I had started reading “His Dark Materials” a few years ago in Jabalpur, and then abandoned it into the second book (there are three) for reasons not clear to me now. After finishing “Hard Times”, I decided to take it up again and finish the series. I’m glad I did. The names of the three books are:
- Northern Lights (Called “The Golden Compass” in the US)
- The Subtle Knife
- The Amber Spyglass
The books are fascinating and make us think of several new concepts that we would never have thought of before. Take the concept of “daemons” (pronounced dee-mons) for example. In the series, the souls of people are outside their bodies in the form of “daemons.” They look like animals, but never leave the human to whom they’re attached. They can speak and are intelligent according to the level of their owner. The daemons of children can change shape at will, but finally settle down into a form determined by the nature of the young adult.
Image Credit: betizuka
It’s a touching concept and one that makes you wish we had daemons of our own in the real world. Imagine having a friend near you all the time who is you and yet not you. An entity that knows what your real nature is and is bound to you heart and soul forever. Someone to whom you can talk freely and who almost knows what you’re going to say and not be surprised. Someone who accepts you as you are because your nature is their nature too. An intriguing twist is that everyone’s daemon is of the opposite sex. It’s as if your soul takes on your personality as it would be if you were male or female instead.
Another prominent feature of the book is the enigmatic stuff called “Dust” (That’s a capital D). It turns out that it’s what we call Dark Matter and is conscious and responds to higher levels of thought, art and intelligence. Finally, there is the nature of the Church which is highly prominent. In fact, the book is about the rebellion against the Church which is portrayed as a despotic omnipresent government which wants to stifle and kill anything that they view as “threatening” to the “Authority”.
Don’t want to spoil the plot for a reader, so I’ll just say that the book invokes very fundamental questions about god and how he is and what he wants.
The book ends in a bittersweet manner, and is quite sad at the end (but not in an evil way). You just wish that things could have turned out differently. It’s not a “happy happy” sort of book and while it’s fantasy, there are some parts that will be better understood by adults.
I greatly recommend it to readers who want a bit of fantasy reading, but one which isn’t cheap. This is far from cheap and doesn’t center around thrills with no meaning. Not “junk food” by any means.