A review by clem
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

adventurous dark emotional sad medium-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I don't think there's any series from my childhood that has managed to keep my imagination captured for so many years. (Even Harry Potter!) I can't have been more than nine when my mom originally read this series to me, and there are so many images I have held onto vividly. (I will never forget the description of Iofur Raknison's "lolling" tongue.) I can't discount the power of nostalgia, but there is something so forceful in the emotions Pullman conjures. He writes children so well: their righteousness, their stubbornness, their ultimate innocence even in the face of atrocity. Lyra is brave and brash and clever and this feels right and correct; she is a remarkable child, but believably so.

I'm not really sure how this series came to be marketed towards kids and middle grade readers. It's not that younger readers can't enjoy it (it's a great adventure story, and I loved it when I was little), but the allegorical elements and critiques of organized religion will go completely over kids' heads. The story is vibrant and evocative and enduring, but there is so much more depth that reveals itself to older readers. The General Oblation Board's experiments on children echoes the Holocaust, residential schools, and many other atrocities sanctioned by and committed in the name of the Church.

This series as a whole and this book in particular have such incredible emotional depth: there is endless fun to be had in the adventure, but the despair and sorrow Pullman takes the story to is almost unparalleled. I can't imagine how literature could be more desperately emotionally affecting than

the discovery of the dæmon-less Tony, or Roger's death

, or so many other moments in the other two books.

Seriously a remarkable novel in a remarkable series. Complex and affecting beyond words.