See it or read it: His Dark Materials

The original His Dark Materials trilogy: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass

The Book of Dust series so far: La Belle Sauvage, The Secret Commonwealth

The BBC trilogy His Dark Materials 1-3

The Golden Compass (2007)

These books are more than 20 years old, so I'm not going to do the whole synopsis. The links above will take you to bookshop.org pages (affiliate links) on the books, where you can get them or the info to ask for them at your library. They're very popular books, and you'll be able to borrow them.

I recently re-watched the BBC series based on Phillip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials. I'd seen it once before and loved it, and, weirdly, I got to thinking about the theme music in the opening credits and how much I liked the credits. So, I checked the series out from the library.

In deciding whether to see it or read it, with a book series like His Dark Materials, I don't think that any adaptation is going to be able to pull even; the books are incredible. I read them in college, when they were still new, and I can remember clearly how devastated I was over the third book. It was the spring of my last semester in college and I had so much to do to finish up, and it was torture to pull myself out of those books. (I did manage to do it and graduate).

Also, the huge cast of characters, multiple worlds, multiple cultures in conflict, prophecies, and animal spirits, there's just so much!

Having said that, I thought that the mini-series was really good, and I was interested in some changes they made that go along with the new, as-yet-unfinished series, The Book of Dust. Especially in the second book, there are some changes in how daemons are written- like, people who have lost their daemons can take on a new daemon, if I'm remembering correctly. I've only read that one once. So far. There were several things in the book that made my jaw drop. The Lore Deepens! Like there wasn't enough going on in the series.

I want to re-read the whole thing, both book series and all the accompanying stories, but I believe I'll wait until winter. Even though I associate them with spring because of my first reading, they feel more like winter books. One thing I'm curious about is that in the TV series (SPOILER), some of the kids survive the cutting, and their daemons do, too. They're only half-alive, but they can be roused to get up and get away from the bad guys, and everyone is acting like there's hope for them to recover. That's not the way I remember it from the book at all, but maybe I'm not remembering it right, or maybe it's a change made for the movie because of the new books.

I think that the tv series also made more of Pan's anger at being left behind when Lyra went to the land of the dead. That plays a big role in The Secret Commonwealth. It was hard to watch. I actually skipped part of the episode this time. I'm a big baby.

This has, of course, made me want to re-read the two books in The Book of Dust, and I'm dying for the last book. I don't want to be like those fans who are harrassing GRR Martin over his last book but... it's been four years, and not even a release date?

I'd also like to put in a good word for the 2007 movie. Am I the only one who liked it? I do think that the books are too much for a three-movie spread, and they were clearly trying to make it look like a kid movie because of the animals, but it's not a bad movie. Worth watching for the cast alone. Both the movie and the series were cast excellently.

So, see it or read it? The answer is read it all and see two versions of it. This will be time-consuming, but worth it!