The Golden Compass

His Dark Materials, Book 1

By: Philip Pullman

Narrated by: Philip Pullman, Joanna Wyatt, Rupert Degas, Alison Dowling, Douglas Blackwell, Jill Shilling, Stephen Thorne, Sean Barrett, Garrick Hagon, John O'Connor, Susan Sheridan, Full Cast

Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

His Dark Materials is now an HBO original series starring Dafne Keen, Ruth Wilson, James Mcavoy, and Lin-Manuel Miranda!  

Featuring an exclusive bonus interview between the author, Philip Pullman, and His Dark Materials star Ruth Wilson. 

The modern fantasy classic that Entertainment Weekly named an “All-Time Greatest Novel” and Newsweek hailed as a “Top 100 Book of All Time”. 

Philip Pullman takes listeners to a world where humans have animal familiars and where parallel universes are within reach.

Lyra is rushing to the cold, far North, where witch clans and armored bears rule. North, where the Gobblers take the children they steal - including her friend Roger. North, where her fearsome uncle Asriel is trying to build a bridge to a parallel world.

Can one small girl make a difference in such great and terrible endeavors? This is Lyra: a savage, a schemer, a liar, and as fierce and true a champion as Roger or Asriel could want.

But what Lyra doesn't know is that to help one of them will be to betray the other....

A masterwork of storytelling and suspense, Philip Pullman's award-winning The Golden Compass is the first in the His Dark Materials series, which continues with The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

A number one New York Times best seller

Winner of the Guardian Prize for Children's Fiction

Published in 40 countries

"Arguably the best juvenile fantasy novel of the past 20 years." (The Washington Post)

"Very grand indeed." (The New York Times)

"Pullman is quite possibly a genius." (Newsweek)

Don't miss Philip Pullman's epic new trilogy set in the world of His Dark Materials, the Book of Dust:

• La Belle Sauvage
• The Secret Commonwealth 

Listen to the rest of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series.

©1995 Philip Pullman (P)1999 Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Superb.... Wonder-filled." (Washington Post Book World)

"Very grand indeed.... Scene after scene of power and beauty." (The New York Times) 

"A rousing, page-turning adventure that promises to please fantasy readers of all ages." (Library Journal)  

Best Audio Book I've ever Heard

I've been listening to audio books for quite some time and this one by far is the best. Performed by a full cast where each actor assumes the role of one of the characters, the listener is transported into Pullman's world.

Set in the fictional past of early 20th century England, every human has what is called a "demon". As children these demons can assume any animal form, often changing depending on the mood of their child. Demons are animal representations of human souls, and no one is complete without one. After puberty, the demons assume one form and stay that way for life. Demons seem to take on the type of animal the person is in life, for example servants tend to have dogs as demons, loyal and obedient. Scholars have birds such as ravens, intelligent and far-seeing. One sailor has a dolphin or some such creature as a demon, thereby tying him forever to the ocean. Humans and their demons are mentally connected. What one feels, the other feels. They can talk to each other and cannot be away from each other, even at close distances or they feel great pain and anxiety.

Lyra, an orphaned pre-teen girl, and her demon Pan (yet to assume one form) find themselves in the middle of a political conspiracy. Unsure of who to trust and who their true allies are, their life was changed forever when they witnessed the Master of the college where they had spent all their years as a ward, attempt to poison Lyra's estranged uncle.

Her uncle, involved in some strange discoveries and experiments has returned to the college to ask for money to continue his work, investigating the origin of subatomic particles referred to as "dust". For some reason the scholars of the college are suprised to learn that this mysterious "dust" does not cling to children. After he receives the money and thwarts an attempt to poison him, he returns to his work.

What is dust? And why are children all over England disappearing? Lyra soon embarks on a journey to seek these answers.

not good for listening the car

Plenty of reviews will tell you about the wonderful story. This performance is full cast audio. I feel like the mixing was off though. Some voices are very clear, but the voice of the narrator (Phillip Pullman) is oddly...muffled. It's fine to listen to while going for a walk or doing quiet things at home. It's often quite difficult to follow while in the car though. His voice (or the mixing thereof) just doesn't work well with road noise even in a relatively quiet car. Just a note for those who are looking for things to while away the long drives.

Better read than heard

In my opinion novels read by the authors are generally inferior to those read by actors, and this is a case in point. To make matters worse, the dialogue is read by actors but the editing is so poor that there is a jarring abruptness each time there is a transition from non-dialogue to dialogue, as in there is no pause at all between the two. This is a fabulous book and I recommend it highly, but this audio rendering leaves a lot to be desired.

