REVIEW: Philip Pullman's HIS DARK MATERIALS trilogy

I think a capsule review of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy of books would be the following analogy: His Dark Materials is to the Harry Potter series as the Lord of the Rings is to Star Wars series. In other words, HDM are critically successful, artistic, mature, dark and almost overwhelmingly complex and sophisticated, like LOTR. Star Wars and Harry Potter are fantastically commercially successful but more lightly regarded by critics and sometimes derided as "pulp."

The trilogy consists of the books The Golden Compass (soon to be a major motion picture to be released in 2007!), The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. The main character is Lyra Belacqua, a 11-year old orpan who lives in Jordan College, in a world similar to ours except that all human beings possess daemons, which are individual attached adjunct personalities in the form of animals. Pre-adult humans have daemons which can take any animal form, adult humans have daemons which have fixed form. In Lyra's world, theology, science and magic are conflated and combined in intriguing and significant ways. The first book basically takes place in Lyra's world, the second in our modern world, and the third book in both worlds, among several others.

I received the books as a gift for my birthday (thank you Amazon.com wishlist!) and even though I was away at a conference the following week I brought them with me and finished the third book just as my plane landed at LAX.

I don't want to discuss too much about the plot, but to suffice it to say that it involves a prophecy involving Lyra benig either the destruction or the saviour of the world(s). The writing is decidedly more sophisticated than J.K. Rowling's although the pacing and plotting is not as proficient as the creator of Hogwarts School of Magic.

GRADE: A (The Golden Compass)
GRADE: A- (The Subtle Knife)
GRADE: B (The Amber Spyglass)