His Dark Materials

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His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass)

Philip Pullman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1084 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Loved it. 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This is such a great series. One of those where you can't turn the pages fast enough. I understand some people were up about the religious undertones. Well that's hardly the point. It's just a solid series. Not sure what the age bracket is for this series, but small children might be frightened.

Don't waste your time! 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 21 people found this review helpful.

What a waste. I agree that these books were well written but don't fool yourself - the subtle anti-God message gets stronger as the books progress! Again, I say, don't be fooled! If you let your kids read this junk you will be setting them up for spiritual failure...the more you find evil appealing, the more you accept it as normal. Don't do this to your kids or yourself! Stay away - run from evil!!!

Editorial Review:

In the epic trilogy His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman unlocks the door to worlds parallel to our own. Dæmons and winged creatures live side by side with humans, and a mysterious entity called Dust just might have the power to unite the universes--if it isn't destroyed first. The three books in Pullman's heroic fantasy series, published as mass-market paperbacks with new covers, are united here in one boxed set that includes The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. Join Lyra, Pantalaimon, Will, and the rest as they embark on the most breathtaking, heartbreaking adventure of their lives. The fate of the universe is in their hands. (Ages 13 and older)

The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3)

Philip Pullman

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Total reviews: 883 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the very start of its very first scene, The Amber Spyglass will set hearts fluttering and minds racing. All we'll say here is that we immediately discover who captured Lyra at the end of The Subtle Knife, though we've yet to discern whether this individual's intent is good, evil, or somewhere in between. We also learn that Will still possesses the blade that allows him to cut between worlds, and has been joined by two winged companions who are determined to escort him to Lord Asriel's mountain redoubt. The boy, however, has only one goal in mind--to rescue his friend and return to her the alethiometer, an instrument that has revealed so much to her and to readers of The Golden Compass and its follow-up. Within a short time, too, we get to experience the "tingle of the starlight" on Serafina Pekkala's skin as she seeks out a famished Iorek Byrnison and enlists him in Lord Asriel's crusade:
A complex web of thoughts was weaving itself in the bear king's mind, with more strands in it than hunger and satisfaction. There was the memory of the little girl Lyra, whom he had named Silvertongue, and whom he had last seen crossing the fragile snow bridge across a crevasse in his own island of Svalbard. Then there was the agitation among the witches, the rumors of pacts and alliances and war; and then there was the surpassingly strange fact of this new world itself, and the witch's insistence that there were many more such worlds, and that the fate of them all hung somehow on the fate of the child.
Meanwhile, two factions of the Church are vying to reach Lyra first. One is even prepared to give a priest "preemptive absolution" should he succeed in committing mortal sin. For these tyrants, killing this girl is no less than "a sacred task."
In the final installment of his trilogy, Philip Pullman has set himself the highest hurdles. He must match its predecessors in terms of sheer action and originality and resolve the enigmas he already created. The good news is that there is no critical bad news--not that The Amber Spyglass doesn't contain standoffs and close calls galore. (Who would have it otherwise?) But Pullman brings his audacious revision of Paradise Lost to a conclusion that is both serene and devastating. In prose that is transparent yet lyrical and 3-D, the author weaves in and out of his principals' thoughts. He also offers up several additional worlds. In one, Dr. Mary Malone is welcomed into an apparently simple society. The environment of the mulefa (again, we'll reveal nothing more) makes them rich in consciousness while their lives possess a slow and stately rhythm. These strange creatures can, however, be very fast on their feet (or on other things entirely) when necessary. Alas, they are on the verge of dying as Dust streams out of their idyllic landscape. Will the Oxford dark-matter researcher see her way to saving them, or does this require our young heroes? And while Mary is puzzling out a cure, Will and Lyra undertake a pilgrimage to a realm devoid of all light and hope, after having been forced into the cruelest of sacrifices--or betrayals.
Throughout his galvanizing epic, Pullman sustains scenes of fierce beauty and tenderness. He also allows us a moment or two of comic respite. At one point, for instance, Lyra's mother bullies a series of ecclesiastical underlings: "The man bowed helplessly and led her away. The guard behind her blew out his cheeks with relief." Needless to say, Mrs. Coulter is as intoxicating and fluid as ever. And can it be that we will come to admire her as she plays out her desperate endgame? In this respect, as in many others, The Amber Spyglass is truly a book of revelations, moving from darkness visible to radiant truth. --Kerry Fried

The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2)

Philip Pullman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 636 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

