leí este libro hace muchos años y recuerdo que me impresionó pero muchas lecturas se atravesaron y no continúe la saga.
Ahora con el estreno de la serie His Dark Meterials decidí empezar de nuevo la saga. Me regalaron esta edición (la cual es hermosa) y quedé encantado de nuevo con el libro.
No se desaprovecha una sola línea y en ningún momento se siente introductorio.
¡Me urge saber que pasará con Lyra!
Ahora con el estreno de la serie His Dark Meterials decidí empezar de nuevo la saga. Me regalaron esta edición (la cual es hermosa) y quedé encantado de nuevo con el libro.
No se desaprovecha una sola línea y en ningún momento se siente introductorio.
¡Me urge saber que pasará con Lyra!
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced