Oooooof.

Too much. Way too much.

Pullman's series concludes like it started. Good but nothing great. And tiring. Very. The Amber Spyglass weighs as much as the other two books put together....and then some. Pullman pulls in still MORE main characters and still MORE beings and still MORE complications and still MORE unlikely, unbelievable turns-of-event. It just got to be too much. Between the witches and the angels and the cliff-ghasts, the shadows, the specters, the ghosts, the Gallivespians, the armored bears....you come away feeling tha the author is trying to beat you over the head.

And yet, you cant stop turning the pages. It is well-written, suspensful and you just cant help wanting to know what happens next. Thus the extra star.

The vast assortment of characters and beings would be fine if it hadnt detracted from the well-crafted main characters of the first book. Mrs. Coulter becomes less of a player and less interesting by the page. The same with Asriel and...characters that should have been better fleshed out and worthy of the weight they carried in this war (The President, Father Gomez, Metatron...)were left virtually unknown.

Most maddening was Lyra. She began the series as an admirable, sympathetic, tough little woman-to-be; a wonderful, powerful heroine driven to do what was right. By the end of the series her subservience to the boy Will is complete. The woman must bow before the man. This book is much too full of "Oh Will! What will we do Will?" followed by her sobbing and Will saving the day. I found that very chauvenistic and quite a turn off.

Still, the ideas of the book are interesting - but not earth shattering. What initially drew me to this series was that the Christians are busy crying about how this series and the movie based on the books are going to corrupt our children and kill God and wreck havoc on our peaceable society. Laughable to say the least.

Understanding that this book was geared towards young teens, I still couldnt help but think that any teen who had not had these doubts or questions or wonderment about God should be tossed out in the snow. Many of the "anti-God" things in this book were things my friends and were arguing about over cases of Miller Genuine Draft in Stephanie Montez's basement. There's nothing new here.

So I dont understand the fuss. In fact, there is only one atheist character in the book, Mary Malone and she felt and empetiness and a loss without her connection to God. I found her rejection of the Church odd. She ate marzipan and kissed an Italian. Whoa! I ate roasted chesnuts and kissed a Colombian once but it didnt make me an atheist. Cant we believe in God and enjoy the world at the same time? Pullman seems not to think so. Therefore there is something ironic about the near heavenly place Dr. Malone finds herself stranded (in fact, the mulefas, thier trees and wheels and her relationship with them was the most interesting part of the book).

In any case, Pullman doesnt say that there is no God. In fact, he allows that there may be a creator, a greater force but the war isnt against God. The war is against the supposed Kingdom of Heaven, a brutal dictatorship run by an angel who wields power through the Church. What is atheistic about that? Nothing. What drives the Christians nuts is that the books but the very valid question in the reader's mind...who does The Church 'work' for? If you arent or havent asked yourself that question you too should be chucked out in the snow. Here, the Church clearly works for a corrupt and evil angel and considering little things like the Crusades and the Inquistion...not to mention the insane theocratic drive of our current President and candidate Huckabee...Pullman may have hit it on the head. God may indeed exist (for me It does)but 'His' spokesmen on earth, indeed his most ardent supporters, clearly do not work for US or for HIM.

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
-T.S. Eliot

Warning: Contains spoilers.

The Amber Spyglass is the final volume in His Dark Materials trilogy.

I really enjoyed Northern Lights (or The Golden Compass as it is titled in the US), the first volume of the trilogy. Pullman introducted us to a fantastic world of great scope. It was suspenseful, the presented world was enchanting, and Northern Lights was pregnant with interesting ideas and concepts - that's why I chose to read all three.

The next one, The Subtle Knife was laborious indeed. Most of what made Northern Lights wonderful was dropped - there was no world building in this volume, the characters seemed stalled and the book was a chore. It was a transitional piece so some of these things might be excused, and I approached the final installment expecting a grand payoff.

The Amber Spyglass is no Return of The King. It's the ugly baby that came out of Pullman's imagination and his hatred of religion. The novels is such a tremendous let-down that it's hard to decide where to start a list of its failings.

Lyra, the cocky and bratty protagonist of Northern Lights disappears almost entirely. Lyra from The Amber Spyglass is almost fullly submissive to Will. Oh Will! What shall we do? Will! Oh Will! Where is the girl who rescued children and planned it all on her own? Here Lyra doesn't seem to be able to do anything without depending on Will.

The "redemption" of Mrs. Coulter is totally unconvincing. The Grand Evil Lady (who was so great in Northern Lights!) suddenly out of the blue starts loving Lyra. This is just so ridiculously uncharacteristic and unbelieveable. The great villain is reduced to a mere puppet in Pullman's hands, who seems to have forgotten how to hold the strings.

Not that other characters are handled expertly. Aside from Lyra who was reduced to a dependand sissy and Will, the grand young adult fiction boy-on-a-quest stereotype Pullman introduces more and more characters like the new race of Mulefa, the bug-like creatures. He then goes on a tangent describing their culture, which while interesting doesn't add much to the plot.

The figure of Father Gomez, who is sent by the Church to kill Lyra is just a cheap way of maintaing tension. He never faces his victim and dies from the hand of a character we believed to be dead several hundred pages previously. His sections are nothing but filler.

The theological questions are never developed. Pullman literally stated in the previous volume that "every Church is evil", without showing why. He didn't show how Chuch uses religion to manipulate the consciences of people - we are treated only to Pullman's version of the Church, which is evil because the author told us it's evil. Everyone associated with Church is EVIL at a cartoonish level. Mother Theresa has evaporated from Pullman's cosmos, and took all the good priests along with her.

There's no conflict inside the Magisterium - no good voices are drowned by the bad ones - because everyone is bad. All of these evils are dressed in the not-at-all veiled robes of Christianity, especially the Catholic Church. These evils are never really shown, we're just told they are evil. Oddly, there are no evil Muslim priest or bomb-throwing Buddhist monks. In Pullman's world there is only one religion, and it is THE BAD ONE. As one of the characters says: "The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all."
Doesn't sound very convincing.

Curiously, the church seems to have little impact on Lyra's world. Though Pullman wants to lay all of the evil of mankind on Christian religion and God he doesn't bother with providing plenty of evidence. The Church does evil things, but it doesn't get into the way of the Armored Polar Bears who live a godless existence, or the clans of Witches who are into paganism. Neither the Polar Bears nor the Witches seem to be particularly bothered by the Evil church - The Witches seem to love their country, and don't seem to be forced or isolated by the church. They seem to love the north pole where they live.

Now, in a world dominated by an incredibly powerful religious organization which corrupts everything, one would expect that everyone would be forced to follow the enforced religion and actively participate in its rituals - masses, etc. Religion would be a part of the daily life, as vital as a breath when you practice it, and as deadly as lack of it when your faith is not strong.
In Lyra's world, NO ONE prays or goes to any sort of religious service. In a world where religious domination is SAID TO BE thriving, I'd expect it to be obvious. If religion is the source of all the evil in the world I expected it to be omnipresent. But it isn't. Except Pullman said so. So we have to believe him, eh?

Pullman goes on a specific tangent to discuss the very issue of God. God is said not to be the original creator, but the first of the angels to appear. He portras him as some sort of terrorist, who lied about his origins and holds the reins of Heaven in his strong hands. However, it is all told to us; we never see it played out. When God makes an appearance, he is shown to be a demented, old angel which vanishes almost immediately. We are never shown the man behind the curtain, the malevolent presence who is the source of all trouble. We are supposed to accept, that no matter what THIS is TRUE and REAL. Is "God" a sadist? We may never known, we can only accept what Pullman tells us, because he showes his truth down our throats.
The angels are shown as extremely ineffectual. They can't really hurt anything, which makes us think again: How exactly did "God", who is just the first angel, become so powerful? There are many more questions about the angels (how did Baruch and Metatron became angels from men, but no one else did?) but Pullman never bothers with them.

Then there is the separate tangent of dr Mary Mallone, a former nun who rejected the Church and all faith entirely because she ate some marzipan and kissed an Italian. Whoa! Maybe if she ate an Italian and kissed the marzipan I could understand the Church denouncing her (the convent would grow slimmer and slimmer) but it doesn't make much sense. In fact this is some of the poorest reasoning I've read in a while. Can't you believe in God, practive your faith and enjoy the world at the same time? Millions of people do, but Pullman apparently think you can't. I could understand Mary quitting being a nun, even quitting organized religion because of the "imposed" restraints, but stopping believing in God because of marzipan? This is not a strawman argument, it's a marzipanman argument, and unfortunately it ain't sweet.

