Book Review: Once Upon a Time in the North (Monday, October 20, 2008)

After reading Lyra's Oxford, I wasn't expecting much from Once Upon a Time in the North, which has a release coinciding with the new "Golden Compass" film. The book, while short, is twice as long as Lyra's Oxford, and tells the story of how the aeronaut, Lee Scoresby, comes to be friends with the Armored Bear, Iorek Byrnison. And despite its diminutive length, the story is truly epic. In order to fully appreciate the heroic nature of the story, it is totally necessary to have read the full His Dark Materials trilogy. Where the trilogy tells the ending of a long story, this book tells its beginning. While the story takes place years before Lyra is born, the last few pages contain a footnote concerning her thesis at university, and those few pages contain more warmth and personality than in all of Lyra's Oxford. But that is just a bonus after a really great story of a flying Texan, making his way in the frozen North.