A note to parents: The world that Pullman conjurs is a bit darker than Harry Potter's. There is more violence and some very frightening situations. I'd say 11 and up would be a good age for these books.


Going, going, gone   September 7, 2005
 623 out of 835 found this review helpful

I'd like to offer a bit of dissent from all the raves concerning the Dark Materials trilogy.

Let's begin at the beginning. *The Golden Compass* is a work of true genius, sparkling with inventiveness and carrying the reader on through its essentially absurd plot (do you *really* believe that any eleven-year-old girl, no matter how precocious, could accomplish all those things?) with fine panache and an unflagging sense of wonder. Don't stop to think, just sit back and enjoy the ride. Lyra, the girl from the parallel universe, is out to save her father from the captivity of armored polar bears and at the same time free her friends from the diabolical experiments of the fiendish Mrs. Coulter. What could be better?

Book Two, *The Subtle Knife*, jars us a bit by switching the viewpoint to our own world, where Will, a young lad about Lyra's age, also sets out on a quest to find his lost father. Will is another full-fledged superkid, able to accomplish tasks that would daunt even Odysseus as he meets Lyra, interacts with all manner of bizarre beings and hops from world to world with tireless stamina.

Alas, Will is never quite as convincing as Lyra, perhaps because he's so thoroughly grounded in our own mundane world, perhaps because his beyond-adult courage, wisdom, endurance and innate nobility are so utterly over-the-top (far eclipsing even Lyra's astonishing talents) that they begin to test the boundaries of our suspension of disbelief. Even James Bond was never this resourceful, and certainly never so remarkably articulate. There are some things that just don't wash, even in a fantasy. But all the same, there's action aplenty, and if you're not in too critical a frame of mind, *The Subtle Knife* makes for an enjoyable read.

But by Book Three, *The Amber Spyglass*, Pullman's characters and storylines begin to explode in all directions, leaving us to wonder just which of the many players we're supposed to be rooting for -- and why. Multiple plotlines are fine, if they're kept within reason, but when the device is overdone, the reader becomes like a passenger on a fast-moving train, trying to look at all the passing landmarks but unable to concentrate on any of them long enough to really appreciate them. Maybe it's simple authorial zeal; but then again, maybe it's to keep the reader from looking closely enough to spot the ever-multiplying logical inconsistencies.

Very quickly, the author's astonishing inventiveness begins to betray him as new concepts, magical gadgetry and otherworldly beings are piled on in such relentless layers that we very quickly reach the saturation point at which anything is possible and therefore nothing can any longer be surprising. Worse, many of them seem to have been invented as mere devices for hauling the characters in and out of the latest alarming predicament. Does the Intention Craft, to name just one, really have any purpose in the storyline other than to give Mrs. Coulter a way to escape from Lord Asriel's fortress?

But most unforgivable of all, *The Amber Spyglass* is less of a novel than a thinly-fictionalized religious -- or should I say anti-religious? -- screed disguised as a fantasy novel. For Lord Asriel's intention is nothing less than to slay God himself and leave the multiverse the exclusive property of its wise inhabitants. This is somewhat complicated by the fact that God turns out to be nothing more than a drooling, withered, senile angel who gratefully evaporates when the two juvenile protagonists release him from his crystal life-support coffin, but Lord Asriel is undaunted. After all, there's still God's Regent to contend with, a lustful angel with a name ("Metatron") that would hardly be out of place on a Japanese giant robot.

Of course with no God, there's always the thorny question of life after death, but militant atheist Pullman has an answer to that one, too. There is neither Heaven nor Hell, but there is a sort of Homeric underground afterlife where the powerless, whispering shades of the dead go to mutter to each other while harpies mock them for their earthly shortcomings.

Not too appealing, you say? Will and Lyra agree, and after the usual superhuman efforts, they descend into Hades and free the dead souls. But being dead, after all, where can the shades go? Why, to oblivion, of course! They now have the option of choosing utter dissolution over an eternity of ghostly mediocrity, and just so we don't get the mistaken impression that this isn't really much of a choice, Pullman shows us that the dead are just deliriously happy to die for the second time, this time for keeps.

I single this oddity out as an example of the author's relentless atheistic digs not because it's unique but because it's simply one of so very many from which to choose. Personally, I have no problem with atheists, but I can't abide *strident* atheists any more than I can abide strident religious fanatics, and *The Amber Spyglass* is one long atheist tract masquerading as a fantasy novel. Again, I emphasize that both atheists and atheist novels per se are fine with me, but when the ideology starts to overwhelm the storyline, it's time to bail out. Pullman's loathing of religion -- particularly Christianity, *most* particularly Roman Catholicism -- drips from every page, until even the most militant apostate is ready to scream "enough!"