With The Golden Compass Philip Pullman garnered every accolade under the sun. Critics lobbed around such superlatives as "elegant," "awe-inspiring," "grand," and "glittering," and used "magnificent" with gay abandon. Each reader had a favorite chapter--or, more likely, several--from the opening tour de force to Lyra's close call at Bolvangar to the great armored-bear battle. And Pullman was no less profligate when it came to intellectual firepower or singular characters. The dæmons alone grant him a place in world literature. Could the second installment of his trilogy keep up this pitch, or had his heroine and her too, too sullied parents consumed him? And what of the belief system that pervaded his alternate universe, not to mention the mystery of Dust? More revelations and an equal number of wonders and new players were definitely in order.
The Subtle Knife offers everything we could have wished for, and more. For a start, there's a young hero--from our world--who is a match for Lyra Silvertongue and whose destiny is every bit as shattering. Like Lyra, Will Parry has spent his childhood playing games. Unlike hers, though, his have been deadly serious. This 12-year-old long ago learned the art of invisibility: if he could erase himself, no one would discover his mother's increasing instability and separate them.
As the novel opens, Will's enemies will do anything for information about his missing father, a soldier and Arctic explorer who has been very much airbrushed from the official picture. Now Will must get his mother into safe seclusion and make his way toward Oxford, which may hold the key to John Parry's disappearance. But en route and on the lam from both the police and his family's tormentors, he comes upon a cat with more than a mouse on her mind: "She reached out a paw to pat something in the air in front of her, something quite invisible to Will." What seems to him a patch of everyday Oxford conceals far more: "The cat stepped forward and vanished." Will, too, scrambles through and into another oddly deserted landscape--one in which children rule and adults (and felines) are very much at risk. Here in this deathly silent city by the sea, he will soon have a dustup with a fierce, flinty little girl: "Her expression was a mixture of the very young--when she first tasted the cola--and a kind of deep, sad wariness." Soon Will and Lyra (and, of course, her dæmon, Pantalaimon) uneasily embark on a great adventure and head into greater tragedy.
As Pullman moves between his young warriors and the witch Serafina Pekkala, the magnetic, ever-manipulative Mrs. Coulter, and Lee Scoresby and his hare dæmon, Hester, there are clear signs of approaching war and earthly chaos. There are new faces as well. The author introduces Oxford dark-matter researcher Mary Malone; the Latvian witch queen Ruta Skadi, who "had trafficked with spirits, and it showed"; Stanislaus Grumman, a shaman in search of a weapon crucial to the cause of Lord Asriel, Lyra's father; and a serpentine old man whom Lyra and Pan can't quite place. Also on hand are the Specters, beings that make cliff-ghasts look like rank amateurs.
Throughout, Pullman is in absolute control of his several worlds, his plot and pace equal to his inspiration. Any number of astonishing scenes--small- and large-scale--will have readers on edge, and many are cause for tears. "You think things have to be possible," Will demands. "Things have to be true!" It is Philip Pullman's gift to turn what quotidian minds would term the impossible into a reality that is both heartbreaking and beautiful. --Kerry Fried

The Golden Compass, Deluxe 10th Anniversary Edition (His Dark Materials, Book 1)(Rough-cut)

Philip Pullman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1463 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

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 daemon, the manifestation of their souls 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 daemons 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 daemon, 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 daemon, 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

The Subtle Knife, Deluxe 10th Anniversary Edition (His Dark Materials, Book 2)(Rough-cut)

Philip Pullman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

PUBLISHED IN 40 COUNTRIES, with over 5 million copies in print in North America alone, 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. For these deluxe editions, Philip Pullman has created new material: papers of Colonel John Parry for the 10-year anniversary of The Subtle Knife (15 new pages), and letters of Mary Malone from secret Magisterium files for The Amber Spyglass (10 new pages). In each book, the new material has been illustrated and handlettered by renowned artist Ian Beck and will be included in the backmatter.

Each deluxe edition also features a ribbon bookmark, rough-edged pages, and Pullman's own chapter-opening spot art. These two volumes join the 2006 deluxe edition of The Golden Compass to form a gorgeous collectible set of the trilogy - a perfect gift for loyal Pullman readers and new fans alike. The Golden Compass debuts as a New Line major motion picture starring Nicole Kidman in December 2007.

The Amber Spyglass, Deluxe 10th Anniversary Edition (His Dark Materials, Book 3)(Rough-cut)

Philip Pullman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

His Not So Subtle Bad Writing 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 5 people found this review helpful.

You'd think that after 10 years the publisher would have invested in a rewrite, lord knows that it would have taken that long to fix this beast.

I had heard all the hype about these books and this volume in particular being anti-Catholic, etc, so rather than listening to the "do not read" uber religious chatter, I read all 3 books.

Forget his agenda -- Phillip Pullman or whomever ghostwrote this book was a very lazy writer here, unlike in the earlier 2 volumes. I was ready to quit after the first third of the Spyglass book out of boredom but was curious to hear how everything resolved. He doesn't even follow his story telling rules which he expounded in his earlier volumes. Basically he lies to the reader by promising something he doesn't deliver on.

The big show was to be the death match b/w Lord Asriel and God,
tag teamed by Will "the Knife".

