August Books 35) Northern Lights, by Philip Pullman

[nwhyte]

I must have read this over a decade ago - I seem to remember buying the first two books shortly before the third came out - and it's interesting to discover which bits have stuck in the mind and which seem new. Pullman's world-building is simply superb. It's not just the places - Lyra's Oxford, the Fens, the Arctic wastes - but also the rules of

Comments

Rules of the world

[fjm]

I didn't like the world building: for me, it collapsed because he never thought through the consequences of the daemons

[sashajwolf]

the most memorable and horrifying moment of the book is that point near the end of Chapter 16 when it looks as if Pantalaimon and Lyra are going to be separated

Yes, that's the bit I always cite when I'm explaining how powerful the writing is.

[artw]

The opening of book two, which I read last night, annoyingly has Lyra waiting passively for somebody to come and feed her because in her world servants do the cooking. It's not that he's not allowed to show female characters with weaknesses, it's that it is completely at odds with the character he created in the first volume.