Mary's story stirs some tension in Will and Lyra, who suddenly realize that they're meant for each other (at age of 12 eternal love is serious business, mind you) and the story morphs into a contrived retelling of The Fall of Man, though I don't understand why Lyra is said to be the next Eve. Of course she finds love (with almost no build up), she gives it up for the sake of the worlds (hers and Will's). I think she resists the temptation to continue their relationship to help everyone build the new Eden, or the Republic of Heaven, but it's a tenuous connection at best. Not to mention that twelve year old children suddenly start talking like certain older men. Blah.

This is getting long, so I'll wrap it up in Pullman fashion. An angel shows up, answers all of the questions and the children return to their separate worlds, promising that they will never forget each other and visit the same place in their worlds to remains as close as possible. In Lyra's world generous foster parents magically turn up, and she sets up to build a godless existence where people could enjoy themselves as if anything was stopping them before. DOH!

I think that these books had great potential. They could show children the dangers of corrupt individuals who use religion to influence and control people. Unfortunately, Pullman took it all away with his absolute lack of polemic and blatant one-sideness and all we got were some puppets running around and spewing his personal sentiments in this incredibly boring and contrived slog. The guy's obviously an imaginative author, but his bigotry got the better of him here and I can only wish that Norhtern Lights was a standalone.

i just decided to copy-and-paste a response i wrote regarding this book in one of the GR groups. that is inexcusably lazy. so sue me! also, it is full of SPOILERS.

- i think one of the most unique things about this book is the fact that one protagonist is a liar and the other is a murderer. not only is that uncommon, particularly in YA lit, it is transgressive. i like how the tools that help these two in their amazing adventures are ones that are normally displayed by villains. and without their ruthless abilities to lie and to kill, they wouldn't have survived. to put these abilities in the hands of the protagonists is one way of showing that despite having negative attributes, a person can still be good and still be heroic. the characters are as complex as real people in that they are not all good. and in many ways, both the ability to lie and the ability to kill come back to haunt both children (particularly the latter) - they don't just get a free pass by the author. but nor are their flaws portrayed in a black-and-white way. many children lie. many people in the world have killed. but doing either does not make them automatically villains. i like that as well.

- as far as the author's atheism goes, it doesn't bother me and i think the series is quite separate from his point of view. the "God" that is destroyed is not actually God, he is a despot angel gone to seed, an imposter. i actually found the book to be exceedingly spiritual and very much connected to the ideas of love for humanity, love for nature, even love for spirituality in its own way. now obviously pullman is a curmudgeonly atheist...but i don't see those views shoved down readers' throats during the series. what i see is an ability to use ideas of 'angels' and 'heaven' without sentiment and to even subvert Christian paradigms....without actually saying 'There Is No God or Heaven'. that may be implied, but i think it can be argued that the opposite is also implied....that there may be a God and a Heaven that is above all of these angel hierarchies, all of the warfare.

- as a God-lover myself (i would hesitate to call myself 'Christian'), i am always on the look-out for sneaky, nihilistic, anti-spirituality tracts. those kinds of things annoy me just as much as the display of judgmental religious rhetoric. despite the author's personal perspective, i didn't notice that in this series, and i was looking for it. angels warring and a False God Angel to me do not amount to a renunciation of faith. if anything, it illustrates a critical stance towards current organized religion. i can deal with that. it is not all-or-nothing or black & white, it is a grey scale. and as i've mentioned, overall i found the novel to be deeply spiritual - pullman may be a curmudgeonly atheist; the morality of the book itself is not.

- personally, i thought the Chronicles of Narnia (one of my favorite series) was far more overt in its religious teachings than Golden Compass was in its 'question what you have been taught' lessons. Chronicles was a wonderful adventure AND a clear religious allegory. Golden Compass is a wonderful adventure AND a lesson in not blindly following faith - with the ultimate lesson that a person can still find their own personal way to faith & spirituality. i think that is a good lesson for kids. for everyone!

Still a four star read for me. Currently kicking myself for not writing this closer to when I finished. As per usual, I have forgotten what I wanted to say about it.

I do think this is a good ending to the series. It doesn't sit well with a lot of people, but I think it's a fitting ending, for a story about loss of innocence (and how that's not a bad thing), different kinds of love, and questioning authority.

