The Golden Compass & The Subtle Knife

The Subtle Knife (Book 2 of His Dark Materials) by Philip Pullman starts with a bang and continues to take us deeper in Lyra's story. We are also introduced to Will, who becomes Lyra's companion during her discovery into Dust.

The Subtle Knife was great, and I look forward to finishing the trilogy (hopefully before the movie is released), but I really want to talk about The Golden Compass. I won't even attempt to summarize it, as the plot is so wonderfully complex, but I do want to mention the parts I particularly enjoyed.

The concept of daemons is fascinating and unlike anything I have encountered in a book. In The Golden Compass, everyone in Lyra's world has a daemon, a creature that is an extention of the human. The daemon is separate from the human, but it is also part of the human, and it can change form at will. At adolescence, however, the daemon's form becomes fixed to reflect its human's true nature. For example, Miss Coulter's daemon is that beautiful but wicked golden monkey.

A daemon cannot stray far from its human, and there is a passage I really love that describes a moment in which Pantalaimon (Lyra's daemon) is forced to test that bond: "His badger claws dug into the earth and he walked forward. It was such a strange tormenting feeling when your daemon was pulling at the link between you; part physical pain deep in the chest, part intense sadness and love. And she knew it was the same for him. Everyone tested it when they were growing up: seeing how far they could pull apart, coming back with intense relief."

That's just a small snippet of this beautiful scene where Lyra and Pan learn how painful it is to be separated from one another. And you learn, as you read, just how important this bond is between human and daemon.

My favorite character in The Golden Compass (besides Lyra of course, because she's pretty awesome) is the witch Serafina Pekkala. The witches in general are just incredible to imagine as they glide through the sky on their cloud pine. Serafina is instantly likable to me. She is sort of a mother-figure to Lyra during the journey with Lee Scoresby, and yet she remains always a mystery.

I love the passage where Serafina explains to Lyra about love and how the witches' hearts are "continually racked with pain" because their human lovers die so quickly while they must live on forever. Serafina tells Lyra: "I would never have flown again - I would have given all that up in a moment, without a thought, to be a gyptian boat wife and cook for him and share his bed and bear his children. But you cannot change what you are, only what you do. I am a witch. He is a human." Sigh... Serafina is just great.

I would highly recommend The Golden Compass as a satisfying and fantastic adventure. I guess it's geared towards a teen audience, but adults will enjoy it, too. I don't know how I feel about the trilogy as a whole, as I have yet to read The Amber Spyglass, but I've enjoyed what I've read so far.

After you read, as an exercise in imagination, you can ask yourself: What would my daemon be? I have yet to venture a guess as to what form mine would take...

AHA! I was going to come up with my own daemon, but the Golden Compass movie website has done that for me. Mine is Pelloneus the Crow. He is modest, assertive, flexible, competitive, and spontaneous. Well, I'm ok with that. And plus I think crows are pretty cool.