Ammy's Book Reviews

Title: The name of this book is called 'The Northern Lights'.

Author: The author of this book is Philip Pullman.                          

Number of Pages: This book has 397 pages.

Ratings: I give this book ten out of ten.

  Summary: "Everyone in my world has daemons, so why are they cutting them away?" Lyra Belaqua is a normal girl, at least she thinks she is before Mrs. Coulter comes. Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon, her soul that walks beside her, leave Jordan College, Oxford, where she grew up, to go with Mrs. Coulter to London. She takes with her a golden compass, an alethiometer, that tells the truth. She finds out that Mrs. Coulter isn't that nice and runs away. She finds out that her uncle, Lord Asriel, is being held captive by the armoured bears so she tries to rescue him. She goes to the North with some friends of hers called the Gyptians. On the way she meets with Iorek Byrnison, an armoured bear, exiled from Svalbard, the kingdom of the armoured bears, Lee Scoresby, an aeronaut and Serafina Pekkala, a witch. Along with all these people she heads to Bolvangar, a place where very evil people are doing very evil things, cutting children's daemons away. Lyra and Pantalaimon save them all and continues to the kingdom of Svalbard to save Lyra's uncle. She meets with the bear king, Iofur Raknison, on her own (with Pantalaimon), as she was separated from the rest of the group on their way to Svalbard. Iorek comes to save her and ends up fighting  Iofur. When he succeeds, they (Iorek, Lyra and Pan) go to free her father. They arrive at the house that he was living in to find that he was trying to make a bridge to another world. He succeeds and Lyra and Pantalaimon cross this bridge into another world.

  My Thoughts on the Novel: -Characters: I really like the character of Lyra because she is brave, kind, determined and even though she has had many hardships, she usually seems to be happy. She is also adventurous and doesn't seem to mind getting into trouble. She would be my favourite character. Her daemon Pantalaimon, is opposite in some ways. He is the careful one, thinking of the consequences before they do something silly or dangerous. He is, though, a brilliant character. Iorek Byrnison is an armoured bear, exiled from the kingdom of Svalbard. He is a great companion to Lyra and Pan. He is brave and does not mind going to war.

  -Themes: I think the themes of this book are friendship, magic, adventure and family.

  -Emotions: I think the emotions in this book are; shock, this is evident when Lyra finds out what they are doing in Bolvangar, excitement, when the children of Bolvangar are waiting for the signal from Lyra to escape, happiness, when Lyra is on her way to Svalbard with Lee Scoresby and anger when Lyra reaches her uncle in Svalbard who isn't grateful when she brings him the alethiometer or happy to see her. 

 -Realistic or Fantasy? This book is definitely fantasy. There aren't talking armoured bears in our world and there aren't alethiometers in this world either.