Some disjointed (spoiler-filled) thoughts:


* I still think the mulefa are weird as hell and now that I'm an adult, I don't how to feel about them. I'm extremely curious to see how they're going to pull them off in the show. They have the potential to be deeply terrible if done wrong.
* The big vicious swan things are weird also?
* I like the role Mary plays here as the "tempter," when all she does is tell Lyra about a time she fell in love.
* It's bold as hell to have the culminating quest here basically be for our heroes to eradicate the afterlife, and to treat the afterlife as a prison instead of a paradise. Pullman obviously finds it comforting that if they choose, dead people can now merge with the universe and be free, instead of being trapped below for eternity at the whim of some faraway authority.
* I didn't remember either Mrs. Coulter or Lord Asriel being redeemed in the end, but they sort of are. And yet they also don't stop being terrible at the same time? I have very conflicting thoughts.
* This is definitely just as scary as I remember it being, though it scared me in a different way as a teenager.
* Lyra and Will's separation is agonizing. Even though it was the one thing I did remember from my two other reads and thus knew it was coming, it's just so utterly tragic.
* There are gay angels in here! They both die, though, and one from a broken heart. I feel like maybe if this was written now, maybe he would have gone easier on them. Then again, everybody dies in this book except basically Lyra, Will, and Mary. So maybe not?
* I always forget what animal Pantalaimon settles as. Why can't I hold that in my memory?

I know I had more thoughts than this.

I can see how many people don't like this one, but I think it works. Will read again, maybe won't wait ten years this time in between.

I have found a new favorite series. I have loved every single thing about it: from the worldbuilding to the writing to the morally grey characters. Everything was just phenomenal. But I especially love this series, and this conclusion in particular, because of how it struck a very personal chord in me. The discussion on deconstruction of faith and the failings of organized religion have hit me harder than I anticipated it would. A real treasure.

My God, this book is confusing. I have read it several times, and I couldn't explain the plot to anyone. I just don't get it. There's too much going on.

The relationship between Will and Lyra, I think, becomes less interesting as they become closer, so, obviously, by the time they're professing their love for each other, I just don't care any more. I don't care that they're split up forever - by the end of the book, Lyra has lost everything that made her interesting.
And, well... they're twelve. Twelve is too young to be professing eternal love for another person, really.

I do, however, rather like the two angels, Balthamos and Baruch. Neither of them is actually around for all that long, but I felt for them much more than i felt for any of the other characters.

I also tend to defend this book whenever people accuse it of being about 'killing God'. Anyone who says so has rather misunderstood it, in my opinion - Phillip Pullman has said that his idea of God is very like how Dust is described. The villains of the book are trying to destroy Dust, so if anything, Will and Lyra save God.

[ESP/ENG]

n  Me dijiste que esa era mi naturaleza, y que debía aceptarlo. Estabas equivocado, padre. Peleé porque no tuve más remedio. No puedo elegir mi naturaleza, pero puedo elegir lo que quiero hacer. Y a partir de ahora lo haré, porque soy libre.n

Llegamos al cierre de la trilogía, tras haber releido Luces del norte y La daga, ya sabía lo que esperar del final. Y lo recordaba muy bueno, y aunque esa senasción permanece, me he encontrado más de una vez preguntándome por qué iban aquí o allí, o por qué hacían esto o lo otro, tramas que me han sobrado completamente y que siendo sinceros se podrían haber eliminado sin ningún problema sin afectar a la trama, haciendo un libro más corto. Pero es cosa mía, supongo.

Tras el cierre del anterior capítulo, aquí todo está presto para llevarnos al final, con un Lord Asriel dispuesto a hacer la guerra contra El reino del Cielo, una raza de ángeles con La Autoridad a la cabeza (que en giro de guión no es Dios sino el primer ángel que se creó y usurpó el nombre de Creador, Yahvé, Hacedor...) y secundado de Metatrón, un mal bicho de cuidado según nos dicen. Pero no va a ser todo tan sencillo, y nuestros protagonistas se verán obligados a hacer otras cosas previamente, en lo que ya digo más arriba que se me antoja un viaje largo y que podría acortarse sin problema.

Como en el anterior libro, habrá nuevas razas a cual más curiosa (los Mulefa, los Gallivespianos y los ángeles), con su parte de peso en la trama, aunque nuevamente todo recae sobre Lyra y Will. Ellos dos sí son importantes, y vemos cómo crecen tanto físicamente como en personalidad. Ese punto está muy conseguido. En otro aspecto que me gusta, todo lo que tiene que ver con los ángeles y sus asuntos creo que funciona muy bien, a pesar de algo que comento en los puntos negativos. Y el final de esa trama me gusta mucho también.

