Maybe you recall, coming up for ten years ago, the film version of the first book in this series, Northern Lights? Except the movie was called The Golden Compass, after the American version of the book, because Americans fall into a funk of existential dread if they don’t get to name everything themselves. It starred Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig? Yeah, don’t watch that. It was made when steampunk was still a thing. It has the worst child acting I think I’ve ever seen, and I was in a community theatre production of Annie. But the books. The books are…well.
I don’t want to say “good”, because it would be a lie, and I wouldn’t do that to you. But cult classics often get to be that way not because they’re good, but because of some indefinable resonance certain audiences feel towards them. Well, I’m not going to stand for that, so here’s my attempt to define what I liked about this series.
1. Lyra Silvertongue, nee Belacqua. Lyra is a terrific YA heroine. She doesn’t put up with grown-up shite, she isn’t afraid of danger (and if she is, she won’t show it), and she will tell you to your face what she thinks of you. Lyra is loyal, compassionate, brave, sassy, furious, and isn’t going to do what you think she should just because you’re taller than her.
2. Daemons. This is the name given to the animals that everyone in Lyra’s world is accompanied by. Daemons are familiars, but more than that: they’re basically a bit of your soul that walks around on the outside of you, that you can talk to and plot with and set to act as look-out while you pick a lock. I’ve given a lot of thought over the last few days to what my daemon would be. For the moment I’ve landed on a Binturong. (Google it, you won’t regret it.)
3. Armoured bears. The island of Svalbard, in the arctic circle, is inhabited in these novels by a race of anthropomorphic polar bears that forge their own armour and go into battle. Lyra gets to ride one around. Super great.
4. Witches. The witches in this book are awesome. They’re old-school trad. They fly on branches and wear tattered black silk, they live for hundreds of years, they occasionally take a human man for a lover if they feel like it but don’t get tied up with them (resulting in more than one broken male heart, which is also something I like in a book).
All of that stuff gets stirred around, and out pop more than a few unnecessary prophecies, a weird arc about destroying the church which is headed up not by God but by some angels pretending to be God (???), a plot that feels like a series of Quests tacked on to the ends of one another which are resolved individually but don’t ultimately make sense when joined together, and a Forever Romance between two thirteen-year-olds. Did I know all this was going to be one long eye-roll but keep reading anyway? I think you know the answer to that.
Look. There are people who think Reservoir Dogs and The Big Lebowski are good movies. We know they’re wrong, but there’s no point arguing with them. The heart wants what the heart wants. My heart wants Lyra and Pantalaimon and Serafina Pekkala and Iorek Byrnison, and you can just shut up about it.