Whatever the characters are fighting *for* in this great battle against the All-not-so-Mighty, isn't entirely clear, since the multiverse still seems to be an awfully bleak and unappealing place after the Dust finally settles. It certainly isn't Love, because none of the couples in the trilogy -- be they Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter, the homosexual angels (yes) Baruch and Balthamos, or Lyra and Will themselves -- are allowed to come to a non-tragic end after their travails. In fact, poor Will and Lyra are cheated out of their hard-earned right to each other by a plot device so heavy-handedly contrived and artificial that we can only believe that the author was determined that there should be nothing remotely resembling anything as trite as a Happy Ending tainting the lunar landscape of his saga, no matter the cost to the readers' credibility. The "tragic" ending to *The Amber Spyglass* isn't so much tear-jerky as simply jerky.

The *His Dark Materials* trilogy certainly is not, as the cover blurbs would have it, a new and formidable competitor to *Lord of the Rings*. It is, in fact, a kind of antimatter version of C.S. Lewis' heavy-handedly preachy Narnia books, but sadly lacking any trace of Lewis' charm. Fanatical Pullman fans will (and do) loudly proclaim that only "fundamentalist Christians" (aka "religious bigots") could possibly be disappointed with *The Amber Spyglass*, but in fact it's more like disappointment in a trilogy that begins so promisingly only to deteriorate into a rambling, unfocused, illogical rant in what should have been the climactic volume.

My recommendation: buy *The Golden Compass*, and enjoy it without hesitation. If you feel that you absolutely *have* to see more of what's going on in Philip Pullman's sad multiverse, go ahead and get *The Subtle Knife*, too. But unless you have an unslakable thirst for obsessive antireligious tracts wrapped up in grimly contrived fantasy trappings that fairly groan at their stretching seams (and I know there are many people out there who do), don't bother with *The Amber Spyglass*.

Well, if you *really* want to read it, I have a copy I'm willing to let go. Cheap.


A grand metaphysical journey with convincing characters and details   September 6, 2006
 407 out of 554 found this review helpful

I just finished reading this grand trilogy to my kids, aged 8, 10, and 12. My wife ended up sitting in on almost the entire series, and all of us were riveted from Oxford to the World of the Dead and back again. These books are incredibly ambitious: they set out to stitch together a religio-political history of the multiverse with deep, informed reference to physics, religious history, adolescent psychology, Nietzschean heroism, etc. etc. etc. The result, as I read it, is one of the most compelling indictments of church and state ever written for a broad audience. Author Philip Pullman concludes, without didactic hamfistedness, that the first purpose of churches and governments is self-perpetuation through maintaining the ignorance of their adherents and citizens. The greatest wisdom and joy, in Pullman's worlds, comes of full, mortal, bodily engagement with the physical world per se: with domestic comforts, food, sex, art, aesthetic involvement, work well done, craft, cleverness, etc. The well-earned consciousness of a human adult, earned through Blakean experience, is the crowning moment of all creation. Antithetical to this wisdom and consciousness is dogmatic narowness, asceticism, monasticism, self-denial, narrowness of experience.

That this idea is dramatized through the adventure stories of children is remarkable. One could do worse than to say that the weakness of fictional biography is its narrowness, its dependence on the particular, the local, the kind of detail that is very difficult to universalize or even generalize. And the weakness of allegory is its didactic tendency, its broad-stroke enmity to personal meaningfulness except in the most abstract terms. What Pullman has done is to weave a sharp, poignantly-rendered, intimate set of psychological dramas into grand, almost scriptural allegory. As though Charles Dickens were setting Tiny Tim against the backdrop of the Old Testament. In this way, which should not be attempted by lesser writers, the touchingly naive and personal actions of a 12-year-old girl take on universal importance. Every minor petulance, every petty preference, every whim shakes creation. In this setting, in which cataclysm feels immanent and everything hangs in pre-apocalyptic balance, our little heroin's encounter with God himself feels simply a natural step in the narrative. How Pullman pulls this off, I don't know. By all rights this should be embarrassing, overblown stuff, but it isn't. It is emotionally raw, heartbreaking, and lovely. Just like life.

I highly recommend these books for children with good vocabulary and their fixed-Daemon authority figures.


Intelligent, challenging Children's literature   July 11, 2002
 267 out of 394 found this review helpful

These books are what the very best of Children's literature does. They are entertaining and fanciful, yet they simultaneously challenge and educate both the mind and heart. Like hot soup when you are sick, they are "Good and Good for You."

