I haven’t written any book posts in the past few weeks out of time constraints, which hasn’t kept me from staying on track for my 52 books in 52 weeks challenge. I have updated my progress today with the three books I read over the past 21 days, being Bill Willingham’s Fables: Animal Farm, Jeffrey Brown’s Unlikely, and this one, Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass.

When my son ploughed through the entire Spiderwick Chronicles during the fall of 2007, I decided that giving him the entire His Dark Materials trilogy for Christmas would be a great idea. Of course, his interest (and mine, admittedly) had been piqued with the advertisements for the Golden Compass movie, but knowing full well it wouldn’t be released in English in my town and we’d have to wait for the DVD release before seeing it, I figured he could go the other route and read the book before seeing the movie.

He simply adored The Golden Compass. He’d keep me updated daily on Lyra’s progress, on her tribulations with Mrs. Coulter, her meeting with the gyptians, her travels up North, the awesomeness of Iorek Byrnison, and, of course, her improvement in reading the alethiometer. His imagination had not been captivated like this with the Spiderwick books, and I therefore took it upon myself to read The Golden Compass once he was done with it.

What I discovered was a surprisingly intricate fantasy-like universe, profound and layered, written in a perfectly dynamic, colourful, and paced style which doesn’t go too easy on the audience the novel is targeted for, while remaining gratifyingly escapist for adults. In fact, I enjoyed a great deal the modern themes Pullman was trying to convey through the people, politics, and institutions of his Earth, as numerous parallels with our (not-so-different) world were fascinatingly drawn.

My son’s started on The Subtle Knife, and I believe I will be next in line.

Book: The Golden Compass

Author: Philip Pullman

Publisher: Knopf

Next: Inconegro