The Golden Compass
Philip Pullman, 1995
Fantasy Young adultContemporary fictionGraphic novels & humour
A girl and her shape-shifting daemon leave Oxford for a frozen north of armoured bears, stolen children and a compass that tells the truth. A brisk, wondering adventure with a sharp girl's voice, lyrical northern landscapes and a steady undercurrent of moral unease.
Feels like wonder and serenity. About adventure, freedom and morality.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy young heroines, talking daemons and quests through snow and strange cities. The story's stolen children and church-like authority give it a darker, more argumentative edge than some younger fantasy readers may want.
Why read it
It offers a vivid world, a heroine who questions what she is told, and a story that takes children's inner lives seriously.
A page from the book
The grief built into loving someone whose kind dies young.
You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you’ll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. We bear their children, who are witches if they are female, human if not; and then in the blink of an eye they are gone, felled, slain, lost. Our sons, too. When a little boy is growing, he thinks he is immortal. His mother knows he isn’t. Each time becomes more painful, until finally your heart is broken. Perhaps that is when Yambe-Akka comes for you. She is older than the tundra. Perhaps, for her, witches’ lives are as brief as men’s are to us. Philip Pullman.The novel appeared as Northern Lights in Britain in 1995 and as The Golden Compass in the US a year later.
Books that feel like this
More by Philip Pullman
Northern Lights
Philip Pullman, 1995
A girl in an Oxford of daemons and airships overhears a word—Dust—and follows it north into a mystery about consciousness, authority and other worlds.
The Amber Spyglass
Philip Pullman, 2000
In a cosmos where every soul has an animal shape, two children carry a knife between worlds while heaven and rebellion collide.
The Subtle Knife
Philip Pullman, 1997
A boy inherits a knife that cuts doorways between worlds, a girl can read the truth, and a war is gathering over both. Read for the pace and the doubt.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is The Golden Compass for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy young heroines, talking daemons and quests through snow and strange cities. The story's stolen children and church-like authority give it a darker, more argumentative edge than some younger fantasy readers may want.
- What is The Golden Compass like?
- A brisk, wondering adventure with a sharp girl's voice, lyrical northern landscapes and a steady undercurrent of moral unease. Feels like wonder and serenity. About adventure, freedom and morality.
- What should I read after The Golden Compass?
- If you liked The Golden Compass, try The Lincoln Highway (Amor Towles), Tress of the Emerald Sea (Brandon Sanderson) and The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis).
A taste of the feed
What a photograph holds that the people standing in it can't see.
The funny thing about a picture, thought Woolly, the funny thing about a picture is that while it knows everything that’s happened up until the moment it’s been taken, it knows absotively nothing about what will happen next. And yet, once the picture has been framed and hung on a wall, what you see when you look at it closely are all the things that were about to happen. All the un-things. The things that were unanticipated. And unintended. And unreversible.
The Lincoln Highway · Amor Towles
How much of your character is just a container you were poured into?
We want to imagine that people are consistent, steady, stable. We define who they are, create descriptions to lock them on a page, divide them up by their likes, talents, beliefs. Then we pretend some—perhaps most—are better than we are, because they stick to their definitions, while we never quite fit ours. Truth is, people are as fluid as time is. We adapt to our situation like water in a strangely shaped jug, though it might take us a little while to ooze into all the little nooks. Because we adapt, we sometimes don’t recognize how twisted, uncomfortable, or downright wrong the container is that we’ve been told to inhabit.
Tress of the Emerald Sea · Brandon Sanderson
Some desires, granted perfectly, may prove to be burdens too heavy for any mortal heart to bear.
Alas,“ said Aslan, shaking his head. ”It will. Things always work according to their nature. She has won her heart’s desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it.
The Chronicles of Narnia · C.S. Lewis
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