En cosas que no me han gustado o funcionado, lo principal es el trato a la religión. El autor está expresando sus valores y sentimientos, pero lo hace tan forzado que resulta cargante. Todo lo malo está representado por el poder que tiene La Autoridad (véase el spoiler arriba para más en esto) y sus ángeles, y que en el mundo terrenal se vuelca en la Iglesia. Sí, históricamente ha sucedido que la iglesia ha intentado contener el saber que no le beneficiaba, pero aquí todo lo relacionado con la iglesia y sus miembros es malo. Por defecto. No hay un solo integrante que esté en contra de lo que sucede, ninguna voz que diga "yo no quiero esto", de hecho aquí hay un sicario de manual que pertenece al estamento, y es el clásico tipo malo, casi parece un cliché con patas. La única buena fue la que se salió de monja, hasta ahí llega el tema.

Otra cosa que no me ha gustado mucho ha sido la redención de Marisa Coulter, creo que es algo forzada y llega tarde. Aunque el momento en sí es un monólogo fantástico y acaba por todo lo alto (o todo lo bajo, bien mirado). Para terminar con esto, me encuentro una traducción extraña en términos respecto a las dos anteriores obras, con traducciones distinas de algunas cosas (el daimonion de Asriel es un Irbis en las primeras, una Onza aquí) y con términos traducidos previamente que aquí se quedan en inglés (gobblers para los zampones anteriormente), algo menor pero que quita algo de cohesión a la trilogía.

Ha sido un viaje largo y variado, del que mantendré el recuerdo original, pero también veré las críticas que he ido viendo ya de más mayor.


n  Cada átomo de mi ser y cada átomo del tuyo.n


------------------------------------


n  Whatever I do, I will choose it, no one else.n

We reach the end of the trilogy, after having reread Northern Lights and The Dagger, I already knew what to expect at the end. And I remembered it being a good finale, and although that feeling remains, I have found myself more than once wondering why they went here or there, or why they did this or that, plots that I have completely left over and that, to be honest, could have been eliminated without any problems and without affecting the plot, making a shorter book. But it's my thing, I guess.

After the closing of the previous chapter, everything here is ready to take us to the end,  with Lord Asriel willing to wage war against The Kingdom of Heaven, a race of angels with The Authority at the head (which in a twist of script It is not God but the first angel that was created and usurped the name of Creator, Yahweh, Maker...) and seconded by Metatron, a NASTY THING according to what we are told. But it is not going to be all that simple , and our protagonists will be forced to do other things beforehand, in which I already said above that it seems like a long trip and that it could be shortened without a problem.

As in the previous book, there will be new races, each more curious (the Mulefa, the Gallivespians and the angels), with their share of weight in the plot, although again everything falls on Lyra and Will. The two of them are important, and we see how they grow both physically and in personality. That point is very well achieved. In another aspect that I like, everything that has to do with angels and their issues I think works pretty well, despite something I mention in the negative points. And I really like the ending of that plot too.

In things that I have not liked or worked, the main thing is the treatment of religion. The author is expressing his values and feelings, but he makes it so forced that it is burdensome. Everything bad is represented by the power that The Authority (see spoiler above for more on this) and its angels have, and that in the earthly world is poured into the Church. Yes, historically it has happened that the church has tried to contain knowledge that did not benefit it, but here everything related to the church and its members is bad. Plain and simple. There is not a single member who is against what is happening, no voice that says "I don't want this", in fact here there is a textbook hitman who belongs to the establishment, and he is the classic bad guy, it almost seems like a walking cliché. The only good one was the one who renounced being a nun, that's where the issue ends.

Another thing that I didn't like very much was Marisa Coulter's redemption, I think it is somewhat forced and arrives late. Although the moment itself is a fantastic monologue and ends on a high note (or a low point, when you look at it).

It has been a long and strange journey, of which I will keep the original memory, but I will also see the criticisms that I have seen as an adult.

n  I’ll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again…n

This third and final installment of His Dark Materials was indeed dark, or at least much darker than the previous two. While they felt more like an adventure, this was slightly on the grim side, and not just because the kids got to spend some time in the land of the dead. While it was quite good, it was probably my least favorite of the three.

This review contains crude language, because I'm too pissed off to be eloquent at the moment. Reader beware.




What the fuck did I just read? Seriously! What in the hell was that supposed to be?

