His Dark Materials 3-Book Paperback Boxed Set: The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass

One of the most famous and beloved fantasy book trilogies you can think of. One that has been tried to adapt into a movie, but it failed, as some things (okay, most things!) are probably best left in book form. It’s so epic, I can only compare it to Harry Potter. If you haven’t read it yet, let me see if I can remedy that! ★★★★★ Endless number of stars His Dark Materials is a sweeping epic that tells of a story bigger than you can imagine, but it’s also a story told through the smallest characters – a story of a world, the fate of which lies in the hands of children. In a way, it’s all about the fight between good and evil, wisdom and darkness, but not in your usual fantasy sense. This is more philosophical than you might have expected it to be, but it’s also so imaginative, so full of adventure and unbelievable details, that you’ll never get bogged down with any of the philosophy. It’s a series that you can eat through a week – no matter how long the books actually are. You won’t sleep, if you have to. Reason #1. Don’t You Just Wish Your Cat Was Your Daemon?? Daemons are talking animals that are… curiously, they’re part of you. They’re kind of your spirit animal, which also makes up part of your soul. It’s incredibly interesting, cute, and it goes so well with the story! You can talk to it, it will help you and defend you, and even if you’re utterly and completely alone, it will be your companion. It’s likely that by the end of the series, you will find yourself trying to figure out what your daemon would look like. Or maybe even does look like. (more on why I say that – in the actual book!) Reason #2. There Are Wonders And Mysteries Obviously, it wouldn’t be cool if I just gave it away to you, now would it. But let me just tell you that there are worlds to explore. That there are reasons the entire world is falling, and you need to find them out. And the reasons are all pretty grand as well. It’s not your typical overused YA tropes either, for example – oh, this or that super power has just decided to thwart the main character and their family, and you need a special snowflake to fix it. No, it’s far better than that! That said, the main character (who is a little girl) IS special, and she’s IS key to the saving of the world, but she’s no special snowflake. We’re getting to that in the next point. Reason #3. The Characters Have Flaws, They’re Not Perfect Having imperfect characters is great! Especially so, because it prevents the aforementioned ‘special snowflake’ syndrome. The main female character, Lyra, is as flawed as can be – she lies, she’s not loyal, she’s subject to other people’s manipulation. She is also ridiculously dramatic, and it’s maintained throughout the entire series in the way she talks (I specifically loved that!). The main male character Will is also a great character. He’s strong willed and he’s trustable, but he can also be ruthless, hard and cold. Both of them symbolize many things, but typical special snowflakes they are not. As for symbolizing? We get to point 4… Reason #4. The Symbolism This story has layers upon layers of symbolism, mostly to do with mythologies, or namely – Christian mythologies, exposing them quite ruthlessly at times. This is magical and super interesting, merging religious symbolism with scientific fantasy (is that.. a thing, scientific fantasy..?), and weaving together a magical build of the world, of the universe. I will not tell you what the main characters (and many others) symbolize, because that would take away from your pleasure of discovering it yourself. However, if you are religious (not only Christian, basically, any religion that is based on a single deity) – be warned, as this book might seem controversial to you. It’s not kind to organized religion. You need an open mind to read it. If you are religious, and still really want to read it (which you should!), I suggest remembering that this is just fiction and it’s an invented world. Reason #5. The Feels This series ends with a bad case of the feels. As bad as it gets. But it’s also the kind of feels you want in a book! Basically, the kind of feels we all read books for. But please, prepare napkins.

