The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials book 1); Philip Pullman; Young Adult/Sci-fi/Fantasy, 399p
Okay, this is a re-read. I read and ADORED the His Dark Materials trilogy when I was the target audience, and now I'm reading through it again, which just happened to coincide with banned books week. And oh, the hullabaloo over this series. Whatever, I'm not here to talk about people's religious feathers getting ruffled.
The aspect of this book that completely captured my heart initially was the worldbuilding, but upon this reading I really have to appreciate the way Pullman writes children. Lyra is the most realistic, self-centered, viciously stubborn protagonist I've seen in a children's book maybe...ever. She's fantastic. As for the worldbuilding, Lyra's home in the multiverse is just as dark, mysterious, and compelling as it had been upon my first reading. Pullman does a fabulous job of exposition, dropping little hints that this world is just a bit different in fundamental ways from our own (and not just in that people have external souls in the form of animal daemons), and the vocabulary, oh my gosh the vocabulary. I have a lot of fun just researching all the cognates going on. (Yes, I am a huge nerd.)
Anyway, this first book starts off with the basic sort of child unknowingly stumbles into a greater destiny trying to save her friend plot, but wow, WOW does Pullman hit the reader with a suckerpunch to the heart. There are parts of this book that are tremendously unpleasant, and that sort of....artful brutality is one of the aspects that make this one of my favorite books, still, after all these years. I'm about halfway through the second book now, we'll see if I can get that review in under the wire for this month. :)
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