Spoilers ect ect ect.




Everything I loved about the first book is completely gone, the author seems to have forgotten that he's telling a story rather than railing against organized religion almost non-stop, the characters seem to have been lobotomized, and it was just long, horribly boring, and extremely anti-climactic. It drags on, and on, and on, and really accomplishes very little, does not deliver on any of the promises made by the first book, and for a book about man killing god there's remarkably little god killing going on here. Come on Pullman, if you're going to have a man start a war with god, GO FOR THE GOLD, MAN. Go for some huge and epic confrontations, gigantic, world-shattering battles, Man screaming defiance in God's face. You know, something... ANYTHING other than a largely undescribed and frankly boring battle scene that takes up a chapter or so and ends with one of the most ridiculous and melodramatic suicides I've ever read of in fiction. Lord Asriel falls far short of his goal, and has to settle for killing God's underling. Mary Malone's side story is just completely pointless and only serves to take up space. A lot of space. While also managing to be completely uninteresting in every way on top of it. And the ending just drags on, and on pointlessly and impotently long after it should have wrapped things up and called it quits, but Pullman, it seems, just had to squeeze in a few more sermons.

At the end it really seems like Pullman wanted to tell a huge and epic tale, but had no idea how to go about doing it, so he substituted rant after rant, and allegory after allegory instead, and these things were nowhere near as entertaining, or well reasoned out as he obviously thinks them to be. What started out as a very fun fantasy story with a great protagonist, truly menacing villains, and a highly inventive and interesting world became a pretentious, thinly strung together collection of lectures on the evils of organized religion held up on cue cards by stick figures that are sort of dressed like the characters in the first book. I'm very disappointed. There is a way to share your beliefs if you want to and still tell a good and entertaining story. Look at  Faith of the Fallen by Terry Goodkind for example. You don't have to sacrifice one for the other. Pullman, unfortunately, didn't realize this. This book was long, boring, pointless, and worst of all, highly disappointing. Perhaps it's a good thing that only the first book got made into a movie. I don't even know how the other two books would even be adapted into movies. It's so sad that it had to end this way. The first book was just soooooo good. What a waste. I don't think there was even a single part of this book that I actually enjoyed reading.

I kept waiting for the author to put his dick away and get back to telling the story, but he never did. He just left it hanging out there in the wind as he stands upon his great and shining soapbox of justice... as foretold by prophecy... Yes, there are many arguments that can be made against any religion. And many of them have valid points. "Religion is bad *drops mike*" is not one of them. That's a four year old's argument, Pullman, you can do better than that, and you should be ashamed of yourself for not doing so. The biggest problem with this book is that Pullman didn't actually make, or prove any of his own points. He ranted against the evils of religion without ever actually naming what any of said evils are, saying how they impact the world and its people, and why he thinks they are evil. You know, how a well thought out argument would be put together? Pullman pretty much just says that religion is evil because reasons. If, in the end, your entire argument can be summarized by the two words "because reasons", you've failed to make an argument. Go back and try again. It's like he just likes to rant for the sake of ranting, rather than toward any sort of goal or purpose. I really don't mind if he wants to share his beliefs with me if it's in a well thought out and delivered way, while not forgetting that he's also telling a story. But that's not what this book is. It's not that I disagree with the argument that made me hate this book, it's how incompetently he delivered it that makes me hate it. I'm all for people having their own opinions and sharing them. But, you know, at least TRY to make a good showing of it when you do. Pathetic. Just plain pathetic.

And by the end of it, I don't think even the author knows what Dust is actually supposed to be. He seems to change his mind on that pretty regularly throughout the trilogy, and, well, he just sort of hand waves it away as "meh whatever, it's not like the driving force of the first book is in any way important, you'd much rather hear about how Catholicism is the creation of hell, right?" It's just an arbitrary point of contention that has no meaning, definition, or purpose in the story except to be a vague, unexplained point of contention. And on top of that, any point you want to make in your book should never be so oppressive that it crushes all of the life, personality, enjoyability, and sense right out of the story. It should go hand in hand with the story, and work together with it to make a better whole in the end, rather than being the main focus of the book to the exclusion of every single thing else. And that's just not what happened here. He got a bug up his ass about making his point, and it became so heavy handed and oppressive that it utterly destroyed everything else in the story. Hugely disappointing. I went into this book wanting more of what I saw in the first book, but the author didn't really seem to care to finish that story, because he was too busy going off on rant after rant. I get it dude, you don't believe in god and you think organized religion does more harm than good. Did you have to beat me over the head with it until I see cartoon stars circling me?

