Would you recommend his dark materials?

[Rev. Rye]

I saw the movie The Golden Compass.  

Does that count?

It's watered down, but it's still a good film and a decent representation of the first novel if you ignore the cliffhanger for the second film that will never come.

If nothing else, the bear fighting scene was fantastic:

[The Industrial Atheist]

The Children of Hurin is super dark. Whenever any of the characters get a break, it turns on them in a tragic way. Basically it's an unfinished work of Tolkien edited into a book.

[Ravenshire]

So I am near finishing lord of the rings and I am looking for my next read and I heard his dark materials is like kinda like Narnia but with an atheist viewpoint. So now I just want to know If its a good book or not?

(emphasis is mine)

You heard wrong. C. S. Lewis claimed that you can't create a believable fantasy world that didn't have a god figure in it. "His Dark Materials" is Philip Pullman's response to that claim. There is so little in common between the two that you may as well say there's nothing.

It's great as a fantasy, it's great as a coming of age story...

It's just plain great. I recommend it to anyone who likes fantasy and or coming of age stories at all. Read it, love it, read it again!

[Aroura]

I enjoy young adult fiction, but found His Dark Materials to be a bit tedious and flat. The charachters never felt alive to me, they seemed kinda 2 dimensional and unengaging. The plot itself is alright, but without engaging characters to participate, I couldn't make myself care much.

I recommend:
Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb
Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

Both of these are marvelous fantasy series with engaging plots and characters. Name of the wind is still ongoing, but only has one book yet to come.

[Mister Agenda]

I enjoyed the whole thing.

[brewer]

Dianetics.

[John V]

Also, if you want to talk boring, LOTR is... well, boring.  Very very good.  But very very boring.  They're not mutually exclusive.  (summary of 90% of Fellowship: the nine walked west, and the river lay in front of them.  They continued, and then the river was behind them, and they kept walking, for there were many miles to go and dozens more rivers to cross.)

LOL. When I was young I read LOTR a few times, but when I was stoned, and didn't notice that. I've picked it up a number of times since being sober and couldn't get through it for just that reason. You're not exaggerating much there. It really is like that.