Book Review: The Golden Compass

I mentioned that I spent a good portion of our recent vacation reading books. The Golden Compass is the third of the four books that I read in Florida. I stumbled across it simply because we saw the preview for the movie (coming out in December) before Pirates III. And I was curious, because a fantasy that rich - or at least as rich as it looked in the trailer - could only (in my mind) come from a book. And so it was proved.

I will say the book did not start out as a page turner. In fact, I believe I actually whined a little bit at the very beginning (for the first 75 pages or so) wondering when it was going to pick up. This is a problem I often have with incredibly detailed fantasy worlds where the author must spend time helping you immerse yourself therein - because the details are important. I can't fault Pullman for it, honestly.

This is the first book in a trillogy. Thankfully, it doesn't feel like a first book in a trillogy. It has a discreet beginning, middle, and end. And if the story had stopped here forever, you would have been ok. Not happy, mind you, because I'm itching to get the next two books (they're already out, I've just been too busy to get to the store and have been doing my typical "I don't want to wait for them to come from Amazon" thing and have gone on to delay so long that if I'd just ordered them they'd've been here and read by now.) to see what happens next. I sincerely hope that the movie sticks to the first book and doesn't try to roll the whole trillogy into one big thing. Because there's plenty of story in The Golden Compass to make a film out of.

The book is the story of a little girl named Lyra, who lives at this world's version of Oxford University and has until this point spent the majority of her childhood being a royal pain the backside. Most of the time as a result of a purposeful decision to do so. She's spoiled and doesn't think and I have to say, I didn't like her very much at first. In this world, people's souls live outside their body in the form of a daemon (and the spelling is just like that - and given that I'm a geek, all I could think of was Unix. Through the entire book.) The daemon can shape-shift into various animals until such time as a person's character is settled (generally around puberty). Then the daemon settles on a form and you can tell about a person from the shape of their daemon. It's a fascinating idea to have this immediate insight into a person's soul as they walk randomly around the streets.

Anyway, one evening Lyra decides to hide and eavesdrop on a conversation. And she overhears something that sets in motion the events of the book that lead to her acquisition of the althieometer - or the Golden Compass - and it allows you to ask questions and see the truth. This becomes a critical part of Lyra's journey to find out why children are being stolen off the street. She has a host of folk who help and another host who attempt to hinder and there are lots of good twists and turns that you don't see coming until they're upon you. And once you make it through the first 75 pages or so, and resign yourself to the fact that, at least in this first book, you're probably never going to really like Lyra, it ends up being a very good read with a very good story.

4 Golden Compasses out of 5

(And if you're one of those - like I am - who would rather read before the movie, you've got until Christmas '07. Movie site here.)