Critique: Northern Lights (His Dark Materials #1) (Philip Pullman)

I first read His Dark Materials ten years ago, recovering from my scoliosis correction. It’s one of the few books in the house that I’d only read once so I decided to read them again.

 

The prose is easy to read, flowing nicely. This is a brilliant trait for any writer but it’s essential for a children’s author.

 

*****SPOILERS***** 

Lyra is unbearable. I’ve never disliked the sole protagonist before so it was refreshing.

She is a risk-taker and adventurer whereas her daemon Pan is anxious, worried and a self-confessed coward. Yet he’s very willing to use physical force to get what he wants (which is basically all the time). Pan’s also the one who convinces Lyra to cross into the other universe. Daemons are an essential part of a person so this dichotomy is interesting; it may also be a legitimate reason for why their personalities sometimes switch places.

The twelve year-old initially has two speech patterns: middle-class for the adults and lower-class for the urchins (poor children). Changing speech patterns for different audiences is fully natural, especially if the audiences are distinct from each other. But after Rodger is taken, Lyra speaks to everyone with a lower-class speech pattern. At the very least, the intelligent Mrs. Coulter should have been spoken to with the middle-class speech pattern.

Lyra ‘considered it a deplorable lapse on the part of her subjects not to tell her everything and at once.’ Bloody hell. You’re speaking like a queen but you’re not even an honourable. Calm down!

When Lyra can’t find her friend Rodger, she climbs onto the roof and screams (#dramatic). This is just one of many examples where Lyra acts younger than her twelve years.

Pan says they thought Dust was bad just because the adults did. But they’re inherently rebellious so they wouldn’t automatically agree with the adults. Also, Pan and Lyra have been curious about Dust throughout the entire book with academic neutrality. So Pan’s statement seems out of character for them both.

 

The concept of parallel universes is central to this series.

It’s set in Oxford and it’s a universe with familiar names to our own (New Denmark, New France, Brytain). So Asriel strolling into another universe at the end isn’t as implausible as people seem to think.

In this universe, they have counts like Europe, not earls like in our UK. Also, the alethiometer is spelt with an ‘er’ like in America, not ‘re’ like in the UK.

Daemons are animal companions of a human, able to change into any form until puberty. Pictures of dead daemons show they can be ‘a fair woman’ or even a basilisk. Pan transforms into deer-hound sized dragon: so creatures don’t have to be normal sized or real. So, considering Pan has in every other similar situation tried to fight his way out, he should have easily escaped from the grip of Coulter’s daemon.

 

Everyone in Lyra’s universe seems to be wired for cruelty.

The Master at Jordan College, Oxford, tries to poison Lord Asriel, Lyra’s uncle. Asriel forces Lyra to spy on the Master but says she’d on her own if she’s caught.

Lyra and the urchins regularly destroy property and throw hard objects at other kids. Someone asks to pay for fish and Lyra feels like telling Ioric to kill the man. (The Master saying Lyra’s full of ‘goodness and sweetness’ is misplaced.)

Is this all a way to separate Lyra’s universe from our own? Is there something about having a part of your soul (daemon) an animal give you more animalistic behaviours?

 

Goodness, gracious, this book has a fair few potholes.

Lee’s balloon has ‘racks of philosophical instruments’. No. One: a balloon would have instruments relating to engineering or physics. Two: there’s no such thing as ‘philosophical’ instruments.

The witches say they aren’t interested in the Dust hunters, yet they know quite a bit. So this comment seems like a way for the witches to inform the Gyptians without divulging everything. It was, to be honest, messily done.

When Rodger dies, we’re not shown his death, either how or when it happened. One could say this is the author cleverly hiding death from view to save the sensibilities of his children audience. But this isn’t the case, considering we’ve been shown death on this book plenty of times before.

 

Iorik the armoured bear is one of my favourite characters. Yet some things weren’t handled too well with him.

We learn that the armoured bears banished, and took armour from, Iorik. But if he was deprived of his armour, how did the humans trick Iorik out of it? Did he make it in between being banished by bears and indentured by humans? The bears are master metal workers so it would be possible, I presume, and the lack of safety and resources could be why Iorik’s armour is ‘crudely riveted together’.

It’s well established that the armoured bears don’t break their word. So when Iorik goes to crush someone’s skull after just promising to not take vengeance, this just goes to disprove what many character’s had said (and what many characters continue to say after this episode).

The only saving grace I can find is Serafina saying that bears can only be tricked when acting like humans. It’s as well established that armoured bears can’t be tricked as much as they don’t break their word, so maybe bears acting like humans will allow them to break their word too. But I’m grasping at straws.

 

Lyra has loads of thoughts that are nonsensical. Yes, she’s a child, but she was educated at one of the best universities: she should know better. One could argue that concepts would likely be different in different universes.

The alethiometer tells Lyra to trust Iorik. When Lyra’s worried that the bear’s too tired, she berates herself for not trusting Iorik. How is being considerate not trusting someone?

One thought gave me whiplash because it was so bizarre: ‘”It ent a lizard… it’s a chameleon.”’ Chameleons are lizards. That’s like claiming a peacock isn’t a bird! But then Lyra interprets the chameleon as air because they sustain themselves with air, not eating or drinking. This is just peculiar. This clue is essential for the plot of the book but this is the only time we encounter chameleons. All the other alethiometer clues make sense so to throw this one into the mix comes out of nowhere.

Lyra, because she couldn’t save Rodger from Asriel’s experiment, thought this was her ‘diligently working to betray him’. This is an odd thought. By trying to save Rodger, Lyra demonstrates loyalty, an action that contradicts betrayal. Working to betray someone means taking actions with the intent of betrayal (which Lyra did not do).

 

There were two positive stand-out moments in this book. Iorik’s blood lands on Lyra ‘like a token of love.’ This is fantastic because blood and love both come from the heart. When Iorik killed another bear, it’s life ‘came away in his [Iorik’s] teeth.’ Amazing.

 

As a gentle read, this book certainly stands out. The world that’s been created is really gripping. The idea of daemons is attractive because you get your own personal pet. There’s a lot of interesting plots points and world building that grab your attention. There were too many mistakes for my liking, however. It’s a shame because the concept of the book is brilliant: the execution let it down.