His Dark Materials Boxed set (His Dark Materials)

click here for more details, find new or used items	Philip Pullman Our price £10.95 (£22.00) New from £10.95 Used from £9.47 Pages: 600 (Paperback) ISBN: 1407104160 Pub: Scholastic Pub date: 2007-04-02 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 13

Reader Reviews:

Hyped-up . Waste of time and money (0/2 people found this helpful)

I bought the box set as I am an Oxford person, and was interested to read references to places well known to me.
This was the best part of the very limited Philip Pullman that I have read as I have visited all the Oxford landmarks, and was actually born less that half a mile from the canal in Wolvercote.
I have read Lyras Oxford, but have now given up, half way through Northern Lights.
Never have I read such an excruciatingly slow, disjointed, boring twelve chapters in my life.
It is almost as if each chapter is a new book.
Why can he not use the English language, instead of all these annoying misspellings, of demon, retiring, and many more?
What right does he have to apparently re-invent Electricity ? Anbaric ??!!
Imagination is one thing, but change just for the sake of change is totally unnecessary.
I am not surprised that the Golden Compass appears to have lost its direction, and bombed out.
I think I have said enough, other than to say my 'Dark Materials' set is now on ebay.

The golden set square (0/2 people found this helpful)

Right listen up people heres the rub. Don't buy this buy Small Mercy by Tom Dawes instead. Its got Ben Elton lookalikes and Pirates in it. And it'll make you laugh until tea comes out of your nose

Put Your Imagination to Work (0/0 people found this helpful)

In a visual world it is all too easy to let others take over your imagination. You accept other peoples' visions as your own. It is convenient, easy, saves your effort but in effect makes your creative abilities go first numb and then dead. This is a book which may help re-awaken what you might have forgotten ever having. Or what you never had, brought up in front of a TV screen.
It would be a spoiler to give out any hints about the content - anyway, it is too complex to be summed up in a review in any but a ridiculous way. The important part is that Pullman creates a whole new world in his book, a world at an angle to ours and he gives you a chance to join him in the trip this book is, imagining the world he describes. If the book had nothing more to offer (and it is hardly the case) this alone would make it a perfect choice.
I could never understand why Harry Potter became a world bestseller and Pullman lagged behind. Let's hope that the movie and general interest that follows will give Pullman the place he has always deserved.

A great gift set of the great books (4/4 people found this helpful)

Enough has been said about how wonderful these books are. In my opinion they are the most brilliant and life-affirming books I have ever read. The important thing about this product, though, is it is the best gift-set I could find of the books.

It's three paperbacks, with the best covers available, in a box. If you want to give His Dark Materials as a gift, then for me it's either this, or the all-in-one hard back.

Classic children's fantasy (1/1 people found this helpful)

I read these books several years ago, when I was perhaps still young enough to be called a child and I found them enthralling. I would say that the basic test for children's fantasy is whether the Author manages to paint a world that you can actually lose yourself in and I think Pullman rivals C.S Lewis in this regard. The first book is admittedly the most enjoyable I think simply because it's the one in which we are introduced to the parallel universe which Lyra inhabits. However they're all well written, and the others are no less imaginative.

Some people are put off by Pullman's clear atheism. The books see Lyra battling against first the Magisterium (which seems suspiciously like the catholic church) and the series climaxes with an all out war against God. However I don't think that the clear Christian theme of C.S Lewis' work has detracted from any childs enjoyment of the Narnia series and I don't see why Pullman's atheism should from this. Furthermore what comes through above anything else is the value of freedom of thought and compassion and I don't think those are values anyone could complain about teaching to kids. The book also addresses themes which some might consider 'adult', theres a fair old sprinkling of death and a couple of gay angels for instance, but I've never seen the value of closeting children away from that kind of stuff anyway. All in all a worthy gift for children, young adults and adults alike.

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