book review

His Dark Materials
by Philip Pullman
Laurel Leaf Books, 2000
o The Golden Compass, 351 pages
o The Subtle Knife, 288 pages
o The Amber Spyglass, 465 pages

Reviewed by T. Nelson

At first glance, this magnificent fantasy sci-fi trilogy seems like a cross between Dune and Paradise Lost, from which the title His Dark Materials is derived. In fact it's a vehicle for the author to teach us about the nature of the soul.

As shown in the movie (and presumably the HBO series, which most people seem to have missed), the golden compass is an antiky­thera-like device called an alethio­meter. The main character Lyra, whose name suits her as she, as a chronic liar who gives dishonest imaginative answers to most questions, uses it to get truthful answers and advice about what to do.

In this parallel world, the souls of children are wild animals that follow them around, like pets, and give them guidance. As the person grows up, their soul becomes fixed in a specific form. If a person is separated from their soul, they die with a spectacular release of energy in the form of sparks.

The Golden Compass

In Volume 1, Lyra's father discovers that strange particles called Dust are entering their world. He goes on an expedition to “study” them and Lyra goes on a trek to find her friend Roger, who's among the many kids who have disappeared, and discovers a terrible truth about what is happening to them. The movie follows this story up to the point just before it takes an even more brutally dark turn, but leaves the question of Dust unanswered.

In Lyra's world, the Church or ‘Magisterium’ is stuck in its Inquisition era and ruthlessly suppresses all know­ledge of Dust. It also discourages experi­men­tation with Dust, believing there to be a connection between Dust and Original Sin. Their Bible is also slightly different from the one in our dimension.

The story contains messages about how powerful organizations like the Magis­terium go astray and end up harming people, and—more importantly as I'm concerned—about subatomic particles. It turns out that Dust is what physicists call ‘dark matter,’ and consists of elementary particles from space that possess con­scious­ness. The alethio­meter allows Lyra to commun­icate with this Dust, which gloms onto people via their soul when they reach adulthood. Dust, according to the story, comes into being when living things become aware of them­selves; and matter ‘loves’ Dust. When a person dies, their soul or “daemon” reverts to Dust and disappears in a flash of sparks.

As Charlton Heston might say, “Dark matter is peeeeeople!”

The Subtle Knife

In Volume 2, Lyra and her friend Will, who's from our dimension, find a special knife that creates open doors or ‘windows’ between worlds, allowing them to travel from one dimension to another as they search for their lost friends. The story gets rather violent and the author almost runs out of characters.

The Amber Spyglass

In Volume 3, an Earth scientist invents an amber spyglass that enables her to visualize the dark matter or ‘shadow matter.’ She too discovers that it's conscious:

[S]he herself was partly shadow matter. Part of her was subject to this tide that was moving through the cosmos. . . and so were the human beings in every world, wherever they were . . . and unless she found out what was happening, they might all find themselves drifting away to oblivion, everyone. [p.329]

Lyra's mother, who is even more dishonest than Lyra herself, realizes that she has sacrificed the one thing she cared about—her child—for her career. She destroys her career and risks her life to repair the connection. Lyra's father, who's now living in a sort of fortress of doom in a different dimension, claims to be searching for a way to destroy the Dust and also the Authority, which is the Church's name for the Supreme Being. So the Church wants to kill both of them. But he is lying too.

A terrific battle ensues. At one point half a dozen species are fighting a battle, including ghosts, witches, humans, and angels. Even the Authority himself, now incredibly ancient, makes a brief appear­ance. Lyra is overwhelmed with guilt for what happened to Roger in Volume 1 and is determined to see him one last time. After she and Will get stuck in a dark world of the dead from which there is no escape, Lyra discovers the value of truthfulness and makes a deal with that world's unearthly denizens to enable their escape.

It would be a mistake to view this story as a critique of religion. At one point the angels say that the Authority isn't the real Creator but merely the first and most powerful angel, who became a dictator. But just as in Milton, there's no telling whose side these angels might be on: everyone lies, and none of the angels, witches, or humans knows the real truth.

As they recover from their ordeal, the two characters suddenly find that they're growing up. Puberty hits them like a piano falling on them. As often happens, their brains turn to mush; Lyra is no longer able to read the alethio­meter, and their daemons are starting to take their final form. They fall madly in love with each other Her friend Will discovers that traveling too far from one's own world weakens and eventually kills the soul. So each must return to their respective world and the doors between them must be sealed. After literally going through Hell, they now experience heartbreak.

Although the author doesn't cheat us by saying the whole thing was just a fantasy, it sneaks up on you at the end: the story isn't just about religion or dark matter or the ghosts or even the giant killer ducks and the talking polar bears who are good at TIG welding. Perhaps it's about childhood, and how we can remember what it was like to be a child and have a child's powerful imagination. And about how suddenly it ends: one day a door just closes and it's gone forever.

nov 27, 2024