Seeking a book for a Young Adult (or a
Child at Heart)? Something to soup up the soul against all the modern
anesthesias of popular television, public education, institutionalized religion, and the massive idiocy clogging the internet?
Look no further than
Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, which slays not only these dragons but does it in the guise of the most
heroic heroine you ever met, Lyra Belacqua, the quick-thinking sharp-tongued little girl who is about to face a destiny greater than she could ever imagine.
In the first novel of this series,
The Golden Compass , Pullman's writing is precise yet beautiful, simple yet challenging, incorporating knowledge from wide fields of experience, from biology to history, theology to physics and back again. He will leave your friend (and perhaps even yourself) asking questions whose answers will
enrich him and
inspire him to continue questioning, and perhaps even to seek his own
destiny.