"Golden Compass" update

So, I finished the first book in the "controversial" series that I've been ranted at and ranted about.

I'll give a breakdown as a normal reader, and then as a literature student (because they're really different interpretations).

Normal person critique:
The plot was incredibly engaging (the sit down and read for three hours straight, grip the chair arm kind of interest). The writing is really tightly structured, and unlike some fantasy authors (ie, Robert Jordan), characters mentioned at an early point in the book show up again soon enough to be useful (the mystery of a little boy who disappeared in one of the early chapters was resolved within enough time that the reader remembers who he was and when the author mentioned him....also very un-Jordan-esque, and good for that reason). This new world is incredibly imaginative, sharing enough characteristics with ours to be understandable, but new enough to be fascinating. The protagonist is approachable and likeable. She's a little girl with (at least apparently) no parents who has been left at a university in care of the professors (but they're called "Scholars") there. How that happened comes to light at the end, and is plausible. My first thought was "yeah, professors taking care of an orphan girl just because....riiiiiiight." She teaches kids that the ideas of children can be big ideas, and that kids can empower themselves or limit themselves based on correct or inappropriate choices. Really good. She teaches kids to think. One problematic characterization is that she's a liar. That's one of the main adjectives they describe her with throughout the book. She usually only lies to people who are out to get her, though. So who knows on that one. In terms of the crisis over religion, I can see where Catholics would be REALLY upset over this book. The fictional Magisterium is reigned over by the "Vatican council." And they're the bad guys. Close enough to home to cause some problems there, I'd think. However, from an LDS perspective, there are some interesting potential differences in interpretation. This girl is a pre-teen. When she figures out that the people claiming to do good through religion are really doing bad things, she questions it. Reminiscent of anyone we know and love? I think so. Just some things to keep in mind.

Literature student critique: Amazingly precise prose, wonderful vocabulary with potential to enrich the language capabilities of students. Conveys exact meanings through wonderful word choice. A bildungsroman, similar in some ways to the Harry Potter story and very much in the pattern of the "hero of a thousand faces" defined by Joseph Campbell (a little girl that will save the world, but doesn't know it, in fact can't know it or all is lost...etc). The idea of daemons (a sort of external expression of the soul) was REALLY interesting to me at the beginning. I think, though, that at least some critics would link them to sexuality or even sex itself. That's the interpretation that I'm attaching to them at this stage. In this light, the fact that the Church tries to separate children from their daemons is disturbing. If the author's intent is to preach that all Christianity (or organized religion) would eliminate sexuality given the chance, I'll have issues with him. Even more problematic is a scene in which Lyra (the little girl protagonist) is struggling to get away from a group of "scientists" and they seize her daemon (forbidden in the world of the story through protocol, forbidden in literature because of the implications of rape) and render her incapable of fighting. If a child were to make the association (which I doubt most would, but some could) between that action and rape or molestation, that scene would be particularly disturbing. The dichotomy of rejection of the mother and idealization of the father by Lyra is highly reminiscent of Freudian thought (I spit in disgust at his name...right AL? :-) The last ten pages or so are FULL of sexual imagery. Again, most kids won't get it. They'll see an avalanche as an avalanche, the daemons of two adults interacting as similar to previous "establishing authority" interactions shown in the text, etc. But some kids might get it. So. Give it to older teens, not to ten-year-olds.

So. That's it. There'll be more. Especially given the fact that in the first twenty pages of the second novel (which I started last night), they take up the issue of female circumcision...a little dense for kids' fiction, don't we think??