Review: His Dark Materials

HIS DARK MATERIALS

By Philip Pullman

Amazon Prices: 30 GBP (Hardcover)/ 60 USD (Hardcover Box Set)

His Dark Materials is a trilogy consisting of Northern Lights (which is known as The Golden Compass in America), The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

I first encountered this story in the hands of a classmate half a year ago. Of course, her copy was called 'Skyggernes Kniv', and it was only the middle third of the story in this book, but you get the point. Anyway, she mentioned that it´d be 'just the kind of book for me', so when I happened to be in Oxford on a vacation, anyway (the city of Oxford plays a rather important role in the story, and the author lives there), I picked up paperback versions of all three books.

After reading the whole story, I was so absolutely hooked on it that I had to get the omnibus version (the picture above). The final part, The Amber Spyglass, deserves a distinctive mention for being the third book, as far as I remember, ever to have made me cry.

But as much fun as it is telling anecdotes, it doesn´t get you any closer to deciding if this is worth reading, so let´s move on.

His Dark Materials is widely critiqued for functioning on many levels. The more basic of these gives the reader a story, which can be said to be good, or to be bad. Personally, I find it exciting, and occasionally very touching, but that is entirely up to your own opinion, so I can´t do anything else than telling you to read it and decide for yourself.

At its other levels, it becomes the reason I´ve chosen this for today´s review. It criticizes religion as well as some smaller aspects of society, and also throws in a few philosophic ideas. You may, or you may not, agree with everything that Pullman either writes or implies, but either way, it opens a few doors for theological debate – it might give you a few reasons to strengthen your case, or it might give you some valid reasoning to argue against.

I can understand why this might be some upsetting material for a die-hard Christian person to read, but I think that anyone who´d like the story behind it should, regardless of their own viewpoints, at least give it an attempt. There´s always the option of only reading the first layer of story. I imagine it´d be difficult, but given that you like the story, it´s worth it.

Perhaps I should add a quick reminder here: The books contains a lot of things that could be classified as sexual and violent content, but it´s not in any particularly gory, perverse or unreasonable way - whenever he´s being violent, Pullman knows exactly what it is he´s doing. It also contains strong opinions about a lot of things, but as I see it, there´s no reason at all to try to protect yourself from points of view. They´re a good thing, you know, even if they´re different from your own.

Notably, these books makes use of the Multiverse theory. I don´t think that hurts them at all.

THE CONCLUSION:

Are you the target audience for His Dark Materials?

You might very well be – His Dark Materials has several target audiences. If your way of life includes the very sympathetic idea of always seeing the situation from others' points of view, this book might not open your eyes any further, but quite likely it´ll be nice to find something to agree with. If you simply like good stories, this is an overflowing universe of complex characters to find them in. If you simply want to sit in your soft chair in front of the fireplace with a brick-sized novel to read, this will keep the table next to the aforementioned chair occupied for quite a while.

What are, respectively, the best and worst parts of His Dark Materials?

I can´t tell you what the best part will be for you, but I´m fairly certain that the worst part will either be how little time we get to spend with some of the most mysterious characters, or alternately, the fact that you might disagree with the author´s pretty definite Atheistic points of view.

I don´t, though, which I guess is just my luck.

For me specifically, was His Dark Materials worth buying?

For a whole 30 GBP, it is a bit much, but to anyone who wants this for the story rather than just to have a version of the book that´s going to last longer, I can recommend getting the paperback versions instead – there are countless versions of this book, so it shouldn´t be hard to find any.

It is, however, to be mentioned that the omnibus version is currently at sale for 18 GBP on the British version of Amazon, and the boxset is at sale for 38 USD on the American – at those rates, I think I would´ve bought one of them if I didn´t already have two versions of it. That said, these have been released incredibly often, and you should easily be able to find a version of it at whatever price suits you.