Northern Lights by Philip Pullman.
First book in a trilogy.
Northern Lights is a well written book that has been made into a film called The Golden Compass. After watching this film, I was worried that I wasn't going to like the book as I didn't get the plot of the film and it was very confusing. Northern Lights is about a young girl called Lyra who lives at a college in Oxford with the proffessers. Her best friend is a boy who's mother and father are kitchen staff for the college. In this book, every human has a daemon which is a spirit that is part of the human, they follow the human everywhere and without them the person would die. Suddenly news breaks out that children are going missing up and down the country and people have come up with a name for the group that is kidnapping them. They are called the Snatchers. There aim is to capture children and take them to the North Pole where there daemon is severed from them and caged up. They then take the dieing child to the Northern Lights where a rift is opening. They let the child go up into the rift and they are never seen again. One day, Lyra's best friend goes missing and she goes on a quest to find him. On the way she finds out who her real mother and father are. This book was much better than the film and I enjoyed every bit of it. I am giving it 8/10.
MB
I started reading this book with some trepidation. I has seen the film on DVD and had not enjoyed it much as I had found it to be complex and I was not sure I understood what the story was about. When I started the book I did struggle a little however once I got going I found it to be a fascinating and yes a complex story interwoven with a number of stories. The heroine of the story is a girl who does not fully know her parentage. She is brought up in a college university by a group of scholars. The story revolves around Dust and the impact this magical substance has on the world. I do recommend this story and suggest that it is worthier of your interest than the movie. Interestingly I now understand what the movie was trying to tell me through the power of the written word. I give this a 7 out of 10
JB
Overall 7.5/10
