 Each week this month I am reviewing a different sci-fi or fantasy novel series and for week four Here is the golden compass also known as his dark materials the first book whose proper name is the northern lights But was renamed the golden compass for the USA market is about a young orphan girl named Lyra Balakwa Who was raised among priests of the magisterium the all-powerful world government church? She discovers that the church is connecting secret experiments on children To discover the nature of the soul and of life itself really This takes place in London in England But it is an alternate earth with its own system of magic and even its own physics This is a very meticulously built world and an impressively well-told story with strong characters and a great cliffhanger ending Now on to book two the subtle knife This book as odd as it sounds has almost nothing to do with the first book Lyra has been trapped in yet Another alternate earth in an abandoned city She meets up with a young boy who has a Knife with the blades so fine that he can slice open windows between dimensions She makes the conscious Decision and Pullman writes this in plain English that she is in love with this boy And she is going to allow him to lead her and decide where they go and what they do with themselves She was a very strong and likable character in the first book But now she has become a supporting cast in her own story I pushed through this book just because I liked the first one and I wanted to see what eventually happened speaking of which book three The amber spyglass. Oh boy Whatever writing skills and storytelling ability that Pullman had in the first book is just gone This book is completely incoherent. I mean it makes no sense at all. It's an infuriating mess I've seen book series that don't live up to their strong beginnings before but this I think takes the cake I can't think of much positive to say about book three and it's a real shame because the first book was really good And now a word about the franchise in general when the movie came out back in 2007 I think there were a great many Christians who were calling for a boycott of it because they claimed that there was a scene in The books and in the movie where a group of children Beat God to death. This was an outright lie There is no such scene in the books nor in the movie and anyone who tells you this is a liar and Speaking of lies, I remember seeing Bill Pullman in television interviews denying that the books were Anti-religious and specifically anti-Catholic. This is also a lie. These books are very anti-religious and specifically anti-Catholic Anyone who reads these books and doesn't think that can't have read them with any seriousness The word magisterium is the very word that the Catholic Church uses to describe its power to describe its kingdom basically So in summary first book impressively good second book not good third book a complete mess and Unfortunately, I have no interest in reading Pullman ever again You can support 30 second sci-fi and my other projects by becoming a patron There is a link in the description below and visit the 30 second sci-fi tumbler That's my headquarters in addition to my videos. I publish links and updates there every day