Hello avid readers of the internet, today I'm reviewing (for the second time as the first review was really just a summary) the first book in the trilogy His Dark Materials: Northern Lights.
The book follows twelve year old Lyra Belacqua, whom is orphaned and has spent ALL of her life in Jordan college in Oxford, But in these times children are being kidnapped... The kidnappers are known as the Gobblers and are feared throughout England! Then Lyra's best-friend Roger is taken by these Gobblers... Lyra sets of on a task to save her friend with the help of Gyptians (people in tribes that live on the sea) and an Armoured bear (ice bear warriors) along with the witches and an Alethiometer- A small compass which allows her the answer to any question she asks and is a key to a prophecy she MUST fulfil- Together they must save Roger and stop the Gobblers before it is too late.
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| Lyra at the dining hall |
Now before I continue my review I did leave one little piece of information that summary! why? you may ask that's because I would need to go into extra detail about this one specific thing that would make the summary too long and you'd all probably get confused (Not calling anyone dumb) but in the book it's set in a different world instead of their souls being in their bodies, it is a living animal that lives outside of the body and it can change shape till their human counterpart grows up this process is known as a "settle" now they are known as deamons, so Lyra's deamon is known as Pantalaimon (Pan).
Ok so now you know what the summary of the book is and what a deamon is, I can now tell you about the characters
Lyra Belacqua- 12 year old orphaned girl whom saves her friend
Pan- Deamon/soul
Roger Parslow- 12 year old kitchen boy was kidnapped by gobblers
Salcilla- Deamon/soul
Lord Asriel - Lyra's uncle who is an explorer
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| Iorek Byrneson |
Stelmaria- Deamon/soul
Mrs coulter- Rich socialite (at first) but hides a terrible secret
name of deamon uknown but form orange monkey
Lord Far- king of Gyptians
Deamon uknown
Farder Coram Gyptian member and lover of Serafina Pekkala (witch)
Deamon uknown
Ma Costa- mother of billy Costa (Lyra's friend) also a Gyptian
Deamon unknown
Serafina Pekkla- Queen of the Lake Enara clan witches and lover of Farder Coram
Kaisa Deamon/Soul
Iorek Byrneson- Ice/Armoured bear Lyra's friend and warrior
Ice bears have no deamons
Lee Scoreby- Aeronaut and friend of Iorek's
Hester Deamon/soul
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| Roger Parslow |
Now I love this book due to it's immersive setting which really gets you hooked into the book, his fantastic gutsy and courageous characters ie: Lyra she can be really caring and loyal to the people she cares about, and can be sneaky and crafty to get the job done (pretend to be somebody else)
Pullman makes his characters easy to love and sometimes hard to hate!
I also like the idea being to connected to other worlds ie: Lyra's world connected to this world etc. I also thing the way it's being separated by particles called -"Dust" (only mentioned a couple of times within this book) Is new and impressive and brings a breath of fresh air from the let's get into a time machine and travel through the parallel world's!
Plus the storyline is very mysterious ie: What are the gobblers? why are they kidnapping children? what are their intentions? which also holds a little air of suspense!
I also found this book really easy to get into and I actually noticed this straight away just by the cover that the film-: The Golden Compass was based on and I liked that film (UNTIL I READ THE BOOK
THE BOOK IS BETTER) so that probably helped me get into the book a little bit but any how I love this book you NEED to read it!! (yes im on page 354 on The Amber Spyglass)
you can buy the book
here and
here
