"In a valley shaded with rhododendrons ... where a stream milky with meltwater splashed ... lay a cave ..."

I apologize but I had to do some editing with the 45 word first sentence for the subject line. Here's the entire text:
"In a valley shaded with rhododendrons, close to the snow line, where a stream milky with meltwater splashed and where doves and linnets flew among the immense pines, lay a cave, half-hidden by the crag above and the stiff heavy leaves that clustered below."

Philip Pullman is very good at building a clear picture for the reader of the many worlds and many settings he has created. He is the most masterful in The Amber Spyglass, the third and final volume of the His Dark Materials series. He introduces radically different species to us and yet makes them somehow familiar and comfortable. I anticipated a much more emotional response to this book based on other people's reviews but I have to admit that I didn't shed a single tear because I felt that everything resolved just as it was supposed to. This book follows Lyra and Will through the final stage of their journey toward destiny.

The Amber Spyglass relied the most on Catholic dogma for its plot and characters so I think it would have been helpful to have been a bit more familiar with those precepts. (I had previously only heard of Metatron through the Kevin Smith movie Dogma. Not exactly an educational source, is it?) Regardless, I really enjoyed this series and the book. It certainly questioned --and perhaps tried to disprove-- religion but I don't see that children or young adults reading this book would have any real concept of that. When I read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe as a child, I had no idea that it was analogous to Christianity. I will certainly suggest it to Z when he is of an age to be interested in books like this.

Sad to see the end of the series,
K


Buy The Amber Spyglass on Amazon or find it at your local library.

"Will tugged at his mother's hand and said, 'Come on, come on...' "

When I opened the book to copy out the first sentence of The Subtle Knife, the second in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, I thought I had grabbed the wrong book. The story ends so incredibly far from where it starts that I almost didn't remember how simply the journey began. This book was different from the first one with more action and a very quick moving plot. While reading The Golden Compass, I wasn't sure what exactly the religious controversy was about but it began to come the foreground in The Subtle Knife.

It's hard to talk about the plot of this book without giving away too much of the plot of the first book. The subtle knife in the title is a knife that is able to cut through the fabric between universes and allow travel between them. The journey that Lyra started on in the first book continues on in this book through parallel universes where she teams up with another child, Will. His quest to find his adventurer father becomes Lyra's as well and they bravely fight together. With the help of characters we have already met like the witch Serafina Pekkala and the aeronaut Lee Scoresby, we see Lyra and Will move closer to their destinies.

I wasn't put off at all by the religious and anti-religious undertones but it was a bit shocking to read about so much violence surrounding and involving children. I can't wait to read the final book in the series to see how this all ends. There were some sad losses in this one and I know there will be more in the next one.

Through two of three,
K


Buy The Subtle Knife on Amazon or find it at your local library.

"Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall ..."

I have always been curious about Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy so when I was at the library this past week I picked up the first book - The Golden Compass. We actually watched this movie a few months ago so I was familiar with the story but wanted to see how the book differed. I was surprised to see that the movie followed the book quite closely. There wasn't much that was left out or changed -- much different from, say, a Harry Potter movie. I think the movie didn't have a strong box office take so it's uncertain if they will be continuing the trilogy.

For anyone completely unfamiliar with this series, the series name "His Dark Materials" is taken from Milton's Paradise Lost and refers to the matter used to create the universe. The first book, The Golden Compass, tells the story of Lyra, a young girl who slowly heads toward her destiny. We aren't sure what this destiny is and we are told that she must not know either because she has to enter into it blindly. This book is set in an alternate reality where each person is accompanied by a daemon -- an animal shape that is essentially the person's soul. The daemon of a child is able to change shapes and then it chooses a form at puberty and becomes a representative of the nature of the adult.

Lyra, an orphan, grows up at a college in Oxford and has a relatively uneventful life until the day that she chooses to eavesdrop during a meeting of the university Scholars and her Uncle Asriel. There she learns information that will lead her to discover not only things about the world but also about herself. She eventually leaves the school in the company of the mysterious Mrs. Coulter and begins the journey toward her destiny.

This is a hard book to summarize without giving anything away because it is like a flower, slowly opening and unfolding. I really enjoyed it and will be picking up the other two books in the series immediately. The next book, The Subtle Knife, is set in the alternate universe and also our own so I am interested to see how that is done.

Following the adventure,
K


Buy The Golden Compass on Amazon or find it at your local library.