I wasn't going to post a review of `His Dark Materials' (HDM) because there are so many already. This was my second reading of HDM and I liked even more the second time. But after reading some of the positive and negative reviews I felt as if I could add something to the discussion on three issues and add some comments of my own on Pullman's apparent themes. Two of these issues are, in my opinion, trivial and the third might be, but it is interesting nonetheless. If you look on Amazon or blogs or other book review sites you will see both positive and negative comparisons of HDM to `Lord of the Rings' (LOR). This is one of the trivial issues: HDM has no relationship whatsoever to LOR other than both are long books broken into three parts and are the basis for some pretty good movies. The second of these trivial issues are the positive and negative comparisons to the `Harry Potter' series (HP). The HP series are mostly for and about children and are about magic as in `Hocus Pocus' magic. HDM is about children but I would hesitate to say that Pullman wrote it for children. Pullman in interviews has said that he dislikes the label of `children's literature' as it implies `not for adults.' The themes in HDM are very adult, but I suspect that an intelligent young adult would respond to them and the adventure aspects of HDM would appeal to most younger readers as well. More over HDM is not about magic at all; it is science fiction (a genre Pullman also dislikes) in the best sense. The so-called `magic' is merely what someone might call the physics of alternate Universes. The last issue, and it may or may not be trivial, is the objection to HDM by Christians. There is no doubt that Pullman intended HDM to be a counterbalance to C.S. Lewis's slobbering exaltation of Christianity (and the superiority of male Anglo-Saxons) in `The Chronicles of Narnia' (CON) and in general a condemnation of some of the practices the Catholic Church. However most of the criticism you see about HDM seems to come from the politically conservative Christian right that interprets any and all criticism of religion as profanation of Christianity in general. I would add that there are also positive reviews of HDM solely on the basis of being anti-religion as well. I do find it interesting that some of the negative reviews of HDM by Christians are really very long and well written. It makes me wonder why someone would say that HDM was a not a good book when it obviously stimulated them to write several pages on it. I suppose that it upset them and they don't like to be upset by what they read. That is strange as it is one of the points Pullman makes in HDM. In passing he mentions that the church has imprisoned a scientist for coming up with what seems to be a valid description of multiple dimensions in String Theory. These negative reviews seem to follow a general trend on the Internet of a group of Christians who spend a lot of time sniffing out heterodoxy and attempting to stifle it. My last observation is why I think HDM is exception SciFi and why you should read it and get your kids to read it as well. What Pullman has done is to take the implications of String Theory, Chaos Theory, the theories about Dark Matter and Dark Energy in modern theoretical physics and asks the question of what a world would look like if these theories were true. What if there are other Universes and what would happen if we could travel between them? This is really, really interesting and I think Pullman has done an exceptional job here. The fact that he uses the influence of religion as one vehicle may or may not have been a major issue here, but it does not detract in any way from the fascinating SciFi aspects of this book. You can read this in three parts as it was published, but like LOR it is best considered as a whole work. HDM is available in a number of editions and I read, this time, the omnibus of all three volumes. If you don't know anything about modern physics it will not detract from the enjoyment of the book as just SciFi or fantasy.

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.

Pullman's trilogy is not to be missed for science fiction and philosophy lovers, in my opinion. It is a coming of age story, in more than just the usual sense. In the alternate England where this story is set, souls exist outside the bodies as animals referred to as "daemons," and their shape is set at adolescence, when the child becomes an adult. Before that time, the daemon can change into whatever animal form it would like. In this compelling take on the "soul," the "soul" has indisputable agency and voice, and each person finds him or herself in a relationship with is or her own soul, as opposed to seeing the soul as the self. Lyra, the protagonist, sets out to discover why children off the streets of Oxford are going missing. This journey brings her to confront large ideas about politics and religion and power, the academy and the public, institutions and individuals. The trilogy - unfortunately - becomes less and less subtle as it goes on, but nonetheless I recommend the trilogy as a whole, because I do not think those readers who love The Golden Compass will do anything else besides read the sequels. The Golden Compass, the first book in the series, is deserving of five stars and is one of my favorite novels ever. I am an avid reader and a librarian, and I particularly love this first novel because it features a strong, believable female lead, a well paced plot that focuses on ideas and politics and power play, and incredible world building. It also was the first time I read a comparison of university and street (or public) life that made me nod and say "yes, that's right." Unlike a lot of readers, I do not think this first novel or the trilogy as a whole is anti-organized religion on principle - I believe it does object to certain elements of organized religion which may well be deserving of criticism. One of the core strengths of the first book is its ability to communicate arguments about larger concepts in society while telling a genuinely good story -- it doesn't come off as preachy, or pushy, and it is eye opening, especially for the young adult target demographic, but these days, often as well for American adults. The second book, The Subtle Knife, is a four star book in my opinion, because while it is an excellent novel, it does The Golden Compass a disservice by weakening the main character (Lyra) with a second protagonist who is male (Will). Will is an excellently written character, but his very presence makes Lyra's character weaker. If we had been introduced to Lyra in The Subtle Knife, I am certain it would be a five star book, but because The Subtle Knife is part of a series, I review it both as a novel in its own right and as a novel that exists in a series. Lyra's fierce independence is essentially in many ways stripped by a "love interest." Few authors have been able to produce a believable romantic relationship that involves a rebellious, independent woman, and Pullman is not one of them. This is not to say that he doesn't appreciate Lyra, rather, it is evident to me in reading the Subtle Knife that he struggled to produce the Lyra we knew who could also ally with something who was, in many ways, more powerful than she was -- that was something her character did not know how to do, and thus the only solution was to diminish her. It's a flaw that only lost the book one star in my own eyes because in every other way, the book lives up to expectation: it is excellently paced, it has a lot of Lee Scoresby (who is simply a phenomenal character), it continues to ask tough questions, it's hard to put down, and all of the new characters as well as some of the older ones get significant and interesting development. The final book in the series, The Amber Spyglass, is one that I want to love. But the fact of the matter is, it has a significant flaw that I cannot overlook: it's all to clear, reading the third novel, what Pullman is trying to push. The story is sacrificed for the philosophy, the sentimentality in places is overbearing, and this makes the fact that the ideas are still compelling even more frustrating. The final book is probably a two star book, but if I was reviewing it by itself, I would probably give it three stars, out of loyalty to the series. Indeed, the redeeming elements of this book are all to do with its tying up of plot points, redemption of certain characters that is gratifying, its own seemingly self aware points about the power of story, and the core, strong arguments about society that are the backbone of the series as a whole. I can't honestly say that by itself, it is a good book, but I do think that as part of a series, it still worth the reader's time. Those of you who are also readers will recognize this sentiment: if you are just now coming to His Dark Materials, I am envious. There are few things in the history of my consumption of genre fiction (and even literary fiction) that come close to the experience of my discovery and subsequent reading of this series. I rarely say "such and such changed my life," but this series certainly changed mine, and I would love to have that experience in reading more often, it is so affirming.