A Terrific Book

My entire family has gotten hooked on this book, to the extent that we look for reasons to get in the car and drive with it. I was so enthralled that we ran out of gas. Imaginitive premise, interesting and well-developed characters, and many plot twists. I thought you could not top Jim Dale reading the Harry Potter stories, but this is right up there.
A word of advice: With different actors playing different characters, this did not play back well on level 2, and we almost gave up on it. Load it at the highest resolution you can play. If it seems a little slow at the start, hang in there. The characters keep getting more imaginitive, and the plot more suspensful.

Unusual production is problematic

The Golden Compass is a well known and respected work such that I think I don't have to review the book itself. It's fun and has a lot of well-imagined characters and adventures and is well written.

However, this recording is unusually "produced" for a recorded book. Philip Pullman acts as the narrator, reading all of the descriptive and background material, while a whole cast of actors fill in the dialogue of the characters. In my opinion, Pullman does a great job as the narrator, but I have some problems with the accompanying cast. I tried really hard to give this new approach to recording a book a chance, but in some ways it just doesn't work for me. One of the first jarring things is that the dialogue portions sound as if they were recorded in an entirely different room (which they probably were) and then spliced into the narrative.

Another of my problems is the performances of some of the characters, particularly the central female character, Lyra, who sounds either like a pre-teen girl or a woman trying to sound like a pre-teen girl. The voicing seems to me artificially light and high in pitch. That would seem to be appropriate for the character, but the problem is that almost every speech starts out sounding somewhat normal but progresses quickly to become breathless and even strident as the character apparently gets more excited. I found this more and more annoying as the performance continued. Especially given the prevalence of child characters and the lower-class British accents used, I frequently felt as if I was listening to a recording of Oliver (without the music of course)! To me it's overly dramatic, particularly for a reading which is NOT a real performance. My point, I guess, is that I don't want to be listening on tape to a live performance of the work. I want to be listening to a reading of the work, and this production crosses that line and not altogether successfully.

This recording might appeal to a younger generation of people who are more accustomed to watching live performances of written works than actually reading the works from cover to cover in book form.

Good story, okay reading

my only issue with this audio book is the difference in volume from the narrator and the characters. narrator is very quiet while character voices are loud and often yelling about something. as a night listener, this is very off-putting. I enjoy the story, but won't be investing in the rest of the books due to this.

Brilliant fantasy!

Although aimed at younger readers, like the Harry Potter books, The Golden Compass trilogy is very entertaining to adults, as well. The story follows young Lyra and her daemon Pan through adventures in an alternate universe, where magic is common and each person's soul takes on the external form of his or her daemon. Pullman's writing is brilliant and very dynamic, and this is much more than a simple children's book. While great for listeners of any age, younger children may need a little guidance, though shouldn't have too much trouble following the story. Highly recommended!

Golden Compass

This story is ok, it's certainly exciting, but one must overlook quite a few jumps in the story to make it work. That's often the case in fantasy, this book simply stretches the practice a little too far. If you do some research (as I did unfortunately AFTER listening) Pullman has a vendetta against the church and more specifically against God--he has an agenda to fulfill and it's obvious from the storyline. The story has too much in it that makes me uncomfortable to recommend it to anyone.

Overhyped

I can't see what the fuss is all about. Some WONDERFUL ideas (people having daemons, the aliethiometer, armored bears, etc.) but I honestly thought the writing was clunky and far overrated. Random events throughout whose only purpose seem to be closing gaping holes in the plot or to get a character to the next plot point. Some wonderful characters, but many seem to exist only as "devices" to provide exposition. One word to describe the storytelling? Forced.

That said, Pullman is the best author/narrator I've yet heard, and my only criticism of the audio was the shrillness of the screaming young girls at certain moments that I wish the engineers could have toned down a bit---I had to turn down my IPOD in sections just for these bits.
Last fyi comment on the trilogy as a whole. I wasn't in the least turned off by the authors views on religion, in fact, I agree with him so I was looking forward to the trilogy. But along with the above criticisms was also a "preachy" tendency in parts of the third that I could have done without. Not a terrible read, but not even close to what I expected based on all the praise I'd heard.

Amazing!!

This was hard to start listening to. The voice of Lyra was sort of manic, but she grew on me. And once "knowing" her, I realized that it is her character, not just bad direction.
The plot completely drew me in, until I was at the point of not wanting to turn off my Ipod. The story, along with the full cast really made you feel the intensity of their situations.
Now for the "anti-God" thing...umm...I didn't think that it was that bad. Especially since the world that Lyra lives in is basically a "parallel" world. Yes, the Church has done some incredibly horrific things in the past. So why is it such a stretch for someone to put it into a fictional story? And for the whole thing about "killing God"??? A bit over-hyped...but that is the fundamentalist way.
Young children wouldn't understand this story very well, and some parts would scare them. Older kids I think should read/listen to it. They should recieve more credit than many are willing to give.