Rating: 
Summary: wow
Review: wow is what I said after I finished this first novel in a series of three, it was just imaginative and a fantastic journey into the unknown. This first book sets up what is to come but you don't know just what will come about by it. I don't want to spoil any of the plot but Lyra is a fantastic character that you want to follow for the rest of your life.
The words bring up vivid visions of landscapes and places and events. I recommend it to everyone.
Rating: 
Summary: a good book...
Review: i really liked "the golden compass"... fascinating, exciting and suspenseful, you'll remember it for a long time. It begs you to read it's sequel, "the subtle knife", tho i didn't like it as much as "the golden compass", i have yet to read "the amber spyglass". be warned tho, if you are very easily offended, especially about religion, i wouldn't recommend this book.
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Summary: A wonderful story--and not just for children!
Review: Philip Pullman's "The Golden Compass", as well as the rest of the His Dark Materials series, is a wonderful, exciting, original, and fantastical ride from start to finish. It has themes for younger children, the idea of "daemons" and so forth, but in reality I feel it has more to offer adults.I absolutely LOVE the religious undertones of this book. If it "offended" you, then I'm sorry you're so closed-minded and ignorant. The idea of fallen angels rebelling against Heaven and Pullman's rather obvious implications that God is wrong and the source of all evil is intelligent, thought-provoking, and at times even made me sit down and question my own faith. I think it is wonderful to find a book that will make people question God. You should never believe in something just because someone told you to--you should always come to your own conclusions, and question everything. I love Pullman's unorthodox standpoint even though I disagree with the idea of God as the source of all evil. Like all good books, the His Dark Materials series is controversial. But moreover it is enjoyable, intelligent, sophisocated reading for people of all ages, with something for everyone. I would recommend this book to everyone regardless of age and religion because it has beautiful truths and intelligent questions to offer to the world. Pullman creates a world were the struggle between love and hate, hope and dispair, and most of all good and evil is played out on a dramatic scale. The description is so vivid, the ideas so original, and the thoughts so deep it has me wanting a daemon of my own.
Rating: 
Summary: Over-rated and driven solely by marketing hype
Review: Philip Pullman said he wrote the Golden Compass and the rest of the His Dark Materials trilogy because, as an atheist ..., ...P>However, Pullman's work is far inferior to Lewis's because he didn't follow Lewis's narrative tact. ... One steeped in Christian theology could see parallels between Aslan the lion and Jesus Christ, but if one was disinclined to care about religion, one could simply ignore the theological themes and enjoy a decent read. Not so with Pullman's tripe. This is no "allegory" but a ham-fisted attack on Christianity that names names, doesn't even have a shred of factual accuracy or historical veracity (e.g., the Pope is named "John Calvin"), and spends most of its time preaching the Atheist message than telling a good story. (Long sections of this book sound like they were lifted straight for New Age books.) ... ......
Rating: 
Summary: not as good as rumor would have it
Review: While the author tells a fast-moving story, the problem here is that the world brave Lyra finds herself in is so transparent that it's hard to feel as though it actually could exist. It seems to have qualities of the real world, but its supernatural apects are never fully explained. Perhaps the point is that since there are so many alternate universes, Lyra's is just one that has similarities to ours but is not the same. The difficulty here is that the author fails to create a place that is different enough to make the reader convinced that what he or she is reading has any depth to it. Sure, every human has a deamon, and witches and talking bears predominate, but there's no history to this world. No sense that Lyra is part of some order of beings that has been around for eons, or something that would stand as a means by which her quest would have some meaning. The best part of the novel is that it's not clear who is more harmful, Mrs. Coulter or Lord Asriel. The children who come to harm upon puberty are threatened by them both, I think. The moral universe is more interesting that the physical one, I think. Most adults feel they always act in a child's best interest but of course not all do. That adults inevtiably screw up kids is a common notion, and innocence lost at puberty is an old theme of pop-culture (Stephen King's 'Carrie' for instance.) Most frustratingly, the reader never gets to feel what Lyra experiences; she seems to have little understanding of herself as a young woman. Perhaps that is left to the second book. But the world Pullman creates is so vague and its threats so ill-defined that it's hard to care what happens to any of his characters.
