Northern Lights or The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

It's one of my goals this summer to read at least a book a week. I realized during the school year how busy life gets with work and just trying to keep up with the students, so summertime has become my time to catch up on things I want to read, things I should read so I can stay in touch with my students, and things I should read to stay in touch with the literary world. Thankfully, often these categories cross over and I get to immerse myself in a new novel every week that will add to my library.

The first for the summer was actually an audio book I picked up from dad. It was a trilogy called His Dark Materials, with the first book being Northern Lights. One of my students had mentioned the books in passing and they were readily available, so I picked the trilogy up. Only later did I realize that in the USA it was popularized as The Golden Compass.

  

Listening to the book wasn't my favorite. There were missing links throughout that sometimes were connected and put to rest, but often the reader was left dangling. Obviously there are those things that are purposely left dangling because it's a trilogy, but these were small things, such as "How did the armored bear know where she was?" or "Apparently there must be a second entrance because that character wasn't in the room a few minutes ago." Moments like that aren't a big deal, but tend to pull the reader out of the story. Also, the audio books seemed to leave out quite a bit. Rather than explaining the sounds that are happening and reading the full book on tape, often it was as if they replaced the words with actual sounds. Seems like that would be a good thing, doesn't it? Well, it is, until you realize how hard it is to tell the difference between a door opening and a trunk opening and either option is possible in the story. Since it doesn't explain in the dialog for a couple of sentences, the reader is left unsure of what is actually being found and how it was found, thus pulling them out of the story yet again.  I just picked up the second book at the library yesterday, so I'm hoping that the audio book's interpretation is at fault for the lack of good, solid writing style. I'll let you know. 

As for the more intriguing discussion, many people say The Golden Compass is anti-organized religion. Honestly I didn't think about that when I was listening. It has a heavy-handed, moralistic feeling to it of being against anything organized that remains unquestioned by the majority of people. This isn't a new theme in literature though; it's been done over and over in different ways. My problem with it was how heavily the author chose to write it in. Rather than keeping the story line and plot foremost in the work, it almost felt as is Pullman made his message and moral the first priority and then tacked the story on to make it a little more palatable. Bad choice. Never is it a good thing when the reader can hear a dogmatic author voicing thoughts in his or her ear. Sadly, this defect cannot be the result of a poor audio tape reading or interpretation. Nor can the fact be that Pullman's characters can be flat, lifeless, and utterly one-dimensional. These cliched stereotypes drag the book down, creating even less of a plot to really sink yourself into on a rainy afternoon. Whereas some authors choose to make minor characters one dimensional because the stereotype is quicker, Pullman uses the stereotypes to criticize and find fault with people alive today. He chooses to create a one-dimensional character because it helps his moral, not because it helps the story. Again, never a good decision. Hopefully the second book will allow the reader to think their own thoughts and choose their own pathways of interpretation. Again, I'll be sure to let you know.