Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Once Upon A Time In The North (book review)


Once Upon A Time In The North, by Philip Pullman, is a prequel to the bestselling His Dark Materials trilogy. It is the tale of Texan aeronaut Lee Scoresby and the great armored bear Iorek Byrnison. Lee Scoresby has crashed in an unfamiliar town called Novy Odense and has gotten caught up a mission to free a Dutch sailor's cargo ship. Along the way, he meets a man with murder on his mind, a bear prince, and a rather charming but brainless lady.
When the time has come for Lee to confront the famed killer Pierre McConville one-on-one, he knows that only one of them will live. Can Lee, after all he has been through, get the best of a famous murderer?

I enjoyed this book a lot, but not as much as His Dark Materials (I think it would be to beat that series). It was interesting to see how Lee and Iorek met. I liked both the familiar characters and the new ones, although I missed Lyra.

2 comments:

DesLily said...

I think I felt the same way.. I liked reading how they met and became friends. But then the story is short and we had 3 long books to get to know Lyra and all the others.

Carl V. Anderson said...

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I think it is fun that he is doing these little stories built around the world he created with the trilogy. And I love the way these books look, they are really nice quality little books.