After coming across online discussions about how this set of books was a kick in the pants to Christianity, and how secular humanists were carrying these books as their banner in the culture war against fundamentalists, I didn't really want to wade into that quagmire. So often, books touted in a culture war read like a manifesto. But I was trying my hand writing at an "alter-earth" fantasy myself, and Pullman's trilogy seemed to be succeeeding where I was failing. So I thought I would give it a chance. I have heard other people say that "His Dark Materials" trilogy was the finest piece of fantasy since "Lord of the Rings." I have also heard it called a humanist alternative to "The Chronicles of Narnia." Needless to say, I was dubious. No one since Le Guin has managed to craft a thick fantasy for young adults, and I was growing comfortable with the thought that the genre had been mined. But, after reading this trilogy, I am now convinced that Tolkien, Lewis, and Le Guin were just hacking at the stone. Thankfully, "His Dark Materials" was not a polemic against religion, nor was it an allegory or manifesto. It was a truly baroque piece of writing, damn near perfect. Naturally, I can now see why a few feverish fundamentalists would be horrified--God is a minor character, which I suppose would be as offensive to Xtians as a drawing of Mohammed is to Mooslims--not that I really care what religious nuts necessarily opine. That Phillip Pullman drew on "Paradise Lost" for inspiration and foundation is a thought-provoking thesis, happily neglected when the tale gets underway. Rather than pedantically preaching, Pullman works his craft: breathing life into his characters, making their dramas and conflicts real and imperative, and painting it all in language just barely within reach of the highly literate young adult. It is the reader's job to build and defend her own beliefs. In the end, I prefer to think that Pullman wishes to be as major an English writer as Milton was--or else that he wanted to remind us that High Fantasy was invented during the British Rennaissance. That's as far as the controversy goes for me. One ot the best things about the three novels, I believe, is a chiascuro worthy of Rembrandt. He blurs the edges of things, and puts shapes in the dark shadows at the hazy periphery. He suggest millions and millions of parallel worlds, populates maybe four, and yet you can almost feel the weight of all those universes pressing your hands as they hold open the pages. He only suggests a marvelous history for many of the secondary characters, and then your imagination unwinds their own novellas in your reveries. His talent for description makes reading a participatory process, rather than a receptive one. The result is a holographic oevre, alive and growing in the reader's imagination. There really is nothing like this trilogy. It is astonishing, marvelous, original, and thoroughly entertaining--much like the main character. The heroine, Lyra, is such a novel hero. She starts the story as an almost Dickensian urchin, then undergoes a tempering of character, forged in the fires of conflict and machination, and undergoes a tragic, orphean fall. Oh, how I wanted to change her fate! But what happens to her is as necessary as all the tribulation most very character meets. "His Dark Materials" outshines "Lord of the Rings," "Narnia" and "Earthsea." There is nothing like it, and I suspect, nothing else will eclipse it for at least a century. It is a masterpiece of English literature, and I feel blessed to have finished it.

An incredible, dark, universe building book series. More twists than a Vonnegut novel, but written for the YA crowd. Do yourself a favor and skip the movie and miniseries, only the books do justice to the multiverse building. Mine got here in two days!

Beautiful box set of one of my favorite series. I'm so excited to own this trilogy.

Excellent book series to read, so imaginative and wonderful read! For young or old! Wonderful journey and there is a series after this set! Hope its as good as this was!

Fantastic story for young adults - and even adults themselves. This edition has zero pictures anywhere, and the pages are rather thin, but for the price (around 100PLN for the trilogy) i'm more than happy. my daughter is enthralled and so am I!

Every child who loved the Narnia books should read this. It's meat and potatoes compared to the candyfloss books out there. Satisfying and thought provoking.

Beautifully written light fantasy at its finest. This is my absolute favorite book series of all time.

It's Phillip Pullman, nothing else needs to be added here

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