One month today The Golden Compass will be released into British cinemas, and boy, am I counting the days.

Though a die-hard Potter fan, I must concede that Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy grabbed me by the ears and invested a whole new spin on the magic genre.

Pullman’s work has led me to maintain that Harry Potter is magic-lite, a passing whim to be enjoyed again and again in manner of marshmallow wafers.

The capers of Lyra et al., however, are a hearty literary pie, a veritable Rubik’s Cube of magic and intrigue that regales youngsters, while raising pertinent theological questions for the adults.

It is, in effect, advanced magic.

While Rowling’s saga has been burned on Bible Belt pyres with demure mutterings from the author, Pullman has proceeded to poke the eye of religious authorities and provide a twenty-first century anti-riposte to C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia.

Though Pullman has denied this, he has however labelled Lewis “blatantly racist” and “monumentally disparaging of women” in his novels.

A few examples of Pullman’s derring-do include:

1. Criticising institutional religion: one of the characters, Ruta Skadi, states, “That’s what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling.“
2. Potraying Christian heaven as a lie: in the final book, the real afterlife is depicted as a bleak place where people are tormented by harpies until Lyra and Will intercede. When the dead souls emerge, they dissolve as they become one with the universe.
3. Members of the Church are typically displayed as zealots: two characters who once belonged to the Church, Mary Malone and Marisa Coulter, are displayed in a positive light only insofar as they have rebelled against the Church.

Unsurprisingly, the Church has struck back. According to Cynthia Grenier, in the Catholic Culture:

In the world of Pullman, God Himself (the Authority) is a merciless tyrant, His Church is an instrument of oppression, and true heroism consists of overthrowing both.

Controversial it is, but it makes for a marvellous subtext that cleverly masquerades as an epic fantasy for younger eyes.

On a more fun note, amuse your inner child by finding your inner dæmon…