Feast of fantasy

BACK from a relatively long absence, I am brimming with enthusiasm over a new discovery - Philip Pullman, author of the Dark Materials trilogy. Frustratingly, I cannot tell you very much about the author as none of his books carry an author biography. Suffice it to say that he has received the highest acclaim for his fantasy epic, praise that in my view is well deserved.

I had heard of Philip Pullman quite a while ago (not surprising this, considering his first book was published six years earlier) but his books were unavailable here until Scholastic's Zamir Ansari ensured they were. Last week, a bout of viral fever gave me the time I needed to sink into Pullman's magnificent books.

There are not more than a handful of fantasy epics that can stand the test of time. Acts of imagination of the very highest order, I can think of no more than half-a-dozen, written in our time that I think will last 100 years or more - J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Harry Potter books, Ursula Le Guin's EarthSea Trilogy, Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast, Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz, Lewis Caroll's Alice books and possibly a couple more (the Narnia chronicles and such like). A very short list indeed and I am willing to wager that Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy will join that select group, they are that good.

The three books, of which I am reviewing two this week (the third will appear next week) are Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass (all Scholastic). At the beginning of the first volume, there is a short descriptive note that says, "The first volume is set in a universe like ours, but different in many ways. The second volume is set in the universe we know. The third volume will move between the universes."

And so in Northern Lights, the action opens in a University town called Oxford which is like Oxford, England, in many ways, but is also different in all sorts of details. For a start, its richest, most famous college is Jordan College, which is not the case in our own Oxford, and for another, every person in the college has a daemon (pronounced demon) attached to them. The daemon is indivisible from the person and is the equivalent of what we call our soul. These daemons, however, are visible and usually take the shape of an animal or bird.

The trilogy's central character, is an astonishing little girl called Lyra, and her daemon Pantalaimon. As with all fantasy epics, Lyra has to go on a quest to save her world and the billions of other worlds that this ambitious trilogy encompasses from certain annihilation.

In Northern Lights, this entails trekking to the North where her megalomaniacal father Lord Asriel is conducting certain experiments in order to open a gateway between the worlds. Armoured bears and witches attempt to thwart her but the intrepid child will not be denied. However, by the time she reaches her father, he has already opened the gateway between the worlds, causing all manner of chaos and destruction. Undeterred, Lyra follows her father into the new world he has entered called Cittagazza. Before she can get to him, however, she is waylaid by further traps and enemies.

In Book II, The Subtle Knife, we are introduced to the second central character in the trilogy, a small boy called Will Parry. He is looking for his father, too, and the two children join hands and set forth on their quest. Angels abet them and spectres delay them but resolutely they press forward. At the end of the book, there is a startling denouement (which I shall not reveal) which opens the way for Book III, The Amber Spyglass which I am dying to finish.

The interesting thing about Pullman's epic is how adult its concerns are. People die in a very realistic way, men and women and witches fall in love and lust after one another (in a genteel way, of course), there is marriage and there are extra-marital dalliances, all written about in ways that are not sensational or seamy, but are written about nevertheless. This, then, is a book that is not sanitised for children which is as it should be; adults, too, will read it without feeling in the least discommoded as sometimes happens when they are seen engrossed in a "children's" book.

There is interesting material on dark matter and electromagnetic theory, the doctrines of the church, and thoughtful perceptions on life and love, not usually the stuff of fantasy. It all works brilliantly however, which is why I am quite comfortable predicting that the Dark Materials trilogy will be read for decades to come.

DAVID DAVIDAR

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