The Golden Compass

Review:

This book was often recommended to people looking for something to read once they finished Harry Potter. But I don't think that it really fits. In the most general sense it does, as it is a magic fantasy story with child protagonists. But something is different. The main difference is that this story takes place in a parallel universe, rather than hidden under our noses in this world. It's like the difference between Batman and Superman; little kids like to think that with enough training and motivation they could become Batman, because he's just a human being, but Superman is an alien and out of the reach of normal humans. The same thing with this book as opposed to Harry Potter. Harry is just a normal kid living in our normal muggle world until he discovers his wizarding heritage. Any reader could hope that the same thing might happen to them. But the Golden compass takes place in another universe, one similar but yet quite different from this one. The protagonist, a girl named Lyra, is an orphan raised at a university, and she has the combination of luck, courage, kindness, leadership, willpower, and adventuresome spirit peculiar to children's book protagonists. There's lots of mystical stuff, talking bears, steampunk air balloons, animal spirit avatars, mishaps and mysteries, and all that other good stuff. But something was missing from this book, and I can't put my finger on what it was. It just didn't quite completely grab me. One irritating thing about it is that it is a total cliffhanger; it's really like getting the first part of a very long three part book. I didn't know that when I started reading, so I was very surprised when the story, instead of concluding, just stopped. Maybe it's not quite fair to review what is on the first third of the story, but that's the book I read. It was interesting and definitely worth reading, but it's not another Harry Potter.