The Golden Compass
My dear friend D. practically insisted, ahem, suggested I read the first book The Golden Compass, convinced I’d enjoy it. It sat on my nightstand for a year.
“It’s YA”, I told myself, “I’m too old for YA”.
Yet I, and the great masses, have gobbled down Harry Potter, an example of YA spun to massive K, YA, and A success. And yes, of course, I’ve pre-ordered the last of the last.
One day, feeling guilty, I picked it up and before I knew it I was 100 pages in and asking D. for the second volume. It takes place in an alternate universe Oxford University. That hooked me right away. I spent a year of college at Oxford; the city and that year holds a very dear place in my heart. In the alt. Oxford, all humans have a living, external embodiment of their emotional lives: a Daemon, in the form of an animal. [ Wonder Twin powers activate indeed.] Our young heroine is "the chosen one"; an exceptionally smart and wiley child who constantly outwits her numbskull elders. Who doesn’t love that? Oxford, animals, smart children, and oh yes, it’s dark, heart of darkness dark, end of the world dark.
D. was right, it won me over in a ways I couldn’t have anticipated. And now there’s a movie coming out December 2007, woo hoo!
“It’s YA”, I told myself, “I’m too old for YA”.
Yet I, and the great masses, have gobbled down Harry Potter, an example of YA spun to massive K, YA, and A success. And yes, of course, I’ve pre-ordered the last of the last.
One day, feeling guilty, I picked it up and before I knew it I was 100 pages in and asking D. for the second volume. It takes place in an alternate universe Oxford University. That hooked me right away. I spent a year of college at Oxford; the city and that year holds a very dear place in my heart. In the alt. Oxford, all humans have a living, external embodiment of their emotional lives: a Daemon, in the form of an animal. [ Wonder Twin powers activate indeed.] Our young heroine is "the chosen one"; an exceptionally smart and wiley child who constantly outwits her numbskull elders. Who doesn’t love that? Oxford, animals, smart children, and oh yes, it’s dark, heart of darkness dark, end of the world dark.
D. was right, it won me over in a ways I couldn’t have anticipated. And now there’s a movie coming out December 2007, woo hoo!
Comments
They are absolutely fantastic (also Lyra's college reminds me quite a bit of Jesus, except that Hall doesn't had a anteroom off the side of High Table unlike in Lyra's college).