First Quarter Outside Reading Book Review

First Quarter Outside Reading Book Review
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
Published by Dell Laurel-Leaf in New York in 1995
Genre: Fantasy Fiction

The Golden Compass is a well-known book. Philip Pullman tells a story of another world and a girl from that world named Lyra Belacqua and her daemon, Pantalaimon. They go on a journey to the north to find Lyra’s friend, Roger, who was taken by the Gobblers. They end up meeting a lot of people, including witches and polar bears. In the end of the book, Lyra finds out that her Uncle is actually her father and that Mrs. Coulter is her mother. They also find a way to find dust.
“Philip Pullman’s award-winning The Golden Compass is a masterwork of storytelling and suspense, critically acclaimed and hailed as a modern fantasy classic,” is a quote from the back of the book.
I’ve never read anything like The Golden Compass before. The author’s use of imagery makes me feel like I’m actually in the book witnessing what is happening. I’ve only read one book that was remotely similar to it and that’s The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud. They remind me of each other because of the large amount of fast paced adventure that kept me on my toes for the entire book.
“Lyra leaped up and seized Roger’s hand. She pulled hard, and then they tore away from Lord Asriel and ran, hand in hand, but Rodger cried and twisted, because his daemon was caught again, held fast in the snow leopard’s jaws, and Lord Asriel himself was reaching down toward her with a wire; and Lyra knew the heart-convulsing pain of separation and tried to stop- But they couldn’t stop.” (Pg. 345)
The movie was the first thing that made me interested in this book. It was extremely exciting and I wanted to know more, so I decided to read it. I like to make sure that I’ll like a book before I read it, so I went online and read articles about it. These articles expressed how much other readers liked the book and this made me want to pick it up that moment. The book was much better than the movie, even if it was pretty much the same thing. After reading the first two paragraphs I thought that it would be exactly the same as the movie, but it wasn’t. The book was set at a faster pace than the movie was and it answered a lot of the questions that the movie left me with because it went into greater detail than the movie did. It was also very descriptive and made me feel like I was actually experiencing what was happening. The Golden Compass was a wonderful book and I would like to read the second one in the series as soon as possible.