Books I've Loved: His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman
MY FAVOURITE TRILOGY OF ALL TIME. I first discovered book one, Northern Lights, at my primary school library, where I made many of my favourite book discoveries (shout out to St. Damian’s in Bundoora); and I instantly fell in love with the rich world and characters Pullman had created. I hastily read the second book, The Subtle Knife, straight after, and ended up re-reading these two books several times before the third book, The Amber Spyglass, was released.
The fantasy trilogy is the coming of age story of Lyra Belacqua, who lives in a parallel universe similar to our own, with her daemon Pantalaimon (the animal embodiment of her soul). For those that haven’t read the trilogy I really don’t want to give away the plot, and so much happens that it’s difficult to summarise; if you’d like to know more Wikipedia has a detailed plot outline, but I urge you to go into these books with no prejudices or prior knowledge.
All I will say is that the magic of this trilogy is that each time you read it you understand a little more, you peel back another layer, you have a new insight into a character or theme.
The epic tale weaves fantasy, theology, physics, and parallel worlds with adolescence, friendship and love. These books may be labeled children’s fiction, but they are so much more. I’ve yet to read ‘adult’ books that I can re-read like the way I read books from my childhood; perhaps this has something to do with nostalgia, or perhaps there is some truth to children’s or young adult fiction that gets lost in adult books.
I read through the trilogy a couple of more times in high school, and even decided to base one of my Year 12 Design projects on the books. I look back now at the cover designs and box set packaging and absolutely cringe, but I can smile at my book-loving heart being in the right place.
Left to right: My boxed set of the trilogy; The covers I designed for my Year 12 project; The box set I designed for my Year 12 project.
These are the types of books that made me fall in love with reading, and made me want to be a writer. If I could ever write a book that made someone feel the way I felt when I read these – the sense of wonder and mystery and adventure so thrilling – well, that would be pretty amazing.
Pullman followed up the series with two short novels: ‘Lyra’s Oxford’, a short story set two years after the events of The Amber Spyglass, and ‘Once Upon A Time In The North’, a prequel based on the character Lee Scroesby. I purchased both books (as you can see I’m a sucker for beautiful covers, and these are gorgeous). An audiobook, ‘The Collectors’, has also been released, though I haven’t listened to it, and is a story of Mrs. Coulter, set much earlier than the events of the trilogy. There is also a future ‘The Book of Dust’, a companion book to the trilogy which I look forward to getting my hands on, though I don’t believe a release date has been set for this.
I think that’s enough on this trilogy for now – just go out and read it if you haven’t, and if you have please comment with your thoughts below – I love to talk about it!
Happy reading :)
