Rating: 
Summary: The Beginning Search
Review: Lyra Belacqua lives at the Jordan College in Oxford, England, with her daemon and spends her days running wild. After spying in a private conversation, she hears about Dust, which all adults fear. In the meantime, children are disappearing. The master at the college sends Lyra and Pantaimon, her daemon to live with Mrs. Coulter. Before she leaves, the master gives her the alteiometer. Lyra and Pan suspect that Mrs. Coulter is up to no good, and when their suspicions were confirmed, they ran away to the gyptians.
Among the gyptians, she heads north to get advice from the witches and to rescue the children. While they were there, Lyra met an aromored bear named Iorek, and she helps him gain his rightful throne back. Later, Lyra is kidnapped and is taken to Mrs. Coulter's headquarters, where they are attempting to destroy the Dust by separating children from their daemons, which is like killing part of their soul.
Lyra escapes with the children, and goes to find her father. When she does, he opens another world, and goes on to try and find the Dust. Lyra and Pantaimon go through the world, to find the Dust, which they believe is good.
I would recommend this book because it is very exciting and fast-paced. The book is full of interesting and conflicting characters, so you are almost never bored.
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Summary: Awsome!
Review: It's a great book. it starts out slow but, after a while it starts to speed up. Then it gets really good. I think it is really cool that they have talking animals for friends.
Rating:
Summary: Really good, i enjoyed it alot
Review: It is a great book. i couldent put it down! you will love it no matter what the age. it has alot of mysterys to begin with, then at the end all of the mysterys, most of the mysterys, are solved, the left overs are in the Subtle Knife!
Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: This book is the best book I've ever read. The whole series is great I was sad whene the series ended. I think they should tottally make another one, but they probably wont but at least we get the movie whitch should be coming out in 2004.
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Summary: This has everything
Review: I am 42 years old, and read this book because my 10 year old son got it as a present from his older cousin. I couldn't put it down. It has chase scenes, suspense, ghosts, parallel worlds, philosophical questions, religious intrigue, a tiny little bit of dangerous sexual inuendo, flying witches and armourmed bears! What more could you want from a book?It is a fantasy book in that it takes place in a fantastic world, with familiar places and peoples that have been tweaked just a bit. Tartars, the Republic of Texas, and gyptians are all familiar, but also strange. I instantly related to these peoples and places, because they were sort-of known; but they also gave me a thrill of new discovery. As opposed to some fanatasy books where the author can get too clever, inventing extravagantly complex worlds, then inventing protagonists for those worlds, and then coming up with impossibly unique problems for those protagonists to solve in those worlds, Pullman has accomplished a marvel. He has created a world both familiar and strange, one in which I am both comfortable as well as disturbed. Entertaining, thought-provoking, and heart wrentching, this book is a treasure, and I will treasure reading it out loud to my son.
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Summary: The Golden Compass
Review: This book, The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman, is a great book. I like it because it contains tons of action, adventure, and trust. It's about a girl named Lyra and her daemon going on a quest to find out if dust, a mythical creature is friendly, neutral, or hostile. At the same time, they are trying to get close up to dust. They get information by eavesdropping through restricted doors. One of the doors she eavesdropped was the counslers room. The door opens. Quickly she hide behind the other side of the door. That was close. They try to get as much information as they can. She saves her worst nightmare, her dad, she gets captured buy polar bears, and she has a tough life.
The book starts off with Lyra and her daemon inside a restricted room. She investigates to see why students of this academy or anybody cannot be in the room. All of the sudden, the doorknob turns. Oh no! Read the book to find out what happens next. After that she has to go to school. This book contains action and adventure. Lyra is extremely tough, not giving without a fight.
This book tells us in life that you have a choice, the regular path, or the new path only made by yourself. In the story, people make many assumptions that dust, a mythical creature, is evil. Lyra tries to prove this assumption wrong. On her quest she makes some friends too. If you read this book you won't regret it!
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Summary: A Compelling Fantasy
Review: This book will draw you in first because of its endearing main character, a spunky heroine named Lyra, and then because of its amazing story. Pullman is one of the few writers I know who has successfully created a series that appeals to both intelligent kids and intelligent adults, and it is often classified under both sections in bookstores. (Don't mistake this book as 'for kids', however, as the story progresses into the sequel it becomes very thought provoking and raises contraversial topics that most fantasy writers avoid.) I won't ruin the plot for anybody by revealing too much, but I will say that this is one of my all-time favorite books, and I would recommend it to anybody with an imagination. The Golden Compass is the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, a series about parallel worlds, magic, and theology.
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Summary: Parents of children under 16, beware
Review: Pullman is a master of story telling and imagery. The subject matter, however, is not appropriate for children depsite the book's cover which recommends the book for ages 10 and up. My objections? The heroine, Lyra, sets off to rescue her dear friend who has been kidnapped and is horrified when she learns that he was kidnapped for a religious experiment in which children are surgically separated from their deamons (external manifestations of their souls) which either kills the children or leaves them in a perpetual zombie-like state. The exiperiment has been performed countless times under the direction of . . . Lyra's mother. Lyra views her father with a mixture of admiration and fear. Her father never marries her mother even though he kills the man Lyra's mother is married to at the time of Lyra's conception. Until the end of the book he is portrayed as noble. His interests are similar to those of Lyra's mother, but his interest is portrayed as pure and academic in nature. In the end Lyra and the friend she rescued bring her father a tool they think he needs. In the dead of night he kidnaps the friend, and Lyra witnesses her father sacrificing her friend by separating him from his daemon to further his own scientific pursuits. This is a book that will teach children to be fearful, not hopeful. It will teach them that they are alone, not part of a family or community. It will teach them to distrust the adults in their lives, not turn to them for advice or assistance. Because the imagery is fabulous, the lessons are more readily learned.
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Summary: Golden Compass
Review: This book was great. At first it is a little hard to follow, you need to pay very close attention. The next two books in the series (The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass) are the same way. Awesome books, but if you miss something you are better off going back and starting over. I ended up reading the first book 3 times.
Rating: 
Summary: An entertaing read
Review: A good book, both for adults and children. Not one of my favorites, however, it was good enough that I bought the other 2 books in the series. Well written, interesting.
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