I read the first book and threw it away. This was awhile ago so my recollection may be flawed, but as I recall, the main premise centered around an element called \\"dust\\" that pre-pubescent children seemed to attract. One of the characters had discovered that Dust seemed to give the ability to travel to other worlds and other dimentions. Adults don\'t attract dust and children stop when they grow up and their daemons stop being able to shift in form from one animal to another (apparently a sign of puberty). The parents of the main character are on opposing sides of the power struggle over dust and the young girl has some ability to read a compass that acts as a guide.
The plot is quite confusing because there is no congruency in the beliefs that are laid out for each side. The mother seems to be on a mission to cut off the childhood attraction of dust by literally separating the daemons from the young children (a very painful and hateful process that the children consider a form of murder). She sees this ultimately as a way to protect them though it is not really clear from what... so she is set up as the enemy to children. She is also connected with the organized church (a loosely veiled reperesentation of the Roman Catholic Church).
The Father is in the forefront of the Scientific community and his end game is unclear. Ultimately we find out that he is looking for a way to harness the power of the dust so adults can achieve travel to other dimensions. He does this in the end of the first book by basically murdering his daughters childhood friend in front of her eyes. (The little boy dies when he and his daemon are torn apart).
So the reader is left, like the little girl, hopelessly confused about who to trust. Both parents seem to her to be unbearably violent, evil and untrustworthy. So she comes to the conclusion that she is on her own with the exception of some of the nonconvetional adults she has met along the way, her own childhood cohorts, the animals, the witches, and the daemons.
I didn\'t read the second or third books, but apparently they touch on the existence of homosexual angelic beings and so on.
I found the first book highly offensive and can\'t begin to imagine why anyone in there right mind would advocate them or describe them as remotely appropriate for children. My friend has read all three (she has young children) and she confirms that they are all strange and disturbing and not at all appropriate for children.
Hope this sheds some light. If I have erred on some of the detail, forgive me, but I believe this is a fairly accurate description from memory.
Be the first person to like this.