The Golden Compass

Title: The Golden Compass
Author: Phillip Pullman
Genre: fantasy, fiction
Reviewer: Kimberly

The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman takes place in a universe similar to the one we live in, except that everyone in that universe has a daemon, an animal that shows his or her personality. When people are young, their daemons can change into different animals; however, as they grow older their daemon settles as one animal. Peoples’ daemons are typically of the opposite gender. The story begins when Lyra Belacqua, the main character, and her unsettled daemon, Pantalaimon, go into a forbidden room in Oxford and sees someone slip poison into her Uncle Asriel’s drink. This is the start of an adventure that includes friendship, death, betrayal, a quest, stolen children, witches, and panserbjorne, armored bears. This stunning struggle continues in the two next volumes, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

I enjoyed The Golden Compass and the other books in the trilogy because of the suspense and shocking plot twists. It was a truly unique tale that I just had to keep reading and was easy to visualize. The story was amazingly written and wonderfully descriptive and I felt like I was in the story with the characters. Even though it was obviously fantasy it seemed so real. I would definitely recommend this book to others. Anyone who loves to read, or reads at all, will enjoy this book, unless they have no imagination or despise books.