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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
In case anyone needed more reason to love Lee Scoresby. I'm not sure how well this little book would work for anyone not already familiar with the series, but for fans, Pullman offers a snack-sized little story. It's wonderful from beginning to end.
It’s a brief but welcome return for a few loved characters from His Dark Materials. Pullman as narrator plus a full cast do an excellent job in providing this glimpse of a much larger world.
Fun little adventure with some of my favourite characters. It’s a basic little story with little development. A 3-star read because it was so simple, and the main plot point was boring to me.
I stayed for the bb bear lad. Oh, and Hester ofc.
I stayed for the bb bear lad. Oh, and Hester ofc.
An excellent short addition to this world, this novella explores Lee Scorsby and Iorek's first meeting and the start of their friendship. While it is a brief encounter, you get the feeling that it is one of many, and this is only the start of their friendship. I do enjoy how it expands upon the world established, such as using the taboo of touching other people's daemons to show how despicable the villain is. It also addresses, however briefly, the privatization of industry and how corruption can seep into places and towns, letting the private company essentially take over. Even though it is called a prequel, I read it after the first trilogy, which I felt worked best. 4.0 stars.
adventurous
fast-paced
adventurous
emotional
funny
lighthearted
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
lighthearted
relaxing
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This is one of those times when “second star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-‘til-morning” is simply too complicated.
Philip Pullman’s Once Upon a Time in the North calls for dead reckoning at an elemental level. In this prequel to His Dark Materials trilogy, there is no golden compass (a.k.a. alethiometer) and no Lyra Silvertongue. In a time before her birth, Lee Scoresby has just come north from the Dakotas, where he won a navigable ballon in a questionable card game. The fact that he is missing vital pages from the Elements of Aerial Navigation manual that came with the balloon has not stopped him from turning aeronaut and somehow, finding the Barrents Sea Company Depot in a storm. It does, however, provide unnecessary challenges for his proposed landing, as does the lack of a wrench to use on the stuck gas-valve.
Unholstering a rusted-up revolver, Scoresby bashes the valve into submission and negotiates a plunge-to-earth-style landing, which also serves to get the opening pages subtlety out of the way allowing Pullman to range freely and directly in a book that is little in size only. This is Pullman’s own antidote to complexity. Good is good and bad is mostly anything that deals with Larsen Manganese, an arctic mining company.
Not that everything is exactly straightforward. The belle of the boarding house dinner table is not the local schoolmarm but the local librarian, and why wouldn’t she be? Moreover, Lee Scoresby’s daemon has been wrong about her own identity for her entire life heretofore. Iorek Byrnison and Lee Scoresby meet and become friends in the course of mispronouncing each other’s names as well as saving each other’s lives. Name mispronunciation appears to have been the bigger issue for them. And Scoresby breaks his own heart losing any chance he may have had (slim to none) in wooing said librarian by trying to provide sage advice.
It is about as unexpected a Pullman story as an aeronaut or any of us could ever expect. One of those books you read twice in a row because how could you not. Comes complete with a Pullman created board game in the back pocket and a series of end notes that are a story in themselves. – Steven S.
Once Upon a Time in the North is an accelerated reader appropriate for middle grades.
Lexile measure: 900L
Philip Pullman’s Once Upon a Time in the North calls for dead reckoning at an elemental level. In this prequel to His Dark Materials trilogy, there is no golden compass (a.k.a. alethiometer) and no Lyra Silvertongue. In a time before her birth, Lee Scoresby has just come north from the Dakotas, where he won a navigable ballon in a questionable card game. The fact that he is missing vital pages from the Elements of Aerial Navigation manual that came with the balloon has not stopped him from turning aeronaut and somehow, finding the Barrents Sea Company Depot in a storm. It does, however, provide unnecessary challenges for his proposed landing, as does the lack of a wrench to use on the stuck gas-valve.
Unholstering a rusted-up revolver, Scoresby bashes the valve into submission and negotiates a plunge-to-earth-style landing, which also serves to get the opening pages subtlety out of the way allowing Pullman to range freely and directly in a book that is little in size only. This is Pullman’s own antidote to complexity. Good is good and bad is mostly anything that deals with Larsen Manganese, an arctic mining company.
Not that everything is exactly straightforward. The belle of the boarding house dinner table is not the local schoolmarm but the local librarian, and why wouldn’t she be? Moreover, Lee Scoresby’s daemon has been wrong about her own identity for her entire life heretofore. Iorek Byrnison and Lee Scoresby meet and become friends in the course of mispronouncing each other’s names as well as saving each other’s lives. Name mispronunciation appears to have been the bigger issue for them. And Scoresby breaks his own heart losing any chance he may have had (slim to none) in wooing said librarian by trying to provide sage advice.
It is about as unexpected a Pullman story as an aeronaut or any of us could ever expect. One of those books you read twice in a row because how could you not. Comes complete with a Pullman created board game in the back pocket and a series of end notes that are a story in themselves. – Steven S.
Once Upon a Time in the North is an accelerated reader appropriate for middle grades.
Lexile measure: 900L
adventurous
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No