The golden compass /
Accompanied by her daemon, Lyra Belacqua sets out to prevent her best friend and other kidnapped children from becoming the subject of gruesome experiments in the Far North. In this first book of a fantasy trilogy, young Lyre & her alter ego, a protective animal named Pantalaimon, escape from th...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Alfred A. Knopf :
1996.
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| Edition: | 1st ed. |
| Series: | Pullman, Philip, 1946- His dark materials ;
bk. 1. |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Contributor biographical information Sample text Publisher description |
| Summary: | Accompanied by her daemon, Lyra Belacqua sets out to prevent her best friend and other kidnapped children from becoming the subject of gruesome experiments in the Far North. In this first book of a fantasy trilogy, young Lyre & her alter ego, a protective animal named Pantalaimon, escape from the child-stealing Gobblers & join a group heading north to rescue a band of missing children. In a landmark epic of fantasy and storytelling, Philip Pullman invites readers into a world as convincing and thoroughly realized as Narnia, Earthsea, or Redwall. Here lives an orphaned ward named Lyra Belacqua, whose carefree life among the scholars at Oxford's Jordan College is shattered by the arrival of two powerful visitors. First, her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, appears with evidence of mystery and danger in the far North, including photographs of a mysterious celestial phenomenon called Dust and the dim outline of a city suspended in the Aurora Borealis that he suspects is part of an alternate universe. He leaves Lyra in the care of Mrs. Coulter, an enigmatic scholar and explorer who offers to give Lyra the attention her uncle has long refused her. In this multilayered narrative, however, nothing is as it seems. Lyra sets out for the top of the world in search of her kidnapped playmate, Roger, bearing a rare truth-telling instrument, the compass of the title. All around her children are disappearing-victims of so-called "Gobblers" and being used as subjects in terrible experiments that separate humans from their daemons, creatures that reflect each person's inner being. And somehow, both Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter are involved. |
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| Item Description: | "The Golden Compass forms the first part of a story in three volumes. The first volume is set in a universe like ours, but different in many ways. The second volume is set in the universe we know. The third will move between the universes" from fourth page (unnumbered). Originally published as: His dark materials I :Northern lights. Great Britain : Scholastic Children's Books, 1995. Sequel: The subtle knife. |
| Physical Description: | 399 pages ; 22 cm. |
| Awards: | British Children's Book of the Year, 1997. Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, 1996 |
| ISBN: | 0679879242 9780679879244 |