8.2 /10 1 Votes
3.9/5 Goodreads Language English Publisher Scholastic Point Originally published July 1995 Preceded by His Dark Materials Genre Steampunk | 8.4/10 Fantasy Book Review Country United Kingdom Series His Dark Materials Publication date July 1995 Followed by The Subtle Knife | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Cover artist David Scutt and Pullman Awards Carnegie Medal, Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, 70th Anniversary Carnegie of Carnegies Similar Works by Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials books, Fantasy books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Northern Lights (known as The Golden Compass in North America and some other countries) is a young-adult fantasy novel by Philip Pullman, published by Scholastic UK in 1995. Set in a parallel universe, it features the journey of Lyra Belacqua to the Arctic in search of her missing friend, Roger Parslow, and her imprisoned uncle, Lord Asriel, who has been conducting experiments with a mysterious substance known as "dust".
Contents
Northern Lights is the first book of a trilogy, His Dark Materials (1995 to 2000). Alfred A. Knopf published the first US edition April 1996, entitled The Golden Compass. Under that title it has been adapted as a 2007 feature film by Hollywood and as a companion video game.
Pullman won the 1995 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's outstanding British children's book. For the 70th anniversary of the Medal, it was named one of the top ten winning works by a panel, composing the ballot for a public election of the all-time favourite. Northern Lights won the public vote from that shortlist and was thus named the all-time "Carnegie of Carnegies" on 21 June 2007.
Setting
The novel is set in a world dominated by an international theocracy, the Magisterium (also commonly called "the Church"), which actively suppresses heresy. In this world, humans' souls naturally exist outside of their bodies in the form of sentient "dæmons", talking animal spirits that constantly accompany, aid, and comfort their humans. Children's dæmons can freely and instantaneously change their appearance into that of any real or mythical creature; once people reach puberty, however, their dæmons settle into one permanent form.
Plot summary
12-year-old Lyra Belacqua runs wild with her dæmon Pantalaimon around Jordan College, Oxford, under the guardianship of the college's master. One day, she witnesses the Master poison wine intended for Lord Asriel, Lyra's rebellious and adventuring uncle. She warns Asriel, then spies on his lecture about "dust", mysterious elementary particles attracted to adults more than children, and images of a parallel universe that can be seen through the northern lights. The Oxford scholars agree to fund his research, considered heretical by the oppressive Church.
Lyra's friend Roger goes missing, presumed kidnapped by child abductors known only as the "Gobblers". Lyra is adopted by a charming socialite, Mrs Coulter. Before Lyra leaves Jordan, the Master secretly entrusts her with an alethiometer, a truth-telling device, which she quickly learns to use intuitively. After several weeks, Lyra discovers that Coulter is the leader of the Gobblers, a secret Church-funded project. Horrified, Lyra flees to the Gyptians, canal-faring nomads, many of whose children have also been abducted. They reveal to Lyra that Asriel and Coulter are her parents.
The Gyptians form an expedition to the Arctic, where they believe the Gobblers are holding their children. They stop in Trollesund, where Lyra meets Iorek Byrnison, the dispossessed royal heir of the panserbjørne armoured bears. Lyra uses her alethiometer to locate Iorek's missing armour; in exchange, he and his human aeronaut friend, Lee Scoresby join her group. She also learns that Lord Asriel has been exiled, guarded by the panserbjørne on Svalbard. Trollesund's witch consul tells the Gyptians of a prophecy about Lyra which she must not know, and that the witch clans are choosing sides for a war.
The party continue towards Bolvangar, the Gobbler research station. Guided by the alethiometer, Lyra detours at a village and discovers an abandoned child who has been cut from his dæmon and who soon dies. She realises the Gobblers are experimenting on children by severing the bond between human and dæmon, a soul-splitting process called intercision. Lyra and her companions are attacked by bounty hunters, and Lyra is captured and taken to Bolvangar, where she is reunited with Roger.
Coulter arrives and halts the intercision process as Lyra and Pantalaimon are about to be separated. She tells Lyra that the intercision is a way to prevent the onset of troubling adult emotions. Lyra engages Bolvangar's emergency alarm, sets the station aflame, and leads the children outside, where they are rescued by Scoresby, Iorek, the Gyptians, and Serafina Pekkala's flying witch clan. Lyra, Roger, and Iorek flee in Scoresby's hot air balloon as a battle erupts. Lyra directs the witches to tow the balloon towards Asriel's house of banishment in Svalbard, but she falls out and is taken by the panserbjørne to the castle of their usurping king, Iofur Raknison. She tricks Iofur into fighting Iorek, who arrives with the others to rescue Lyra. Iorek kills Iofur and takes his place as the rightful king.