I think Pullman's sendup to Armageddon into thin air was his way of saying that since Judeo/Christianity is a human invention, he didn't have to have a big fight to kill it off, that he could let it feebly fade away, which he did. Almost like it wasn't worth writing any more about.

As I trudged through the last book, the worlds and characters ended up being made out of and as important as cardboard. Pullman would reiterate a lot of the same detail when describing the world(s) and it was totally amazing to me that Will knew which worlds to cut into ... especially given the infinite potential for connecting worlds.

Contrast this to Tolkein, who spend most of his life not only further detailing his worlds, but inventing the mythos, language and geography as to be believable.

Pullman's naming of the characters was particularly trite.
Lyra ("Liar, Liar", the harpie exclaimed).
Will ((free) will, the desire to accomplish a goal, such as using the knife)
Mary (archetypical female figure, 2nd Eve, Jesus' mother, tempter, a nun -- voice of the church and the now new way of thinking).
Lord Asriel (Israel, rising up)
Give me a break ....

The various soliloquys were pandering and while I enjoyed thinking about some of the ideas, it was so heavy handed that I just had to wryly smile and wonder how the author could live with his lack of discipline in this work.

The Mulefa world was god-awful boring and he could have covered the whole evolutionary piece in 1 chapter. Mary's existence there and elsewhere seemed only to deliver the summary of a form of ethics w/o a god-head and how god-lessness does not equate to moral-lessness.

There was a major logical inconsistency ... if there was no God or supernatural like beings, then how could the witches fly, how could the grey Purgatory exist, how could the Specters and harpies end up being? For as much as the author attempts to justify everything through science, he didn't even bother to apply the same treatment to his fantasy trappings. Goofy.

I would rather have had this broken up into 2 books and him invested more time to bring this home. The whole book reminds me of my 6 year old randomly and messily sketching out ream after ream of characters and worlds on scrap paper and just letting them lay all over the house. Of course a 6 year old has to clean up his messes, but Pullman somehow got away w/ not doing the same.

Free Choice is a cornerstone of Christianity and also in these books. My only regret was that I chose to read them when I could have invested time reading books about evolution, history of religion or atheism for that matter rather than this tortured attempt at writing.

For all you 5 star assigners (Pullman apologists), your zealous defenses sound as narrow minded as the alleged narrow thinking religious folks that you are condemning ... this 3rd volume is weak writing no matter how you slice it -- even with a dull yet not so subtle knife.

Read it for yourself if you've got free time to waste and form your own conclusion! (Just make sure you don't waste your money and instead borrow from the library : )

Lyra's Oxford

Philip Pullman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 90 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Attention all serious book collectors and fans of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. This undoubtedly beautiful package--cloth-bound in a classy red and adorned by numerous illustrations by master engraver and illustrator John Lawrence--is a must-purchase. A pint-sized pocket volume, Lyra's Oxford packages together a short story set in the same universe as his famous trilogy, a fold-out map of the alternate-reality city of Oxford, a short brochure for a cruise to The Levant aboard the S.S. Zenobia, and a postcard from the inventor of the amber spyglass, Mary Malone. Pullman, in his introduction, suggests that the peripheral items within "might be connected with the story, or they might not; they might be connected to stories that havent appeared yet. It's difficult to tell."
A very sumptuous and lovingly crafted but tantalizingly brief book , Lyra's Oxford begins when Lyra and Pantalaimon spot a witch's daemon called Ragi being pursued over the rooftops of Oxford by a frenzied pack of birds. The daemon heads straight for Lyra (the creature was given Lyras name as somebody who might help) and is given shelter. Together Lyra and Pan try to guide the daemon to the home of Sebastian Makepeacean alchemist living in a part of Oxford known as Jericho--but it is a journey fraught with more danger than they had at first anticipated. (Age 10 and over) --John McLay

The Science of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials

Mary Gribbin, John Gribbin

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Extra info for Pullman's "His Dark Materials" 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

For the ordinary person, this little book has pretty good coverage of the scientific basis for Pullman's trilogy. I am no expert, but from the info in the college courses I have taken with the Teaching Company, I think the writers have done well to condense so many items in a little space. It helps to understand that many of the ideas in Pullmans's fantasy have a bit of reality to them.

Editorial Review:

Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is renowned for its mystery and magic. What’s the truth behind it all? Is the golden compass actually based in science? How does the subtle knife cut through anything? Could there be a bomb like the one made with Lyra’s hair? How do the Gallivespians’ lodestone resonators really work? And, of course, what are the Dark Materials? Drawing on string theory and spacetime, quantum physics and chaos theory, award-winning science writers Mary and John Gribbin reveal the real science behind Philip Pullman’s bestselling fantasy trilogy in entertaining and crystal-clear prose.

From the Hardcover edition.