[Blacknarcissa]

YES YES! ITS GUNNA BE ENGLISH RIGHT?
Oh..
Nicole kidman

.. crud!

anyways, I DIDNT SEE THE BBC THING! :eek:

ohmygod!?
neva heard that.. ;o
its been on
or its being made?

[Raule]

Believe it or not, there was actually a stage production done of this too -- in Great Britain. Timothy Dalton played Lord Asriel, which I thought was quite interesting casting. Interestingly enough, another James Bond actor, Daniel Craig, will be playing Lord Asriel in the film version. I think Nicole Kidman could make an interesting Mrs. Coulter. However, I'm apprehensive what film might do to it.

I actually liked the second and third books of the trilogy better than the first. In fact, I'm one of those rare people who liked the 2nd one best.

[Blacknarcissa]

I'm special, i also enjoyed the second one best.

and.. HARDY HAR HAR I LIVE IN 'GREAT' BRITAIN.. i attually never heard of the play though. :eek: AND also i have found out that they did a radio 4 dramatization of it! I'll post the link for downloading inabit. Ahhh also they are doing/have done a BBC drama of it! :D :D :D !!

Methinks you can buy it from Amazon too!!

[Blackadder]

I just didnt like the book. Can't really explain why. Think it was just uninteresting and when I read it I didn't want to turn over another page.

[alison]

Some random thoughts. I admire this series, though I have reservations. I think Northern Lights is the best by far, and enjoyed it hugely, and actually couldn't put the next two down the first time I read them. But on rereading, the books fell away for me a little. I enjoyed book 1 as much as ever, but the next two began to irk me. Partly it was the splintering narrative, which becomes more and more cumbersome, and there were just a few too many loose ends (especially, what about the cut children at the end of Book 1? I wanted to know...). Partly the didactic tone, which begins to trumpet in book 3. To be perfectly honest, I think Pullman is just as didactic as CS Lewis, and you could see the whole Edenic thing looming large long before the end. But there are very moving or gripping passages in the books, some wonderful inventions, and the whole idea of the daemons is plain genius.

The war of Heaven and Hell is a straight steal from Milton - not that there's anything wrong with that, I hasten to say, but it really ain't got nothing on Paradise Lost, which Pullman openly acknowledges as an inspiration. For me, it highlights that Pullman is a good writer, but not, like Milton, a great writer. Fwiw. So that the ambitious storyline isn't quite met by a similar quality in the writing. It's hardly damning to be not as great as Milton, not many people are: but I suppose I wanted a bit more than merely a neat inversion of the good/evil axis, which is ultimately what it becomes, although it threatens for much of the book to be more interesting than that. Pullman takes his cue from William Blake: the reason why Satan is such a charismatic and compelling character is that "Milton was a True Poet, and of the Devil's Party without knowing it". I guess I wanted more of a true poet's negative capability in the subtext, since all the ingredients promise it, and felt let down by a rather prosaic tidying up of its metaphysics, a desire to draw a moral from it all at the expense of the story. Something like that, anyway: though maybe it's just that Pullman isn't quite a good enough writer to avoid bathos in the final soaring passage.

[Justin]

I am in the midst of reading the Golden Compass, and am thus far impressed with its originality. I was ready for a break from elves and dwarves, so witches and polar bears suit me just fine,lol. The only weakness that I can thus far present is the subject of Lyra's naivete, at some point she has to realize before she does, how important she must be, even thinking through her own eyes a childs imagination must lead her to believe shes a princess or something. I am looking forward tremendously to the next book, the promise of crossing into other universes and other worlds is exciting.

[Blacknarcissa]

Its really hard to say what i want to say without ruining the books for others. hmm.. well i, attually didn't see the whole 'Adam & Eve & The Snake' story coming..? I read the books yearrrrrrs and yearrrrrrrrs ago and I enjoyed it because it had been the 'hardest' book I had read so far. Before that i had read Anthony Horowitz and Tamora Pierce which i think is pretty easy-reading. Maybe thats why I love The Pellinor Series (Alison Croggon) so much because the books are aimed at teenage/young adults.. i think. She doesn't 'dumb-down' for young audiences which i like. I know lots of adults who have read it and enjoyed it veryyy much! Children are more intelligent than you know!. Some writers when writing for children attempt and fail at trying to get down with the kids and speak our language/slang and end up sounding like an embarassing parent. Hmmm.
Lalala I love PP.

[U-Borat]

The poetic side of immensely disliked the ending...
Isn't there meant to be a sequel or something?

[Katya]

Nightsorrow - it's a trilogy, of which The Golden Compass is only the first.

As for the movie, I think that Philip Pullman has had a fair amount of involvement, and I'm pretty sure (if I remember correctly) that he was directly responsible for casting the girl (it's been a while and I don't remember her name). It was a local British girl, and not a big actor. I think that the movie has a possibility of being great, but also a possiblility of crashing and burning. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I really liked TGC. I thought that it was well written, with excellent characters and a goodly paced plot. I haven't read the other two yet, as I just haven't had a chance to pick them up (maybe later this month). I wouldn't have picked up on the anti-religion thing if I hadn't been told, so in all, I guess that's ok. I can't wait to read this story to my kids, or have them discover it themselves.

I found the daemons kind of tricky. Mostly because the author chose a name for them that we automatically associate with Evil. I couldn't figure out what they were, and what their purpose was at first. I grew to accept them as they were, though, and let their name just be what it is. I guess I get hung up on the terms of things, rather than what they actually are! :)

Anyway, I'll be sure to pick up the other two, as I've heard that the trilogy just keeps on getting better and better!

[Blacknarcissa]

The whole religion thing doesn't really come into the story until the second and third books. But this didn't put me off .. and I'm only 13. Oh and yes.. a girl has been cast for Lyra and YES she is ENGLISH!

Cause as you all know..
the world revolves around England. <3


Eng-er-landd!
Eng-er-landd!!