THE GOLDEN COMPASS by Philip Pullman
(His Dark Materials, Book One)
Ballantine Books, 1995, 351 pgs, ISBN: 0-345-41335-0, Mass Market Paperback, $6.99

Genre: Fantasy

I don’t have a lot to say prior to this review except that I’m so glad I read this book. It’s been recommended to me for years, and it’s entirely my fault that I haven’t read it before now. Following the completion of Anansi Boys, I’ll be moving on to The Subtle Knife. 

As I’m sure many others are doing right now, I began reading The Golden Compass in preparation for the upcoming film. Which isn’t to say that I went out and purchased it for that purpose. No, I already had a copy that I’d received many years ago as a Christmas gift. Somehow, I had never managed to read it. I suppose that my initial inspection of the summary had led me to believe that it was a modern day tale with a modern day little girl, and at the time that just wasn’t what I wanted to read.

Seeing the movie trailer changed all that. Not because of the visuals (and, Lord knows, they’re gorgeous), but because it showed me what kind of world I’d be introduced to. My misconception of what the story would be like was clear to me. It wasn’t a run of the mill “little girl ends up doing something she never expected in a world she’s never been with creatures she’s never seen.” No, that wasn’t it at all.

After completing The Golden Compass, I realize just how much that wasn’t the case. Certainly Lyra makes discoveries over the course of the novel, but it doesn’t feel like a strange and foreign thing. Lyra might as well be an explorer. It’s simply in her nature to ask questions and poke about, to get into scrapes and get dirty. Once she sets her mind on something, she pursues it relentlessly, whether it’s fighting with other children or going on a rescue mission that spans thousands of miles. Lyra is a unique and remarkable girl who doesn’t let a little thing like ‘not knowing’ get in her way. If she doesn’t know, she finds out.

And, my goodness, can she ever talk. She talks herself out of more situations (or, sometimes, into them). She’s quick witted and figures out what to say when in order to twist the moment to her advantage. She’s tenacious and compassionate, and I like her for all of those reasons.

There are some parts of the book that I’m still trying to understand — mostly, the story behind Dust. Sure, I follow all of the explanations, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around it in a way that will help me understand the characters’ obsession with it. I expect the next two books will further illuminate the topic, and I’m looking forward to that.

The concept of the daemons is wonderful. It’s just the kind of thing that I would have wanted as a child (oh, heck, I’d still love to have one). Daemons are so much a part of Lyra’s world that the very concept of anyone not having their soul companion is unthinkable. It’s what separates humans from other creatures, and reading the scenes that threaten to separate Lyra and Pantalaimon are heartbreaking.

While I won’t divulge any of the plot, I will say that it wasn’t what I was expecting. The beginning of the novel in no way lets on to what will be happening at the end, though all the pieces are there, being slowly revealed to the reader. I would have never foreseen the events of the last two chapters, and even while I was reading them, I couldn’t believe what was happening. The story is simultaneously exhilarating and tragic, and the last chapter leaves a clean opening for the book that follows.

I only recently purchased the His Dark Materials Omnibus that was released this year, and I find it of interest that there are new excerpts to each book, which the author calls “Lantern Slides.” They’re short snippets which seem to randomly fill in bits of information that, while not imperative to the story, are interesting to know just for being a fan of the work.

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AMERICAN GODS by Neil Gaiman
Harper Torch, 2001, 592 pgs, ISBN: 0-380-78903-5, Mass Market Paperback, $7.99

Genre: Fantasy

American Gods has now, officially, left my “I own it but haven’t read it” stack and moved onto “novels I’d like to read again one day.”

When I first picked up American Gods, I don’t think I knew what to expect. Sure, I’d heard the scores of Neil Gaiman fans singing its praises, but somewhere along the line I had missed out on what, exactly, the book was supposed to be about.

And now I understand why. To say that American Gods defies description is to say that so much happens – and good for you if you can keep up – that to decide where to start writing a comprehensible synopsis is something like trying to figure out where to start cleaning a house that has several millennia of random cultural artifacts lying around in no particular order whatsoever.

Though, don’t get me wrong. This book has plenty of organization, and kudos to Neil Gaiman for the way he arranges the plot. Even I, someone who likes to think herself capable of weeding out the upcoming surprises in most novels, missed out on some of the most obvious character insertions and plot turns. Pride would have me claim that it’s merely a lack of familiarity with some myths and legends but, really, it’s because Gaiman did such a damn good job.

So where does that leave us with attempting to summarize the story? Well, let’s try it like this:

Shadow is counting down the days until he’s released from prison; counting and imagining exactly how he’ll spend his first night of freedom. But even before he has the chance to walk through the gates, Shadow receives the first message in a lifetime’s worth of bad news. Suddenly he’s free, but he has no idea what to do, which is about the time that a man named Wednesday offers him a job.

Shadow is, understandably, skeptical about the entire situation, and the longer he stays in Wednesday’s company, the less certain he is about what to believe. But there’s no denying the strange things that are happening around him, the strange dreams, or the strange people he begins to meet. And, of course, there’s the little matter of his wife….

And that’s, really, only the very beginning, but to stay more would be giving away too much.

I suppose I had expected a different sort of narrative, something where the author is speaking in more direct, possibly humorous tones. Instead we have a very tight third person limited view from Shadow’s POV, which is more structured and action oriented than the meandering internal narrative that I had anticipated. And it’s all for the better, as the way the novel is written is exactly the way I would imagine Shadow’s mind works.

Neil Gaiman had a pretty long cast of characters to work with and, somehow, he pulled it off. At no point did I sit around wondering where these people were. I knew they were somewhere, and I knew that, wherever that was, it wasn’t integral to the story just yet. The main characters to be concerned about were Shadow and Wednesday, and they were almost always in plain view. As for the rest, it was clear from the beginning that they were important but peripheral.

And it should be obvious, but I’ll say it anyway – the more familiar you are with various myths and legends, the more you’ll understand the intricacies of American Gods. Some of the best moments in the novel were the paragraphs where I would sit back and laugh, recognizing a name or a character and reading about their new place in the modern world. It felt like I was sharing a private joke with the writer or, perhaps, with the characters themselves. Nudge, wink. (Of course, I never did figure out who was the man in the charcoal suit, and I’d still love to know.)

Overall, I’d say that this novel impressed me. As my first foray into Gaiman’s writing, I think it was a good choice. It’s long, but nothing in the novel seems out of place or pointless; it’s descriptive, but not too descriptive; and the characters that come along throughout the course of the story have so much personality – unique personality – that I wouldn’t mind reading entire stories dedicated to each of them.

Then, of course, there’s the ending. It has a very smirk-worthy quality, which is really the greatest thing you can ask for. 

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