Synopsis
Accompanied by her daemon, Lyra Belacqua sets out to prevent her best friend and other kidnapped children from becoming the subject of gruesome experiments in the Far North.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1996-04-01 | | Series: | His Dark Materials |
| Size | | Length: | 399 pages | | Height: | 8.8 in | | Width: | 5.8 in | | Thickness: | 1.5 in | | Weight: | 20.8 oz |
Publisher's Note
In a landmark epic of fantasy and storytelling, Philip Pullman invites readers into a world as convincing and thoroughly realized as Narnia, Earthsea, or Redwall. Here lives an orphaned ward named Lyra Belacqua, whose carefree life among the scholars at Oxford's Jordan College is shattered by the arrival of two powerful visitors. First, her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, appears with evidence of mystery and danger in the far North, including photographs of a mysterious celestial phenomenon called Dust and the dim outline of a city suspended in the Aurora Borealis that he suspects is part of an alternate universe. He leaves Lyra in the care of Mrs. Coulter, an enigmatic scholar and explorer who offers to give Lyra the attention her uncle has long refused her. In this multilayered narrative, however, nothing is as it seems. Lyra sets out for the top of the world in search of her kidnapped playmate, Roger, bearing a rare truth-telling instrument, the compass of the title. All around her children are disappearing--victims of so-called "Gobblers"--and being used as subjects in terrible experiments that separate humans from their daemons, creatures that reflect each person's inner being. And somehow, both Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter are involved.
Pullman introduces readers to a world as convincing and thoroughly realized as Narnia, Earthsea, of Redwall, wherein lives a half-wild, half-civilized girl named Lyra Belacqua, whose carefree life among the scholars of Jordan College is about the shattered by the arrival of two powerful visitors.
Industry Reviews
"It's a rich combination of high fantasy, high drama, and intense emotion. Philip Pullman's creation is a world thoroughly realized, completely convincing. Best yet, this volume promises to be the beginning of an ongoing major literary effort. Readers can only wait impatiently."
Publisher's Catalog - Lloyd Alexander
"War, politics, magic, science, individual lives and cosmic destinies are all here. They are not flung together, they are shaped and assembled into a narrative of tremendous pace by a man with a generous, precise intelligence....His prose has texture and flexibility, like excellent fabric. And he gives us so much. Suspense, of course, but such degrees of pleasure, excitement...and grief. And such joy--the joy of thinking, of testing your senses and feelings, of knowing your imagination is entering worlds not dreamed of in the usual philosophies."
New York Times Book Review - Margo Jefferson
"One of life's pleasures is the experience of plodding through the first few pages of a book and then finding oneself sucked in, flipping the pages to discover what happens next. THE GOLDEN COMPASS is long, but is told simply and draws us on, as one crisis blossoms out of another."
New York Times Book Review - Jane Langton (05/19/1996)
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