philip pullman books northern lights trilogy

Twelve year old Will Parry hides a secret from the world. She seems much younger than I think she is intended to be in this book, and a few moments jar when she suddenly 'acts her age'. I also found it difficult to get into Lyra's skin.

Pullman has made the strange decision to portray every person in England, Europe, and Scandinavia – except for the upper class adults – as having an identical dialect, and begins to confuse himself when the narrative slips into the same dialect as the dialogue. Northern Lights begins very promisingly in the first chapter, and has an excellent opening line – “Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening Hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen.” Unfortunately it fails to live up to expectations. When her best friend, Roger, is kidnapped by a group of people experimenting on children, Lyra joins forces with the Gyptians in an attempt to rescue all the stolen children. She sets a series of catastrophic events in motion when she sneaks into the Master’s study and inadvertently saves her uncle’s life. Lyra is an orphan living at Jordan College, Oxford. Northern Lights, the first book of His Dark Materials, is set in a parallel universe, where every human has a Socratic daemon – arguably an external representation of their soul. Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series consists of the trilogy Northern Lights ( The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass, and the companion books, Lyra's Oxfordand The Book of Dust (pre-publication). ~ Northern Lights | The Subtle Knife | The Amber Spyglass ~

Philip pullman books northern lights trilogy