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Summary: Absolutely phenomenal book!!
Review: All three of His Dark Materials books are amazing, each one better than the one before. On the surface it's a great book about a young girl who gets caught up in an amazing adventure, so kids will love it. However, it's perfect for adults too because the pages are rife with deeper meaning, spirituality, friendship, love, loss, etc. I highly recommend this book for anyone. Enjoy!!
Rating:
Summary: my favorite book ever!
Review: I read this book first when i was ten and didn't quite understand. It is very complex and dark, but also has a wonderful story. I re-read it two years later and loved it! the whole series is fabolous! a must read for anyone between the ages of 11-111!
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Summary: A great read, but the series disappoints...
Review: The Golden Compass is a page-turner and an adventure to be sure. But I think the reason I really enjoyed it is that I know the characters and creatures of Pullman's fantasy world will stay with me for a long, long, time. They remind me of the characters from L'Engle's 'Time' quartet: passionate, conflicted, flawed, but never, ever, boring and very, very, memorable. This is not a simple sci-fi tale; the ideas are complex and novel. The daemons are fascinating and very appealing. The different cultures of the Scholars, gyptians, witches and armored bears are original as well. Even inanimate objects (the alethiometer, Dust, anbaric charges) play very interesting roles in this story. Also very effective is Pullman's choice to set his tale in a world that very similar to our own, but different in a few startling ways. These differences are never spelled out explicitly for the reader, which leaves you feeling much like the main character Lyra, i.e. caught up in the adventure and hungry to fill in the missing bits of information. A great read! However, when I read the next two books in the series, I was very disappointed. They resonate with deep disappointment in Christianity and especially Catholicism. We are served up God as a dying angel and the Church as a mix of murderers, pedophilic priests, and inquisitors. Christ, unsurprisingly, is nowhere to be found. After all, a loving Christ who gave his life to bring people closer to God and free them from sin and death would not fit into Pullman's assessment of the Church as being interested only in obliterating every good feeling and impulse. As I mentioned in my review of the last book, I don't object to Pullman listing the abuses of the Christian Church, past or present. I think that's a worthy subject. But in writing this kind of one-sided portrayal, Pullman is at best attacking a straw man, and at worst , is offensive and deeply misleading, especially to children. Even C.S. Lewis's treatment of the Calormenes in the Narnian Chronicles, which has justly come under fire for tones of racism, is more positive and balanced than this stuff (and Lewis was writing fifty years ago, after all). I'd urge anyone who wishes to proceed with the rest of the series to take it all with a large grain of salt.
Rating:
Summary: The Golden Compass
Review: The Golden Compass is one of the best books I have ever read. It combines science fiction with fantasy, non-fiction with fiction, and generally rocks. Lyra is a character that will apture your heart, even if at first you are somewhat confused by the world in which she lives. The concepts in this book are very imaginative and creative, from the daemons, a physical manifestation of the soul, to the parallel universe that this book inhabits. This is a definite must to read, whether you like science fiction or realistic, or have never even read a more than 200 page book before.
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Summary: The Beginning Search
Review: Lyra Belacqua lives at Jordan College in Oxford, England, and spends her days running wild in the city. One day, after she and her daemon, Pantiamon, eavesdrop in a private conversation, she learns about Dust. Meanwhile, children are disappearing. The master at the college sends her and Pan off to live with Mrs. Coulter, but before she goes, he gives her an altheiometer. Pan and Lyra suspect that Mrs. Coulter is up to no good, and when their suspicions are confirmed, they ran away to the gyptians. Among the gyptians, she heads north to get advice from the witches and to find the children. While they are there, Lyra helps an armored bear, Iorek, get his rightful throne back. She is then kidnapped, and is taken to Mrs. Coulter's headquarters, where they are trying to destroy the Dust, by separating children from their daemons, which is like killing a part of their souls. Lyra escapes with the children, and then goes to find her father. When she gets there, her father had just managed to open and new world and goes through it. Lyra and Pan also go through it, trying to beat her father in finding the Dust, because they believe that it may be good.
I would recommend this story because it is very exciting and fast-paced. The story is filled with many interesting characters and conflicting personalities. This is a good book to read, because there is very little chance of someone becoming bored.
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