Book Worm

‘The Golden Compass’ was written by Phillip Pullman – a graduate from Oxford who has written many great works in his time (‘Shadow in the North’, ‘The Tiger in the Well’). This is the first book in a fantasy series that has been dubbed as the next best thing since ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’. While others have been offended at the content of the book and have encouraged parents to keep their children from it.

Lyra Belacqua, a street-savvy and sassy little girl, takes the lead role. Raised and haphazardly educated by Oxford scholars, she has until now led a largely carefree and unconfined life. When her uncle, Lord Asriel, returns to Oxford from exploring in the North, he brings back word of strange events, mysterious Dust, and a photograph showing a city in the Aurora Borealis. His reports pique Lyra’s insatiable curiosity and set in motion the wheels of her fate.

Children begin to go missing, stolen by mysterious unseen “Gobblers,” and Lyra herself is taken away from Oxford to live with the attractive but cunning Mrs. Coulter. When Lyra and her daemon, Pantalaimon, discover that their new caretaker is herself behind the abductions of the missing children, they escape to the safety of the water-faring folk, the gyptians.

With them, Lyra and Pantalaimon will journey to the far North in an effort to rescue the stolen children and, if possible, exact vengeance. What they will find in the frozen North are some things horrifying, some achingly beautiful, and some truly awesome. Lyra’s journey becomes a life and death struggle that will end in her deciding whether or not to take the role Destiny has decreed for her.

While the language has been made easy reading for children the message behind it is far more in depth. The theme of the book is that absolute power corrupts absolutely – and in this book that absolute power is the ‘Church’. Pullman makes it clear that he does not trust any religion. He believes that religion is something that cannot be proved with science therefore it is not real. That religion is something that will suffocate the life out of you until there is no free will.

Pullman has stated that in these books he trying to teach children “to kill God” and that he wishes to use the books to “undermine the Christian religion”. There is no doubt that this new fantasy series will stir up much more debate in the coming future.