Lyra, Iorek, and Roger travel to Svalbard, where Asriel has continued his Dust research in exile. He tells Lyra all he knows of Dust: that it has spawned parallel universes, it is somehow connected to death and misery, and that the Church believes it is the physical basis of sin. He plans to visit the other universes and destroy the source of Dust. Suddenly, he severs Roger from his dæmon, releasing an enormous amount of energy, killing Roger, and tearing a hole in the northern lights to a parallel universe. He walks into the new universe. Lyra, devastated, decides that Dust may be a force of good rather than evil. Vowing to stop Asriel, she and Pantalaimon pass through the opening in the sky.
Characters
All humans in Northern Lights, as well as witches, have a dæmon (pronounced "demon"), which is the physical manifestation of a person's "inner being", soul, or spirit. It takes the form of a creature (moth, bird, dog, monkey, snake, etc.) and is usually the opposite sex to its human counterpart. The dæmons of children have the ability to change form - from one creature to another - but towards the end of a child's puberty, their dæmon "settles" into a permanent form, which reflects the person's personality. When a person dies, the dæmon dies too. Armoured bears, cliff ghasts and other creatures do not have dæmons. An armoured bear's armour is his soul.
Title
During pre-publication of the novel, the prospective trilogy was known in the UK as The Golden Compasses, an allusion to God's poetic delineation of the world. The term is from a line in Milton's Paradise Lost, where it denotes the drafting compass God used to establish and set a circular boundary of all creation:
In the US, publisher Knopf had been calling the first book The Golden Compass (singular), which it mistakenly understood as a reference to Lyra's alethiometer (depicted on the front cover shown at the head of this article), because of the device's resemblance to a navigational compass. By the time Pullman had replaced The Golden Compasses with His Dark Materials as the name of the trilogy, the US publisher had become so attached to the original title that it insisted on publishing the first book as The Golden Compass rather than as Northern Lights, the title used in the UK and Australia.
Awards
For Northern Lights Pullman won both the annual Carnegie Medal for British children's books and the annual Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a similar award that authors may not win twice. Six books have won both awards in 45 years through 2011.
In the US, The Golden Compass was named Booklist Editors Choice – Top of the List, Publishers Weekly Book of the Year, a Horn Book Fanfare Honor Book, and a Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book.
Religion
Some critics have asserted that the trilogy and the movie portray the organized churches and religion negatively, while others - notably Dr Rowan Williams, formerly Archbishop of Canterbury - have argued that Pullman's works should be included in religious-education courses. Peter Hitchens views the series His Dark Materials as a direct rebuttal of The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis. Literary critic Alan Jacobs of Wheaton College in Illinois suggests that Pullman recasts the Narnia series, replacing a theist world-view with a Rousseauist one.
Adaptations and video game
A feature film adaptation of the novel, named The Golden Compass, was released in December 2007. The novel was adapted by Chris Weitz, who also directed the film. Dakota Blue Richards, in her film debut, played Lyra. The cast included Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Ian McKellen, Sam Elliott, Derek Jacobi, and Christopher Lee.
In 1996, Natasha Richardson narrated an audiobook version of Northern Lights. The trilogy, His Dark Materials, was abridged in a dramatisation by BBC Worldwide, published on 1 January 2003. It was also adapted unabridged and released by BBC Audiobooks. It is narrated by the author, Philip Pullman, with a full cast, including Joanna Wyatt as Lyra, Alison Dowling as Mrs Coulter, Sean Barrett as Lord Asriel and Iorek Byrnison and Stephen Thorne as the Master and Farder Coram.
The National Theatre in London staged a two-part adaptation of the trilogy in 2003–2004.
A video game of the movie adaptation of the book, titled The Golden Compass, published by Sega and developed by Shiny Entertainment, was released 4 December 2007. Players assume the role of Lyra as she travels through the frozen wastes of the North in an attempt to rescue her friend kidnapped by a mysterious organisation known as the Gobblers. Travelling with her are an armoured polar bear and her dæmon Pantalaimon (Pan). Together, they must use a truth-telling alethiometer and other items to explore the land and fight their way through confrontations to help Lyra's friend. The Golden Compass features a mix of fighting and puzzle solving with three characters.
It was announced in November 2015 by BBC that it will be making a new TV series adaptation of the book series, with Bad Wolf and New Line Cinema producing.