His Dark Materials
Philip Pullman's classic trilogy is now available as a stunning, large-format, bind-up edition. Since the first volume was published in 1955, and has now been filmed as "The Golden Compass", the trilogy has been acclaimed as a modern masterpiece, and has won the UK's top awards for children's literature. Today, the fabulous story of Lyra and her daemon is read and loved by adults and children alike. The extraordinary story moves between parallel universes. Beginning in Oxford, it takes Lyra and her animal-daemon Pantalaimon on a dangerous rescue mission to the ice kingdoms of the far north, where she begins to learn about the mysterious particles they call Dust - a substance for which a terrible war between different worlds will be fought...
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27recommend
59mentions
52people
2009–2026years
49% recommend39% neutral12% critical
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What Hacker News says
- Skulduggery Pleasant currently.
Read Harry Potter obviously. And His Dark Materials.
- No kids, but I'm listening to His Dark Materials currently, and would recommend it to every parent. 5 and 6 might be a bit young for it, I would compare it to the third or fourth Harry Potter books in terms of maturity. Got great themes and messages too.
- If you want the druggy, high-concept, ersatz-reality version go with Philip K. Dick - namely The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, A Scanner Darkly, VALIS.
If you want the intellectual take go with A Canticle for Leibowitz (Miller), Oryx and Crake (Atwood) or Solaris (Lem).
If you want the 60s hard-science rooted societal outlook from an ex-Naval Engineer with strong views on gender roles, it's all about Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers etc..
If you want something to share with the young adults in your life, or simply some of the finest writing in the contemporary British YA canon, then Philip Pulman's magnificent homage to 'Paradise Lost' - the 'His Dark Materials trilogy' - cannot come more highly recommended. Usually categorised as 'fantasy', and heavily indebted to Milton and Blake, this represents a master-class in parallel-universe world building with its own take on a Steampunk Oxford and a number of other science fiction tropes.
- I remember the first time I read His Dark Materials trilogy as a kid and how much I loved it. I was able to escape to a completely different world, and it was the first love story I really enjoyed. I loved it so much I reread the books immediately, and begged my parents for the cassettes for the audiobooks. Makes me kind of sad that we seem to not value reading as a form of entertainment anymore because getting immersed in a book is a completely unique feeling I rarely get from any visual media.
- Based on the above list, you all might also enjoy His Dark Materials https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Dark_Materials, Redwall https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redwall, and The Dragonriders of Perth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonriders_of_Pern
When reading progression is ready for more depth, The Dark Is Rising https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Is_Rising_Sequence or Earthsea https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthsea are both excellent too.
All are series with approachable first books that can be enjoyed on their own (if they don't hit).
- The His Dark Materials was probably the first books I got really in to and some of the only books I've ever re-read. I read a couple of others by the same author but wasn't grabbed as much. I think I was around 13 at the time. Harry Potter were probably some of the first "long" books that I ever read but I wasn't a huge fan and gave up by the third. I'd say those along with random Discworld and assorted fantasy books planted the seeds of enjoying reading but it did go hand in hand with sitting next to my mum and enjoying the experience. Taking a book on holiday and sitting in the sun reading rather than just playing on my gameboy, which happened too but without bans on screen time more like just encouragement to join in the reading activity. Maybe bad battery lives and non-backlit screens helped too. One book that's always stuck in my memory since is Freakonomics. I read it when I was a teenager and the very logical thinking hit a real nerve. I know the book has had controversy since but I can't say I took away any specific example of "Sumo wrestlers like to cheat" or whatever, but the way of thinking it encouraged has definitely stuck with me. My partner read some Malcolm Gladwell books when she was younger and she was definitely a fan for a similar reason. I think they're a load of tosh with generous leaps of logic but I can understand the appeal of something that encourages you to look beyond the obvious.
