A review by feuillycakes
Northern Lights by Philip Pullman

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

If you think this is a lighthearted fantasy for kids, you’d be wrong. The concepts in this book are horrifying, the main character Lyra faces some horrible abuse and hardships, and though it’s perfectly understandable for a child, I didn’t fully grasp the horrors of this universe until I reread as an adult. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Torture, Violence, Trafficking, and Medical trauma

There’s a lot of discussion and descriptions of what is essentially an awake lobotomy but worse and more traumatic and fatal. Descriptions of violence and body horror, descriptions of experimentation on children including a form of torture that isn’t real but is still horrific to read about.