The Mogul's Stories

My Review of The Golden Compass

This was my first Middle School book report.

The Golden Compass

The book I read was The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman. It is the first of a 3-book series called His Dark Materials. I would highly recommend this book to people who love fantasy books like Harry Potter and Artemis Fowl. If I had to rate this book on a scale of 1-10 I would give it an 8 because the book was very good, but also very hard to understand.

This book is based on a world like ours with some major differences, such as: there are many fantasy creatures, there are different names for things, the world is run entirely by the church, and that creatures called daemons exist as souls that are not within the body but are still attached to the people. There are also many similarities between the world in the book and the real world, such as: there is the same world map, there are still the same historical events, and there is still a church.

The book starts with the main character, Lyra, sneaking into a room to spy on her uncle, Lord Asriel. The place she lives is at Jordan College and is an orphan as far as she knows. As she is spying on Lord Asriel she sees the college master try to poison him. Lyra tells Lord Asriel what the master did once he is gone. Lord Asriel mentions a strange elemental particle called dust that collects around kids, but no one knows what it is.

Weeks later she is hearing rumors of "Gobblers," a group that is supposedly kidnapping kids. One by one the gyptian chidren are disappearing and Lyra decides to find out whats up. After a while she finally gives up on her search. The master decided then that Lyra should live a life outside of college and sends her to live with Ms. Coulter, a mysterious woman. Before she leaves the master gives her a altheimeter, or truth teller.

After Ms. Coulter threatens Lyra's daemon she runs away. While running she is found by her friend Tony Costa who takes her to his people. His people tell her that Lord Asriel and Ms Coulter are her parents. They also have found out that the kids are in the North Pole.

After months of travel Lyra finally reaches the north, only to get kidnapped by 2 complete strangers. She is taken to a place where her mother is cutting kids daemons away, witch is like cutting your soul away. Lyra finds a way to free all of the kids and leads them into the wilderness. She eventually finds her friends group again and rescues her father from a prison. Her father then kidnaps her friend and takes him to the aurora. Once at the aurora he sacrifices her friend and breaks a inter dimensional hole in the aurora.

This book is the first of the series so the ending is really abrupt. To fully understand the book I would recommend that you read it, because there are a lot of parts too hard and too long to explain

Posted by Da Mogul at April 5, 2005 08:08 PM