"His Dark Materials" are a great counter-point to the mindless fun of Harry Potter and friends. Pullman's writing is educated and insightful, his characters are real and multi-faceted. The series is packed with adventure, ideas, beliefs, fantasy, talking armored bears, Texas Balloonists, animals, gypsies, and just about everything else. The tone of the series is serious, and as dark as the name implies.

"Chronicles of Narnia;" "Prydain Chronicles;" "The Hobbit;" "Harry Potter;" "The Time Quartet;" "Wind in the Willows;" and now..."His Dark Materials." Philip Pullman, welcome to the club.


His Dark Purposes   May 1, 2006
 238 out of 372 found this review helpful

Fascinating book inappropriately marketed to children.

Pro:
Philip Pullman shows glimmers of brilliance as a writer. His characters are engaging, his worlds are vivid, his prose is delightful at times, and he occasionally produces lush and beautifully drawn descriptive paragraphs. His "science" is goofy but inventive, and without it his story couldn't work. He also demonstrates a good understanding of what appeals to an adolescent reader. I enjoyed the first volume, though my interest plateaued in the second volume and dropped like a stone in the third.

Con:
Philip Pullman is one of a growing group of authors who market their own controversial adult ideas and themes as juvenile fiction/fantasy. While I affirm his right to have, and to express his view of the world, Mr. Pullman's method of garnering an uncritical and captive audience for his message is despicable. Pullman is a skillful and sometimes powerful writer who understands his audience well; sadly he uses that skill and knowledge to entice, seduce, and manipulate the immature reader.

Here is a summary of how the Pullman method works:

The Golden Compass is a compelling action adventure of a young, smart, defiant, and spirited pre-adolescent (12-year old) girl. There are dark characters, ugly episodes and wicked happenings in this volume, but spunky Lyra is up to the challenge. And, she has cool friends (noble gypsies and armored bears, among others) to help her.

In The Subtle Knife we meet Lyra's male counterpart Will. By the end of this also dark and rather convoluted part of the story we like Will a lot, too. And we hate the bad guys, although sometimes it's hard to tell just who the bad guys are. Will finds himself possessing a knife that only he can use; a knife that allows him to open windows into other, sometimes parallel, worlds.

Now that Mr. Pullman has set his stage (and the child has a significant investment in the story), he force-feeds the unsuspecting reader his world view in The Amber Spyglass. Yes, there is some foreshadowing of what's coming in the first volumes, but until we get to the third volume we keep hoping that these are literary red herrings thrown in just to keep us off balance. Alas, no such luck.

In short order Mr. Pullman informs us that:

- The God of Judaism and Christianity is a fake, a liar, a dictatorial despot, a draconian authoritarian intent on making everybody miserable. Mr. Pullman's definition of "god, the Creator, the Lord, Yahweh, El, Adonai, the King, the Father the Almighty" is that he is the source of everything that's wrong with the world.
- The church is run by self-serving, power-hungry dupes and mercenaries who ensure God's tyranny is carried out. Everyone else of faith is a discounted as a closed-minded simpleton who wouldn't know what to do without being told.
- The health of this world and all of Pullman's "billions and billions" of other worlds is dependent on invisible, sentient dust, reminiscent of the Mitichlorians behind The Force of Star Wars lore. This dust is the product of man's gaining wisdom, a "natural" process that Pullman places in direct opposition to man's knowledge of God.
- The "good guys" in this world are the secular naturalists, the amoral, the animals, the witches, and the rebellious angels who have set out to help overthrow and destroy God, and
- Elite, self-actualized young men and women of character (like the reader, of course) possess the power to destroy God, and should destroy God because, after all, it's the right thing to do. With the assurance of Lyra's and Will's feelings that if we do destroy God then all will be well with the world and we will be happy.

Harry Potter, meet Bertrand Russell and Ayn Rand. And don't forget Jean Genet, for flavor.

Along the way Pullman gives lectures on:

- The moral relativism of infanticide (it's bad to kill children if you are aligned with God, but its O.K. to kill children when necessary to further a "good" cause (i.e. deposing God, or whatever)),
- The nature of homosexuality (though angels are nonphysical spirit beings that doesn't prevent them from being, and stereotypically behaving like, homosexuals), and
- The pervasiveness of the supernatural (pretty much all of us have some kind of "spirit being/guide" counterpart that can help us do magical things, assuming we are just "special" enough, by virtue of birth and fate, to tap into this other self)
In other words, Pullman uses the first two books to build a platform from which to deliver his elitist-humanist/post-modern/New Age message.

