Cuz I've got a GOLDEN COMPASS! (sing title to the song "golden ticket" from willy wonka)

So recently i finished reading The Golden Compass.  Read on as I attempt to give you a spoiler-free summary of the book.

The main character of this book's named is Lyra Belacqua who lives at Jordan College in Oxford among scholars.  Lyra has a daeman named Pantalaimon who is her soul outside of her body in the shape of an animal who can change into the form of any animal at will depending on how Lyra is feeling.  Every human in this world has a daemon; if someone doesn't have their daemon they are as good as dead, if anyone touches anyone's daemon it is SEVERELY frowned upon because of the "taboo". One day Lyra is at the college when a man named Lord Asriel (important to the story) comes and talks about something called "Dust" to the scholars.  This subject intrigues Lyra and she wants to know more. Lord Asriel also discovered other universes within their universe that cannot fell see,hear, smell or touch them, and the same likewise. If you go to the North you can learn about Dust, and that was exatly what Lyra was planning on doing. Eventually Lyra finds out some important information about Lord Asriel and then finds out he was taken North to a prion guarded by big strong armored bears.  At some point children around Jordan start to go missing and nobody can figure out why for a while. Then they discover it is a group of people they called "Gobblers".  It is rumored that the children that go missing are taken to the North so Lyra has her heart set on going North to learn about Dust and where all the missing children are so she can free them.  After having a horrible encounter with a woman named Mrs. Coulter (also important to the story). Eventually Lyra goes North with a group called the Gyptians. There, they have an adventure and find some things (things i don't want to give away) and Lyra befriends a loyal armored bear name Iorek.  Lyra is said the have a great destiny according to the witches and she has to accomplish her destiny without knowing it. The whole time she is in the North she has something called an alethiometer, otherwise known as "the golden compass" of which this book got it's name.  This EXTREMELY RARE compass has little pictures all around the inside and if the dials are moved correctly, on the right pictures and read by a person who understand how to read and use it, the compass tell the truth about the past, present and future.  This device helps Lyra accomplish a lot in the book.  Lyra is also given the task to bring this compass to Lord Asriel to help him accomplish whatever it was he wanted to accomplish with these other universes.


I hope that made sense.


The central theme of this work is the gaining knowledge through adventure:
Lyra travels to the North with the Gyptians and she gains so much knowledge about her own life and life in general. 


One literary element in this book is metaphor
Daemon act as a metaphor because the shape they take are associated with the kind of person they are linked too for example: Mrs. Coulter's daemon is a golden monkey which is perfect for her because they are both cunning and smart. This helps develop the theme because a most of this book is because of daemons, for example, why the Gobblers were taking children and the topic of daemons was how Lyra was able to trick the king of all armored bears.


OVERALL I think this was a good book I will defiantly make time to read the other too books in Phillip Pullman's trilogy.  I do recommend it to people who enjoy fiction books with supernatural elements, those are the sort of things I enjoy if you read the post about my favorite books. Some strengths of the book would be the overall story plot and how he develops his story by adding new twists, his idea about daemon's was cool I would really love one now after reading this book, and the way he develops the main character Lyra.  Some weaknesses of this book are definitely how slow it moves. It took to long to get into. This last weakness might be my own reading comprehension fault but i couldn't remember most of his characters and who they were, they weren't explained enough to remember so I found myself flipping back through pages to jog my memory.