Year of Epic Fantasy Reading 2017: Day 29 (The Golden Compass)

Title: The Golden Compass
Author: Philip Pullman
Themes: Moral development
Quotes: "And though she understood nothing, she was intrigued and delighted by the complexity and the detail."
Reading/Listening Time: 13 hrs and 7 mins (but I listened to it on 1.5x speed because it was a little boring)

Review:

For a long time I didn't want to read this book because I'd read some articles by the author and it really seemed like we didn't seem eye to eye on a couple of subjects, but that really didn't become an issue in this book. I mean, I can see how this can vaguely be construed as a reconstruction/criticism of The Chronicles of Narnia (Lyra vs Lucy, beauty in the natural world vs beauty in the "other" world) but, in this particular book, God is just a curse word. The author is dealing with some very specific religious dogma, and how dangerous it can be when it's taken to extremes.

It's about a girl named Lyra who grows up at a college in England with a bunch of old professors and her "Uncle" who's kind of a douche bag. There's some intrigue because her uncle is involved in this research and they made a discovery about wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey, and also original sin...and then everyone from the college to the church tries to kill him...

SPOILER ALERT Lyra saves him from being assassinated and he doesn't even friggin care. Like WTH ASSriel?! END SPOILER

My biggest problem with this book was the characters. It was really hard to be invested in them when the adults are friggin cardboard and Lyra goes from like a 7 year old kid mentality to being, like, 11...to suddenly having the reasoning skills of an adult depending on what the writer wants from her at that moment.

The magic system was a little better: everything vaguely magical is described like it's a natural extension of reality, which was actually pretty cool. Unfortunately, it also kinda makes it feel like it exists mostly for aesthetics. I suppose that can be the point: that things just are and they don't have to have to serve a greater purpose, but it didn't make them particularly memorable for me.


Rating 2/5 Stars.