"The Golden Compass" by Philip Pullman

If you're going to get theology in your fantasy, be like C. S. Lewis and do it respectfully. Don't be like Philip Pullman and do... whatever this was.

Basically, an orphan girl named Lyra growing up in alternate-universe Oxford University is given the titular Golden Compass (actually a sort-of-prophetic clockwork measuring device called an alethiometer) and tasked, sort of, to bring it to her estranged uncle who's been imprisoned in Norway by the bears. Along the way she |gets tangled up in this whole plot with some evil child-stealing people|.

It's rather hard to pin down when this is set. From dates of lore events in the past I'd put it at some time after the 19th century (1800s), but the technology is kind of all over the place. It kind of vibes like 1800s-era scientific methods, there are firearms but also catapult things, the air travel is achieved by zeppelins (making me want a crossover between this and Leviathan), the fantasy!Romani have motorboats (or possibly steamboats) but also |charter a sailing ship| when they're |setting out to find the missing kids|, and there are occasional mentions of something called "atomcraft" which may or may not run on uranium.

(This is quite obviously an alternate history, but Lyra doesn't know a lot of history, so we don't get a lot of details. Except that apparently the Protestant Reformation may not have happened, and the Roman Catholic Church has taken over everything. Note to authors: if you want me to like your book unreservedly, you'd do well to maybe not portray the Church as antagonistic; or, if you do, make it clear that actual Christianity itself is not the problem. Like Frederick Douglass did.)

There's a character in this, Lord Asriel, who may have his own set of merits but who shares his name with Asriel |Dreemurr, a posthumous character who's mentioned in some exposition in Undertale (Toby Fox, 2015)|. The fact that to the best of my knowledge |we never see Asriel Dreemurr in-game| prevented me from imagining Lord Asriel as him, but I did have twinges of "wait, |that guy's in Undertale|" whenever Lord Asriel showed up in the book.

Oh, and giving everyone a magical animal companion? That's fine. Darkbeast did that, and the book was kinda lame, but it the animals were fine. Calling them "daemons," however, is not fine.

If you're going to namedrop original sin, you might at least get what it is right. The doctrine of original sin is the doctrine that all humans are inherently sinful thanks to the Fall, not the doctrine that the Fall actually happened. I know that, and you now know that, but Philip Pullman apparently didn't. Or he did, and he just didn't care.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for violence against children and brief suggestive content (two adults making out). That said, I don't recommend it to anyone who cares at all about Christianity.

2 stars. It's extremely well-written, I'll give it that, but it also flirts with blasphemy as much as it can get away with.

(Endnote: One of my friends recommended this book to me. He likes it. I would have liked it if it were by C. S. Lewis, or at least in the style of C. S. Lewis -- i.e. respectful of the religion it revolves around.)