Leonard Gaya's Reviews > The Golden Compass

Before quantum mechanics and Schrödinger’s cat’s paradox, alternate universes were inherently accessible post-mortem, either Heaven or Hell: that whole “other side” business had a strong moral and religious bias. However, contemporary science fiction has introduced new possibilities of experimenting with alternate realities, e.g. travelling through time (Wells’ Time Machine) or through space (Stapledon’s Star Maker). More interestingly, it introduced the possibility of parallel worlds: utopias (Huxley’s Brave New World is a utopia cum grano salis), dystopias (Orwell’s 1984, Atwood’s Handmaid's Tale), uchronias (Philip K. Dick’s Man in the High Castle), fantasy worlds or, if you will, alternate Middle Ages (Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Martin’s Game of Thrones).

Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights is an ambitious combination of all of the above. The protagonist, young Lyra Belacqua, lives in an alternate England. Her world is, in general, similar to ours, but everything is a little bit misaligned. It’s a world where a puritanical Church rules over everything, where Scandinavian culture is pervasive, where people travel mostly by boat and zeppelin (steampunk-style), where each person has an accompanying dæmon — a sort of sentient cuddly pet, shamanistic animal spirit, or Freudian Id, perhaps —, where one can meet witches and armoured bears, and own strange objects that look like a pocket watch but tell the truth instead of the time… At all events, Pullman has built one the richest, weirdest, most fascinating and consistent fictional worlds in contemporary literature. He also has succeeded in creating a magnificent gallery of supporting characters: Lord Asriel, John Faa, Iorek Byrnison, Serafina Pekkala — all are endearing and colourful. Pullman’s prose is exquisite, and the scope of his story is staggering. For all that — possibly because this was meant to be a children’s book —, the plot is surprisingly lively and easy to follow — some of the scenes are memorable indeed, like the attempted poisoning at the start (ch. 1) or Lyra’s slyness with the bear-king (ch. 19).

I find it surprising that Pullman’s book was not received with at least as much acclaim as, say, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. The fact that Northern Lights contains some anticlerical ideas and gave the god-botherers a queasy stomach is beside the point. However, it is possible that Pullman’s novel introduces too many ideas at the same time without developing them fully and does not quite provide a clear sense of closure and of what it is all about by the end of this long first part. It left me with a downbeat sensation, asking myself while closing the book, “eventually, why should I care about all that picaresque and slightly fantastical adventure?”. The 2007 film adaptation (with Nicole Kidman, Ian McKellen, Derek Jacobi, and Christopher Lee) tried to compress Pullman’s novel even further but only managed to highlight the plot’s flaws. At any rate, I am sure that the next part, The Subtle Knife, will compensate for these slight inconveniences.

Edit: Watched the first season of the BBC/HBO His Dark Materials TV series. It is much better than the 2007 movie, probably because a TV series provides ample space to develop the storyline, while a 120 minutes movie was like a bed of Procrustes, compressing and sabotaging Pullman’s narrative. The TV show seems to be taking the exact opposite direction and expands on the plot and characters beyond the limits of the novel. The result is still somewhat confusing, but the slower pace provides a sense of danger and darkness that is quite gripping. Dafne Keen and Ruth Wilson, who play the two female protagonists, are both fabulous.