A short story featuring two art collectors who come across a painting, a bronze monkey and a spooky trail of evil occurrences that seem to follow them.

A strange and bizarre tale with numerous nods to His Dark Materials. I liked the discussions about the multiverse and the way in which the world's 'leak'. I didn't love the ending. I just didn't quite understand the why like why Mrs Coulter - especially a painted Mrs Coulter - would've wanted any of them dead? I mean I got the Priest who tried an exorcism, that one made sense and seemed totally in character.

But why did she care about Grinstead and Horley? I don't doubt she would kill - I just didn't think it made sense that she would without a reason.

An interesting addition to the series, 3 stars. ( )

This was a strange little book, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that none of the novellas from the world of His Dark Materials are quite what they seem. These tiny stories are well-crafted (Pullman is an artful storyteller, afterall), but they’re so brief and teasing that by the final pages we’re left wondering what exactly it is that we just read. The Collectors is a brief mystery, set in the lightly gothic stylings of short stories such as W.W. Jacobs’ classic “The Monkey’s Paw” and tells the tale of a painting of a young girl and a brass monkey that always end up in the same collection. Their strange tale is related to our protagonist (if we can call him that, for his vagueness) by the pair’s latest collector, who is fascinated by the two pieces of art, but inevitably misses the danger that readers can just glimpse out of the corner of their eyes. We, afterall, know that the young girl will grow up to become the complex Mrs. Coulter and the monkey is her daemon - a symbiotic relationship that we understand from the larger narratives of their world and clearly hints at a danger that this Oxford’s art collectors are blithely unaware of. Our unease only grows as the two move their conversation away from the common room and the newly acquired monkey is unwrapped by his purchaser, but Pullman quickly moves the narrative on from this point and we are finally set at ease as the tension comes to a bloody end for both parties. The monkey and painting are reunited again, but they are left without an owner; was this the plan all along, as neither Mrs. Coulter or her monkey likes being caged, or are we reading too much into a mysterious curse and the hidden magic of their world? ( )

A delightful little gothic sidestory to the Northern Lights books, very nicely illustrated by Tom Duxbury. ( )

Once again, Philip Pullman has served up cute HDM fanfic. This one is a dark ghost story, running on the idea of 'what if the Balthus painting 'Portrait de la jeune fille en costume d'amazone' was actually Mrs Coulter when she was aged 18, exploring another world, and what if there was a creepy connection between two works of art meaning they must always be together even if this means death or disaster to their owners

Like a lot of fan fiction, it doesn't quite sit comfortably with the original canon if you poke it too hard, and none of the characters are likable, but the book is beautiful and the story is eerie. ( )

A short and disturbing story with appropriately mysterious illustrations by Tom Duxbury, you need to be familiar with the world of His Dark Materials to have some insight into what's going on. I enjoyed it for the the somewhat acerbic picture of academic life, as well as the reference to Mrs Coulter (never named).