Product Description

Published in 40 countries, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy--The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass--has graced the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Book Sense, and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. In 1996, The Golden Compass changed the face of fantasy publishing, and 2006 marks its 10 Year Anniversary--and an opportunity to celebrate with a deluxe hardcover. Pullman created new material just for this edition (archival documents, scientific notes and "found" letters of Lord Asriel) which has been illustrated and handlettered by renowned British artist Ian Beck and will be included in the back matter. The deluxe edition also features Pullman's own chapter opening spot art. A quality collectible--with the enticement of never-before-seen new material--for Pullman fans.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27533 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-24
• Released on: 2006-10-24
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 432 pages

Amazon.com
Some books improve with age--the age of the reader, that is. Such is certainly the case with Philip Pullman's heroic, at times heart-wrenching novel, The Golden Compass, a story ostensibly for children but one perhaps even better appreciated by adults. The protagonist of this complex fantasy is young Lyra Belacqua, a precocious orphan growing up within the precincts of Oxford University. But it quickly becomes clear that Lyra's Oxford is not precisely like our own--nor is her world. For one thing, people there each have a personal dæmon, the manifestation of their soul in animal form. For another, hers is a universe in which science, theology, and magic are closely allied:

As for what experimental theology was, Lyra had no more idea than the urchins. She had formed the notion that it was concerned with magic, with the movements of the stars and planets, with tiny particles of matter, but that was guesswork, really. Probably the stars had dæmons just as humans did, and experimental theology involved talking to them.

Not that Lyra spends much time worrying about it; what she likes best is "clambering over the College roofs with Roger the kitchen boy who was her particular friend, to spit plum stones on the heads of passing Scholars or to hoot like owls outside a window where a tutorial was going on, or racing through the narrow streets, or stealing apples from the market, or waging war." But Lyra's carefree existence changes forever when she and her dæmon, Pantalaimon, first prevent an assassination attempt against her uncle, the powerful Lord Asriel, and then overhear a secret discussion about a mysterious entity known as Dust. Soon she and Pan are swept up in a dangerous game involving disappearing children, a beautiful woman with a golden monkey dæmon, a trip to the far north, and a set of allies ranging from "gyptians" to witches to an armor-clad polar bear.

In The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman has written a masterpiece that transcends genre. It is a children's book that will appeal to adults, a fantasy novel that will charm even the most hardened realist. Best of all, the author doesn't speak down to his audience, nor does he pull his punches; there is genuine terror in this book, and heartbreak, betrayal, and loss. There is also love, loyalty, and an abiding morality that infuses the story but never overwhelms it. This is one of those rare novels that one wishes would never end. Fortunately, its sequel, The Subtle Knife, will help put off that inevitability for a while longer. --Alix Wilber

From Publishers Weekly
Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy now appears in sophisticated trade paperback editions, each title embossed within a runic emblem of antiqued gold. The backdrop of The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials, Book I sports a midnight blue map of the cosmos with the zodiacal ram at its center. The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass carry similarly intriguing cover art, and all three titles offer details not seen in the originals: in Compass and Knife, for example, Pullman's stamp-size b&w art introduces each chapter; Spyglass chapters open with literary quotes from Blake, the Bible, Dickinson and more.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Grade 5 Up-Accompanied by her daemon, Lyra Belacqua sets out to prevent her best friend and other kidnapped children from becoming the subjects of gruesome experiments in the far north. By Philip Pullman.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Customer Reviews

Much better than the movie.
More depth and better storyline than the movie. This books reads quickly and a good way to expand your vocabulary. It has an imaginative story that's hard to second guess. You'll want to order the second volume early so you can continue the epic.

Disapointed
Maybe it was all the hype I got from friends who'd read it and recommended it, but it seems over-rated. Gets off to a slow start and doesn't really pick up and become a page-turner until Lyra falls through the ceiling and is in real danger. However, at that point I started to have a hard time suspending my disbelief over the fact that this 11-year-old can understand what's going on, be that clever, and have the conversations she's having. It's all too perfect. Still, I must admit that I have already put a reserve on the second book from the library, because I want to know what happens, so in that respect it's successful.

An incredibly rich universe that holds terrifying secrets
I first became interested in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy after seeing the film based on it (The Golden Compass (New Line Platinum Series Two-Disc Widescreen Edition)). I found the screenplay to be disjointed and lacking, so I decided to read the original novel in order to have a better idea of important missing background information.

Lyra Belacqua is a wild child growing up among stodgy scholars at Oxford's Jordan College. She's content sneaking around slinging mud, engaging in street fights with rival schools, and avoiding any real sort of education. Her daemon Pantalaimon is her voice of reason. And here is Pullman's first masterpiece: daemons are human souls that are present as an accompanying animal; they are connected to their owner, yet have distinct personalities. Generally, a daemon is the opposite gender of its human. Only children have daemons that are able to shapshift; once they reach puberty, their daemon will maintain that form.

Lyra and Pantalaimon witness an attempted murder that would have had devastating consequences for them both, and intervene. And so starts Lyra's journey to the North; to Svalbard, a reimagined Norway that's a dangerous land swarming with cliff-ghasts, ruthless Tatar tribes, and armored polar bears. Her secret weapon is an alethiometer, the titular "Golden Compass" that allows its user to ask a series of questions in order to discover the truth. There are very few in existence, and fewer still that know how to accurately read it. Lyra is one of those few.

Along the way, she becomes involved with the gyptians, a Gypsy-like seafaring tribe, a Texan balloon pilot, a friendly witch, and an exiled prince that aid her on her quest to reach her Uncle Asriel. Richly imagined and brimming with tantalizingly complex science, Pullman's universe is, much like Tolkien and Rowling's works, a self-contained universe that possesses its own form of religion (as many have noted, Pullman's works are anti-religion, or at least anti-organized religion), history, geography, and science. The book is much more richly nuanced and imagined than the film adaptation, which does a dreadful disservice to the original novel by omitting the final chapters.

A note: if you consider yourself to be very religious, you may not want your children reading these books, as there are numerous anti-religious (specifically, anti-Catholic) sentiments within, as well as discussions of castration and scenes of at times extreme violence, including towards children. Pullman, an atheist, takes issue with the dangers of organized religion; as one character puts it, "Every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling." However, the His Dark Materials trilogy is beautifully written and imagined and has much to recommend it.