The Golden Compass
By: Paul Pullman
In the Golden Compass the book starts off in a different universe, where every human has a daemon, which can shape shift from animal to animal. Lyra Belacqua is the main character. Lyra, with her fearless daemon Pantalaimon “Pan,” is one of the wildest adventurers. The book starts off in the Retiring Room, which Lyra is forbidden to enter. However when Lyra sneaks into the Retiring Room and hides in a closet, she sees the College Master poison Lord Asriel’s wine. After the master leaves, Lyra jumps out of the closet before Lord Asriel sips the wine. She tells him what happened. Lord Asriel told her that she may stay hidden for the upcoming meeting. During the meeting, she learns that dust is descending from the Aurora Borealis and reveals another universe. After that she finds out that her friend Roger was kidnapped by Gobblers. Lyra is determined to rescue Roger.
Then an important visitor, a woman named Mrs. Marisa Coulter, offers to take Lyra away from Jordan College to become her assistant. As Lyra leaves, she is entrusted secretly by the Master of the College with a priceless rare object known as an alethiometer, a “truth teller” which resembles a golden, many-handed pocket-watch that can answer any question asked by a skilled user. Lyra discovers that Mrs. Coulter heads an organization known as the “General Oblation Board,” and that this board is in fact the “Gobblers,” who have been kidnapping children. Horrified, Lyra flees and is rescued by the Gyptians, who reveal that Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter are Lyra’s father and mother. She also learns that many children have been disappearing, and the Gyptians are planning an expedition to the north to rescue them.
On a stop in Trollesund, Lyra meets Iorek Byrnison, an outcast sapient prince of the armored bears. The villagers tricked Iorek Byrnison out of his armor, which is akin to his soul. Without his armor, Iorek is bound to servitude to the village. Lyra uses her alethiometer to locate the armor, allowing Iorek to free himself. Both he and a travelling balloonist, Lee Scoresby, offer their support to Lyra. She also learns that Lord Asriel is held prisoner by the Panserbjorn.
The Gyptians and Lyra continue north to Bolvangar, where they believe the Gobblers are keeping the children. Lyra stops at a village on the way, and guided by the alethiometer, finds a boy who had been removed from his daemon. Lyra realizes that the Gobblers are attempting to remove the bond between human and daemon, a horrific action in that world. When you are removed from your daemon it lets out a huge amount of energy which the Gobblers want to control. The boy dies.
She is captured by bounty hunters and taken to Bolvangar, where she locates Roger and devises an escape plan. Mrs. Coulter arrives to supervise the facility. After Lyra is caught spying by staff, the staff of the facility decide to silence her using the same process to remove children from their daemons. She is rescued by Mrs. Coulter, who is shocked to see her as an intercision subject. Mrs. Coulter tries to steal the alethiometer from Lyra, but the container contains an insect-like device that causes her to fall unconscious. Lyra escapes and leads the other children from the facility. She and the children are rescued by Lee Scoresby, Iorek, the Gyptians, and their allies, the witch-clan of Serafina Pekkala.
Lyra is determined to deliver the alethiometer to Lord Asriel because she believes that he needs it for his purposes. She tricks the usurping bear-king, Iofur Raknison, into fighting Iorek Byrnison by claiming that she was Iorek’s daemon. She tells the king that if he kills Iorek, then she would become Iofur’s daemon, which is something no bear has and Iofur wants. Iorek is victorious and regains his throne.
Despite being imprisoned, Lord Asriel has become so influential that he has accumulated the necessary equipment to continue his experiments on Dust. He explains to Lyra what he knows of Dust, including the Church’s view that it is deeply sinful; his belief that Dust is somehow related to the source of all death and misery; and the existence of parallel universes. Lord Asriel wants to visit the other universes in order to find the source of death and misery, and destroy it, bringing the end of “centuries of darkness”. The Church fears the truth and “with good reason”. Having discovered that she has indeed brought her father what he wanted, though not in the way she thought, Lyra pursues him. It was not the alethiometer he needed. Instead he needs an “enormous” amount of energy to complete his task, and the energy source comes from severing Roger from his daemon. Roger dies when Lord Asriel separates him from his daemon. Lord Asriel uses the released power to tear a hole through the sky into a parallel universe. Although Lord Asriel offers to bring Mrs. Coulter with him to the parallel universe, she declines. Lord Asriel walks through into the new universe alone. In horror at her part in rescuing Roger only to bring him to his death, Lyra, along with Pan, follow Lord Asriel to the parallel universe.
I hope you enjoyed my book review. I gave the book a score of 10 out of 10 because it was really great. I highly recommend this book to everyone. However please note, the book is very long and it took me a month and a half to read.
By: Joseph Werenski
Leave a comment