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

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

 by Philip Pullman
(based on 1084 customer reviews)

His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass) (Paperback)
Author: Philip Pullman
Publisher: Laurel Leaf


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Most useful review as voted by customers:
700 out of 843 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 10/27/01


The Golden Compass; A great follow up to Harry Potter.

After finishing the 4th Harry Potter book I moped around for a few days lamenting the fact that the next installment isn't due for publication for quite some time. Luckily, a friend of mine suggested the Dark Materials series by Phillip Pullman. Five pages in to The Golden Compass I was hooked. With a "Potter like" fervor I ripped through the first book in two very long nights. After which I was useless at work, but just as satisfied as when I first discovered the work of J.K. Rowlings. A great read!

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.

402 out of 523 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 9/6/06


A grand metaphysical journey with convincing characters and details

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.

263 out of 363 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 7/12/02


Intelligent, challenging Children's literature

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.

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