From Cover to Cover: Northern Lights/The Golden Compass

Hello and welcome back to From Cover to Cover! I know last month I said I was going to be reading The Fountain Society, but there's been a slight change of plan. You see that book isn't available electronically, and getting a hold of a physical copy in the hospital was a mite difficult so I decided to push it back a little. Awfully sorry, Theron. I promise to get right on that next month. In fact, it is ordered and on the way! In the meantime I've decided to take a recommendation from my gorgeous and talented friend, Wanderlust Smith, an extremely talented and gorgeous alternative model who's work you can check out over here.

I've actually had this book lying on my shelf for years, but never got around to reading it, and as there's no better opportunity than an extended hospital stay for catching up with your own personal library, this seemed like a great time to finally get to it!

Northern Lights, or The Golden Compass in the United States, was first published in 1995 as the first book of the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. It takes place in another world where the souls of humans are outwardly expressed by animal companions called daemons, and follows Lyra, a young girl under the care of scholars at Jordan University, Oxford. When her best friend, Rodger the kitchen boy, is taken by a group known only as the Gobblers, she vows to save him. Soon she is swept up in an epic journey to Arctic North, where she encounters a host of colourful characters, must escape the manipulative clutches of the devious Miss Coulter and discover the mysteries that lie behind Dust. The strange substance that both Miss Coulter, and her stoic uncle Lord Asriel, are so obsessed by. Oh, and it has armoured bears. And they're awesome!

I'm going to be referring to this book as Northern Lights, mainly because that's the name of the book I read, but also because the reason behind the name change in the US is kind of dumb.You see, originally Philip Pullman was going to name his trilogy The Golden Compasses which gave the US publisher impression that the first book was titled The Golden Compass, singular. Apparently they were so taken by this name, that even after Pullman changed the overarching title to His Dark Materials, they still insisted on using the name because they liked it. Way to support brand cohesion there, guys. I suppose it especially gets to me because, technically, there isn't even a compass in the book, no matter how much the film wanted to re-brand the alethiometer as one.

Naming issues aside, this book is an astounding read, especially on a technical level. It introduces us to a world that is like our own, perhaps stepped back in time a century or so, yet manages to establish its more fantastical elements effortlessly. It doesn't take long for daemons to seem like the most natural thing in the world, so much so that I can't help but feel that perhaps I'm in the wrong world and should, by rights, be in one where I have a daemon of my own, as it sounds wonderful. By the time we get into the realm of witches and armoured bears that talk and have opposable thumbs, well, it all feels perfectly sane and reasonable within the world that Pullman has built. In fact my only quarrel with these elements falls with the witches in particular, and that's more because I'm not sure what purpose they serve story wise other than to swoop in at opportune/inopportune moments to sweep the plot along. But at least I have no trouble accepting them as part of this world, and they do add an interesting wrinkle to the deamon dynamic.

Pullman builds his world well, and doesn't really bog down the book explaining the politics, or the geography, or the culture of anything that isn't immediately being dealt with at the time. This, I feel, is a bit of a double edged sword. On the one hand it means you become acquainted enough with Gyptian or Pasternore to follow along but it also means that if you try and branch out and focus on the world at large from snippets overheard from scholars, explorers, Coulter and Asriel, you can almost drown in the layers of detail there. Because even though Pullman doesn't force the politics and geography of the world into your face, it's obvious he's put a lot of thought into it. Characters discuss regions we never see, they mention rebellions, wars, the politics of far off nations. It all makes the world seem terribly fleshed out, but at the same time doesn't rely on the crutch of exposition. If anything, Pullman has his characters talk about the world as we would talk about our own, and that's a fairly impressive thing to pull off because writers can become so eager to build their world, that they fall into the trap of giving us a hand held guided tour of it just to make sure we appreciate the work they put in. And that's fine, but unless you're a tourist paired up with a very overeager local, that's not how the world really works.

These layers extend right down to the subtext, this is a novel that I think can be as deep as you want it depending on how much you're willing to peel back. The various orders of power and institute in the book are definite nods to organised Christianity, I'd single out the Catholic church because they seem obsessed with doing strange things to children, but none of them seem to have nearly enough dogma for it. On the face of it they're obsessed with the control of free thought and control and suppression of information (like most church like figures in fiction ever) but Pullman goes deeper, and soon the novel is brushing against the idea of sexual mutilation of young children for religious ends and the idea of his mysterious substance, Dust and the Daemons themselves being tied into the process of puberty and sexual progression. Something the various churches of the world have always tried to control with an iron fist.

I've heard it suggested that Lyra is a Christ like figure, coming into the world to shake the foundations of old time religion and show them a better way. But I don't think this is the case. Lyra and her companions seem more representative of free thought, innocence, knowledge, all the kinds of freedoms the church seek to repress. The Gyptians are travellers who go where they please, look after their own business and try to pay nobody any mind or trouble unless they're being paid mind or trouble themselves. The scholars at Jordan dedicate their life to guarding and passing on knowledge. Lee Scoresby is a freewheeling traveller and Iorek Byrnison and the other bears trust their inbuilt morality and instincts and are stronger for it - Both of whom are true to themselves and their needs, above external influences.

These characters sit in stark contrast to Miss Coulter and the other antagonists, who don't seem particularly content with their lot and are driven by things they're told, either by superiors such as the staff of Bolvangar, or by ancient texts and belief systems that they squander their life and their considerable power to try and interpret or fulfil. Yet, while the characters in this book are generally strong, believable and a joy to read about if there is an issue I take with the novel, it is with the characters.

First of all is Lyra. I think on the whole she's a great character, she's very obviously a child and in over her head, but through ignorance and sheer bullheadeness seems to pull through situations most adults would crumble in. I don't even really mind that she seems overly adept at picking up new skills. It was established from the off she is a bright child, she just needs an exciting way to learn for it to sink in and what's more exciting than an adventure across the world while being the focus of the biggest manhunt in history? What I don't like is that she always seems to be in the right place at the right time, and while much of this story is about destiny and fate and I'm sure you could shrug that off as such, it does become a little brow creasing when she just so happens to leave a party at just the right time for events to happen. Or bursts out of a place at exactly the right time to be saved. In a novel where the narrative is so rich and the story flows so well, these instances stand out in my head because they just bring it all to a juddering, clunking halt.

The other issue is that having reached the end of the book... I don't think I have all that much vested interest in the antagonists any more. Mrs. Coulter never really hooked me in the first place, the most dangerous and shocking thing about her was her monkey, and as for the other antagonist of the book - He was built up as a mysterious, complex character with his own secrets and his own agenda. Turned out he was as much of a spoilt child as Coulter herself, so used to getting his own way simply because he wanted it that he'd break the universe to please his own whims. I suppose it's my own fault. I built him up in my mind, then he turned out to be a much more basic and unlikeable character than I thought.

To scoring then! Northern Lights is a novel that's rich and deep with detail and subtext, the characters are fantastic, the story flows well and it has surprisingly dark edges but then, I suppose it was written as the anti-Narnia so that's to be expected. This is one that I'm sure most have read already, but if you haven't it's definitely worth a look! Four out of five monkeys.

Next week, we'll hopefully be back on track for the Fountain Society!