There are several passages in the volumes when Lyra or Will actually ask a tough question (What happens when we die? Where do we go? Why are we here?). To these questions a more mature, more worldly adult character always sagely answers: "it's not time for you to know that now." Pullman glosses over his answers to these questions as he finishes his story. As it turns out, Mr. Pullman subscribes to the philosophy of despair: we have no purpose other than to do what we think best, and when we die we're just dead. End of story. Which is fine from Pullman's perspective because with God in power Mr. Pullman's future is likely to be, well . . . . . Hell.

Spoiler Warning (though if you are a parent you will definitely want to know this): The long-anticipated climax of this 1,200-page book never materializes. In the end, it turns out that destroying God isn't such a big thing after all, and certainly doesn't solve all of the worlds' problems. Only when God is gone does Pullman come clean that the real reason the worlds are dying is because of what men have done to the universe, and now the children will have to devote their lives to fixing the mess. In this unexpected extension of the story, Pullman now has our two (now newly adolescent) heroes take a big step in repairing the world by falling in love, immediately followed by a carefree afternoon of sensual intimacy. Pullman omits a clinical account of what happens that afternoon, but whatever it is, it is magic: suddenly the relentless decay in the worlds is halted. Does this make any sense? No. But it helps to tie off a major loose end in the story, and provides Pullman a way to repeat an earlier theme to his young readers: that without God we are free to engage in sex without any restraint or guilt. Because with the death of God we are now free to be our own God. We can define our own morality, or lack of it, constrained only by what an open-minded society sets as limits in the new Republic of Heaven.

Once finished with the books I went online; perhaps I was reading too much into this children's book. I wasn't surprised by what I learned.

Mr. Pullman:

- Is a self-described atheist.

- Is listed as a member of the British Humanist Association (the goal of which is "an end to the privileged position of religion in law, education, broadcasting and wherever else it occurs")

- Is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society (The society campaigns for: 1) the disestablishment of the Church of England, 2) the withdrawal of state subsidies to religious schools, 3) the end of tax exemptions for churches, 4) the abolition of the blasphemy law, 5) an end to the public funding of chaplains in prisons, hospitals and the armed services)

Is His Dark Materials simply the anti-Narnia tome that Pullman says he set out to write? Perhaps. C. S. Lewis' Narnia stories are allegories of good and evil, principles and the lack of them, the nature of man and the nature of God, love, forgiveness, sacrifice, pride and humility. Pullman offers nothing more than shades of evil, ego, and seduction; God is dead, and man has no need for forgiveness, for Pullman's superman is intrinsically good and there is nothing to forgive. On the other hand, one could argue Pullman simply has a vendetta against God in general and against the Church of England in particular, and uses a book marketed at children to further his goal of revenge.

In interviews, Mr. Pullman has claimed neither he nor his book is anti-religious. This is as an odd and dishonest position to take; akin to as if Lewis had said his Chronicles of Narnia has nothing to do with Christianity. True, Pullman is careful not to say anything about Allah in his primer on atheism, but one suspects that this Englishman's reason for the omission has somewhat more to do with cowardice and less to do with tolerance. Pullman assumes that in a politically correct publishing world he can get away with being anti-Semitic and anti-Christian. Leaving one to wonder: if a public speaker boldly and loudly teaches that the Judeo-Christian faith is responsible for all that is wrong and hurtful and evil in the world, and that the only way to solve the problem is to destroy what it stands for (and destroy most of the believers in the process), what more is necessary to classify the ranting as hate speech? If the speaker substituted any other group (Muslims, homosexuals, persons of color) in the sentence above, would society be so tolerant?

His Dark Materials is unabashed humanist propaganda written to delight a child's mind. But just as devious is the way the author chooses to misrepresent faith. Mr. Pullman uses the traditional images, phrases, words, and symbols of the Jewish and Christian faiths in his book, but infuses his own meanings into them to twist them into serving his purpose. He trusts that his target audience doesn't know enough to spot his deceptions, or is insecure enough to accept his definitions as plausible. Further, he makes several outrageous and false claims in the process; at one point Pullman casually purports Calvin to be an advocate for child killing, as if there were some documented and widely recognized historical basis for his comment. Just speculation on my part, but perhaps Mr. Pullman does these things and says these things because he assumes few will ever call him on them. And that if he tells his lies enough times in enough ways, the populace he so despises will eventually repeat his mantra as truth.

While I cannot respect Mr. Pullman's condemnation of those who are aware of an authority higher than themselves, I could advocate a discussion of his thoughts on the subject if I believed he actually understood what he was talking about. Unfortunately, his own stunted and malignant grasp of the world view he opposes appears to have atrophied at about the age of his target audience. An audience better served listening to another voice.