Let's put it another way. What did Lyra and Will learn during the course of the book? How are they better people in the end than they were at the beginning? What did they accomplish, and how will it affect anything? I can't answer these questions, because the author was too focused on preaching to me that he forgot to include something so simple, yet completely vital to a story, as basic character development in the book. Here's just one small example of the sheer incompetence in storytelling here. Remember how Mrs. Colter had complete control over all the Specters? That sure was awesome, wasn't it? Yeah, too bad the author didn't remember that. And that is just one of many, many, many abandoned, aborted, or just plain forgotten plotlines that the author ignored so that he could better spend his time preaching. In essence, Pullman is exactly what he despises most. Some asshole so full of himself that he won't stop preaching long enough to take a look at the world around him. Funny, eh?

Oh yeah, and 12 year old true love? Yeah... bullshit.

And to be clear, I am not bothered in the least by anti-religious sentiments. Other people are allowed to believe what they believe, and their doing so has no impact whatsoever upon what I believe. I AM bothered by incompetent idiots who wouldn't know how to put together a real and sound argument if their lives depended on it, and think that they're being very clever whilst completely failing to validate said argument in any way. I'm also bothered by assholes who try to pass off a rant on |<---Insert Topic Here--->| as a story, and writers who don't know the first thing about plot structure or character development. (I'm looking at YOU Rothfuss!!!) --read: the author is an arrogant moron who should go back to high school debate club and learn how to structure and support his arguments, then take a high school English class to learn the first thing about telling a story, before writing any more books kthxbai #wouldloseargumentstoafouryearold--

I’ve been putting this book off for almost four years. I’ve been truly terrified to read it for such a long time. The first book, The Golden Compass, is one of the best fantasy novels I have ever read. I adore it. The second book is something else entirely. I was horrified when I read it and truly disgusted with the unexpected direction the series took. I did not want to read this one because I did not want my memories of the first book shattered completely.

So I finally picked it up and I approached it expecting to hate the thing. I expected it to be worse than the second book, but my expectations were unfounded. The biggest problem this trilogy has is the fact that it’s not really a trilogy. It’s essentially one big book, one story. Each book is not self-contained but needs to be read in sequence; they are not structured like individual books: the story keeps flowing to the last page. And this book, whilst nowhere near the same level of mastery the first book possessed, was not entirely bad. It managed to piece everything together quite nicely, but this series had the potential to do so much more.

I was delighted with the first book, for many reasons. One of the main things that impressed me was the strength of its protagonist. She’s a very young girl who is very much human. She is not a messiah figure and was prone to make mistakes but she was also capable of moments of real brilliance. I rooted for her. I wanted to see her grow and conquer those that would seek to use her for their own ends. She had power in her. With the introduction of Will she took a backseat in the story, he became the main hero and overshadowed her completely. She seemed happy to follow his lead and became subservient to his decisions.

This was a big mistake. Whilst Will did actually develop some personality in this book, it was at the tragic cost of Lyra’s. Pullman seemed unable to balance the two personalities together without one unfortunately dominating the other. And the ending they pushed towards was so very (how shall I put this?) closed. It was not the ending this series needed. I feel that Pullman sacrificed the situation he had blooming to fit the writing into the allegory he had been devising since the first book. It became too forced, one the story would have been much stronger if it was allowed to breathe and go where it needed to go.

The redemptive themes towards the end seemed drastically out of place. Two characters that clearly didn’t care much unexpectedly had a change of heart. I found it a little unbelievable. You may wonder why I even bothered to give it three stars. I’m wondering that myself. I think a lot of it has to do with Iorek Byrnison. He was in the last book, and his presence here helped pull the story up in my estimation. But His Dark Materials will always be a series that ruined its own potential.

Very disappointing. It seemed that the author was trying to make an anti-religious "point" and just hammered it to a tiresome conclusion. The 'redemption" of Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel in the plot-line was amateurish and predictably lame. Frankly, there is little more to say. There were far too many new characters and new worlds to follow with any sense of story. The titles of the trilogy are interesting but how Mary ultimately designs the spyglass and uses it seems to be an afterthought on the author's part.
The 2nd book was the best of the three. This was a slow read and I found myself getting bored and losing interest.

“People are too complicated to have simple labels.”