\n| Re-Readability<\/td>\n | ![](\"https:\/\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/stars4.jpg\" "\\"Good") <\/td>\n | Characters<\/td>\n | ![](\"https:\/\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/stars3.jpg\" "\\"Fair") <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nStory<\/strong>: Pullman tells a story of an intricately crafted world, similar to ours, but where magic is treated as science, technology is vaguely Edwardian, and everyone has an external expression of their soul in the form of a familiar animal, a daemon.<\/p>\nThe background of the story — with its various lands and peoples, it’s strangeness and familiarity, ruled over by the churchly Magisterium — is lovely, well thought out presented. The story is far more pedestrian, as a young girl — who coincidentally is the subject of a mysterious prophecy — gets caught up in the various machinations of the Magisterium, her iconoclast uncle, a mysteriously dangerous woman, various freedom loving peoples, a disgraced war-bear, and Something Awful Going on Up in the North. Coincidence tends to snowball with coincidence, with little Lyta at the center of all of them.<\/p>\n Characters<\/strong>: Pullman’s characters, for the most part, are well played cardboard cut-outs. Aside from way too much Nobody Is As They Appear (and Nobody Can Be Trusted Except Those Who Can), all of the major players tend to be somewhat (or terribly) unpleasant, while the supporting cast is all unrealistically nice. The aforementioned war-bear is the most interesting one of the lot, and even there he’s not all that complexly drawn.<\/p>\nRe-Readability<\/strong>: There’s probably plenty there that bears re-reading — for the background of the world, if nothing else — but the miasma of general unpleasantness might make it a while before I do so.<\/p>\nOverall<\/strong>: The Golden Compass <\/em>isn’t a bad book, it’s just not as enjoyable, innovative, or interesting as I’d hoped it would be. I’m hoping the succeeding volumes showed improvement.<\/p>\nBearing in mind I haven’t read the next two (though I plan to), I found nothing presented that I’d call a nasty or unfair attack on religion. The Magisterium is clearly not a nice bunch of folks, but we don’t encounter them all that much, and the plotting and scheming of various groups within it certainly has precedent in our (non-fictional) history when religions take over the state. That’s not a condemnation of religion, faith, or theism — but of the frailty of humans. You’d think religious types would actually applaud that recognition — but in the context of church governance, perhaps it hits too close to home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After somewhat enjoying the movie, and being a bit torqued over the vehement condemnation of the source books by various religious conservatives, I really wanted to like this book series. Well,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11924,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/12\/30\/movie_review_the_golden_c.html","url_meta":{"origin":12611,"position":0},"title":"Movie Review: The Golden Compass","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 30-Dec-07 5:31pm","format":false,"excerpt":"We all went out to the movies this afternoon.\u00a0 Katherine and Alex (and Ginger) saw Alvin & the Chipmunks.\u00a0 Nick and Mary and Margie and I saw The Golden Compass....","rel":"","context":"In "Movies"","block_context":{"text":"Movies","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/goldencompass.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":33096,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/05\/so-why-were-folks-so-torqued-off-about-googles-doodle.html","url_meta":{"origin":12611,"position":1},"title":"So why were folks so torqued off about Google's Doodle?","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 5-Apr-13 9:21pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I mean, even if you get beyond the people who thought it was Hugo Chavez, was Cesar Chavez really a less Christian \"Eastery\" (never mind it was his birthday) a choice than, say, Bing showing Easter Eggs? \u00a0If not then why were folks having a conniption? Embedded Link Are Colored\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12005,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/12\/14\/flop.html","url_meta":{"origin":12611,"position":2},"title":"Flop?","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 14-Dec-07 7:56pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Les points out the inevitable crowing over The Golden Compass opening\u00a0not as well as expected\u00a0-- crowing, in this case, by the Catholic League, which had organized a boycott over the...","rel":"","context":"In "Disney\/Pixar"","block_context":{"text":"Disney\/Pixar","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/disney"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5004,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/11\/17\/not_frell.html","url_meta":{"origin":12611,"position":3},"title":"Not-Frell","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 17-Nov-03 3:49pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Pretty decent rumors abount that a 4-hour Farscape mini-series is going to be shooting soon. The mini will wrap up various dangling plot lines, perhaps paving the way for Farscape...","rel":"","context":"In "Media & Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Media & Culture","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":30201,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/09\/10\/new-52-blues.html","url_meta":{"origin":12611,"position":4},"title":"New 52 Blues","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 10-Sep-12 10:08pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Remarkably, this article nails some of the DC \"New 52\" issues I'm most torqued about, in general and specifically.Trivial? Maybe. On the other hand, to me, it's like the \"Han Shot First\" controversy writ huge on the comic book scene -- crappy corporate\/editorial decisions changing something that was just fine\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/images0-focus-opensocial.googleusercontent.com\/gadgets\/proxy?container=focus&gadget=a&resize_h=100&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcomicbook.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F08%2FDC-New-52-300x157.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1322,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/01\/25\/boo_frickin_hoo.html","url_meta":{"origin":12611,"position":5},"title":"Boo-frickin-hoo","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 25-Jan-02 6:35am","format":false,"excerpt":"The Saudis are apparently torqued that the Pentagon has reversed its policy on requiring female service personnel to put on the abaya when going off-base. Note that the Saudis never...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |
![](\"http:\/\/images.amazon.com\/images\/P\/0440238137.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg\" "\\"The")
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