Journey into the Northern Lights (Northern Lights - Philip Pullman)

Member Name: lady_natalie

Product:	Northern Lights - Philip Pullman
Date:	28/09/09 (90 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great cast, rich plot and settings

Disadvantages: none!

Northern lights is the book that the film The Golden Compass was based on. It is by Phillip Pullman and was published in 1995.

Lyra Belacqua lives in Oxford in a parallel universe to our own. It is alike ours in a lot of way but there are some small and a few huge differences. The main one is that every person in Lyra's world has a daemon, an animal which is usual of the opposite sex of its human of which it is inseparable. One day Lyra and her demon Pan go to hide in the scholars retiring room in Jordon College in Oxford. On this day her Uncle Asriel is going to talk to he scholars, and she sees one of them planning to poison him. She tells him at the soonest possible opportunity, and gets to watch his presentation. Asriel shows the scholars the head of a traveller named Stanislaus Grummen, and tells them about 'dust' which he intends to go and study. Lyra wants to go with her uncle and travel to the far north, but she is told to wait. In the mean time she is sent to live with a beautiful woman named Mrs Coulter which children all over England are disappearing without a trace, said to be taken by the 'Gobblers'. One of Lyra's friends, Roger, a kitchen boy goes missing too. So Lyra and Pan run away from Mrs Coulter to find the Gyptians, the people living on barges on the river of England, and they all decide to head to the north too, so they can discover what the Gobblers really are, and to take back all the children that have gone missing.

Northern Lights is the first book in the 'Dark Materials' trilogy, and is really quite different from the later two. This book focuses on the world that Lyra lives in and only hints at the suggestion that other worlds may exist. She is a 12 year old girl, apparently an orphan, living in one of Oxfords Colleges and scarping by with whatever education the scholars have time to give her. She spends most of her time playing with the gyptian children and children of the staff at Oxford, especially Roger. Her life changes completely when Roger is taken and the Gobblers appear. She knows that it is her duty to find Roger and all the other children.

This book is split into 3 main parts, Lyras life in Oxford, her time spent travelling with the Gyptians, and then her time when she gets to Svalbard and on her way to Bolvanger, the holding place of the children and their daemons. I love all three parts of the book, and it kind of gets exciting as he scenery changes, it helps you feel what it would really be like travelling to such different places, feeling the world become an entirely different place. So that is really what this book focuses on, Lyra deciding what to do and then doing it. It also talks about dust, which is much more important in the other books. Lyra hears the adults talking about it a lot, and they have been studying technology that shows the 'dust' around people, and how there is a lot less around children. Lyra becomes very intereted in this and it shapes the other books deeply.

I think the best thing about this particular book is the characters. Mrs Coulter you feel is truly evil, whilst she may not look it you can feel how deep down she is terribly rotten, and i think she is a great enemy for a 12 year old girl to have. Iorek Byrnison is an armoured bear and exiled prince from his home on Svalbard who Lyra hires as a sort of mercenary. Lee Scoresby is Ioreks friend and helps Lyra and the Gyptians travel with the help of his hot air balloon. There is also talk of witches.

With so much going on this is a great children's book, although it is not beyond the realm of adult readers either. It's exciting, the characters are fantastic and i love how everyone has a daemon. On top of that there is a great plot with darker undertones. In Lyras world the church has a lot more power, and the Gobblers, or General Oblation Board, as they are rightfully called, work for the church. A lot more of that is explained in the later books, but a lot is set up in this one. Although this is the first of a trilogy i think it can also be read on its own as the story is very different from the other two, and in that way, quite separate from them both.

Summary: great book for children and adults