Toking Jedi

Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy includes The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. This is my attempt at a basic summary without giving too much plot away. Though be warned: as I'm summarizing the entire series i do give some elements of the first and second endings away. I'll try and make those vague enough....

The Golden Compass introduces Lyra Belacqua, a young girl living on a University campus in a world in which people have daemons, basically their spirits or souls, and take the form of animals, according to each person. Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon are thrown into the midst of a controversy about dust, a mysterious material which scholars are trying to figure out. She is given a golden compass, with which she uses to answer questions she has along her journey. Her journey is filled with Gypsies, witches, talking armored bears, and so many other cool things. Eventually she finds her way into a parallel world, and in The Subtle Knife meets Will. Will is a boy from a world not unlike our own, who , while looking for his father (who mysteriously disappeared), finds a strange window in the air and ends up in an alternate world, where he meets Lyra. There he learns how to use an ancient knife, which he uses to cut windows in thin air into other worlds. Together Lyra and Will use their tools to battle the ignorance of the church in Lyra's world. There is a whole shebang involving God and the Archangels, and the world of the dead... Anyway, eventually Will and Lyra end up in our world (or something very damn similar to ours), in The Amber Spyglass. There, the two meet Dr. Mary Malone, a researcher of Dark Matter and something she calls Shadows, which Will realizes correspond with the dust of Lyra's world. Dr. Malone finds her way to a window into a strange world with strange, elephantine/buffalesque creatures. After learning their language and their ways (I forget where Will and Lyra head during this part, but they aren't with Dr. Malone during her escapades with the strange elephantine/buffalesque creatures), Mary finds out from her new friends that a wind of dust is flowing out of the world into oblivion. They can see it, but with the naked eye she cannot. So she constructs an amber spyglass, consisting of two pieces of amber at a fixed distance, with which to see them. I don't remember how the whole thing ends but it's awesome anyway.

These are three of the most absof***inglutely awesome books I've ever read... it's all about consciousness and life and love... And I'm making it a task--no, my duty!--to read all three over my winter vacation, completely stoned.... ohhh myyy goddd that will be incredible....

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circle~smoke

That trilogy sounds good, I don't get into reading much. Kind of makes me wish that I had or would. Nice job keeping the details intact, you must truly be a jedi.

imported_dr0

so, so true... i HAVE to read these again

smoking jedi, isn't it nice to read books like "the golden compass" and then wonder why the entire world bows down to J.K. Rowling

imported_dr0

sorry, my post got entered in twice, this is the edit :|

anonymity

I read these books when I was in elementary school, I think, maybe I read Amber Spyglass in middle school. I thought they were awesome back then, and I even did a book report on Subtle Knife. You should have talked about the armored bears. I don't remember much about them, but one of them was really cool, he just drank all the time and then kicked ass.

tunami56

Those books are incredible... My friend and I, who both read very much and have since we were in elementary school, both read the trilogy and loved it so much. I switched between reading the books and listening to the audiobooks, which were also extremely good. Philip Pullman does the narration and there is a full cast as the characters.

Hashishi

the first book was called 'northern lights' in europe. honestly, americans you don't just steal our books you change the ****ing text as well

i enjoyed the series but thought he ran out of steam and ideas to the end. when it got to the bit with all the ghost children it just got farsicle.

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