Reviews - Северное сияние

You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.

10.5k reviews for:

Северное сияние

Филип Пулман, Philip Pullman

4.07 AVERAGE

izzykai's review against another edition

3.0

adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

nturnberrez's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

"So Lyra and her daemon turned away from the world they were born in, and looked toward the sun, and walked into the sky."
the beginning of a classic series that combines history, literature, religion, science fiction, poetry... while i love the other books more than this one, the chilling scenes of violently slicing away someone's daemon still gives me goosebumps.

beckwilk's review against another edition

I am so, so disappointed. I know there are SO MANY fans of this series, and I was so excited to become one of the many. I was looking for another middle-grade series to get attached to, something that would give me the feels the way Harry Potter did. Unfortunately, though, The Golden Compass ended up being such a let down. Part of it is definitely just my own taste. But there were also glaring flaws in the characters and the narrative.

I’m not a fan of steampunk. It just doesn’t work for me. Maybe it’s because I’m not that interested in that particular time in history; maybe it’s just that my introduction to steampunk was weak. I’m not really sure, but I’ve never been a fan of the genre – not the books, movies, the music, none of it. So The Golden Compass right away wasn’t working out for me.

Also, I really disliked Lyra. While I enjoyed her spunky attitude and disregard for authority, she just grated on my nerves. She wasn’t very smart, relying on others to explain things to her in pages-long info-dumps disguised as dialog. And even when answers were staring her right in the face, she didn’t figure out anything was amiss until she was told. The one time she did take charge, she was captured and had to be rescued.

Finally, and this is the least troubling bit. It didn’t bother me that much, but I had a hard time actually becoming absorbed in the world. The first 50 pages made very little sense to me. There were a ton of words that I guess go back to the steampunk genre that just threw me out of the narrative. It also took me a while to figure out the purpose of a daemon.

I honestly think I would have loved this if I read it when I was a kid. Unfortunately though, I’ve become much more picky in my reading than I used to be, and The Golden Compass just didn’t work out for me, no matter how much I wanted it to.