A fascinating story for all sorts of reasons -- so much so that it's
difficult to know where to begin.
On one level it's a very good quest-type adventure, set in a world
which is similar to this one, but significantly different in terms
of geography, history, development of technology, religion -- plus
one other really significant difference which I'll come to
later on.
Purely as an adventure, it works very well. The heroine
(named Lyra, about 10 years old if I remember rightly) sets out to
find some of her friends who have mysteriously disappeared. In the
process she also gradually pieces together the truth about her own
past, who her real parents are and in what way all these things are
connected with some weird stories she has overheard about the Northern
Lights and another world 'beyond the sky'.
Lyra herself is a fascinating character. I don't remember coming across
anyone in fiction with quite her particular combination of
characteristics. As in any good story, of course, her character and our
perception of it develops as we go along. The story itself does move
at a great pace and the plot takes several twists. It kept me
guessing -- particularly about the characters and motivations of
certain key individuals -- all the way through.
What really sets this book apart, though, is the extraordinary
imaginativeness of the writing. Sometimes a 'parallel world' concept
is used in a story just for a little variety, to explore some of the
human possibilities from a slightly different perspective. We have
some of this here too, trying out the effects of a different relationship
between religion and science, exploring the issues that might arise for a
society of intelligent warrior-bears, imagining a love affair (of sorts)
between an ordinary mortal and someone who, if not exactly immortal, lives
many times longer than we do. All this is written with great sensitivity
and perceptiveness, so that we are able -- with some considerable degree of
sympathy -- to enter into the feelings and dilemmas of characters
that are very different from ourselves.
The greatest imaginative achievement must surely be the way the author
develops the idea that human beings in the world of the story have
a sort of companion-spirit, for which the word 'daemon' is used. The nature
of the vital link between human and daemon -- and the various implications
of this -- gradually emerges as the tale unfolds. (One might see
the daemon as a sort of externalisation of the soul, the conscience or some
other such concept. My impression is, however, that we would be doing
the story an injustice by trying to force it into an allegorical framework
of this sort.)
All this is done so skilfully that we not only accept this
apparently bizarre concept for the purposes of the story, we enter into
the feelings of Lyra and her daemon towards each other. We begin to feel
we understand something of what it would mean to experience life in
this way. We even share -- to some extent -- in Lyra's horror when she
encounters a situation where the relation between human and daemon is
violated. (I hope what I have just said is too vague to be considered a
'spoiler'.)
The book uses the genre of fantasy in the best possible way -- to
explore ideas which could probably not have been tackled in any other
medium. Whatever children may make of it -- and I imagine it must be
pretty popular -- it's one of the most fascinating and strangely moving
books I've read for some time.
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