First of all, I would not recommend these books to kids. I don't think that most kids would be able to navigate the intricacies of Pullman's ideas and separate the story from the rhetoric. I see this as a major problem since they are written for and marketed to children.

That being said, there are a lot things about the books that I found really interesting. For example, the people of this world have a creature that is part of them, their daemon. The daemons are a physical manifestation of the person's soul, which is an incredibly interesting idea. The children have daemons that can change forms symbolizing how their personalities are not fixed or decided. When a child matures his daemon takes on a form that best portrays that person's character and personality. In a way the daemons act as a conscious; they also reveals character traits that a person might want to keep hidden.

Pullman's books definitely have an anti-organized religion slant. But the issues that Pullman tackles in the first couple books are things that I don't believe in anyway - like original sin and the church wielding political power. Here's what Pullman himself said about that, "When religion acquires that power, it goes bad very rapidly. That's the criticism I think the story of His Dark Materials is making, because in Lyra's world, power is wielded by religious authority, and that's why it's gone wrong." One of the major conflicts in the story is a Galileo-esque tale of a man who makes a scientific discovery that goes against the doctrine of the Magestrium (the church and the seat of political power.) And since he is like Galileo, you can imagine how well the Magestrium takes that discovery.

One thing that really bothered me about the first couple books actually has nothing to do with Pullman but just the general state of the world right now. That is the fact that it always seems like the church goers in books have to be crazy - either crazy controlling or crazy religious or just plain crazy. I'm shaking my head now in frustration.

Where things got dicey for me with Pullman's books was in the last book of the trilogy. Now instead of fighting against the corrupt church, Lyra's father wages a war against heaven and God is portrayed as an old man, which I found pretty offensive. However, that being said, I never got the impression that Lyra's dad was a "good guy" or that he was doing the right thing by trying to overthrow God.

As far as the physically inappropriate behavior is concerned, I never really could decide what happened in that scene. It's clear that the kids love each other (they actually aren't that young, 14 and 15, I think) but that is all that is clear. Involved in this situation, is a character who is told that she is "to play the serpent," as in the Garden of Eden. And, I suppose, that if you believed that Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden because of some sexual sin (which I know people do), you might read this section of the book in that way. But I'm not sure if that is what Pullman was going for.

Ok. So final run down. Is all the criticism hype? No. But most of it is too heavy handed. Am I sorry I read the books? No. And I would even consider reading them again. I would like to get my mind around some of Pullman's critiques and see if I feel as uncomfortable with some of the stuff as I did the first time (it's been 4 years probably). I walked into these books blindly. I didn't have any idea what I was getting myself into when I started reading them, and so I think I was doubly shocked by some of the themes of the books. But what a fruitful conversation Pullman has started. I would love to talk to someone who has carefully and thoughtfully read the books. I saw the movie but Nate didn't, and I really wished that he had so that we could talk about it and try to separate Pullman's ideas from those of his characters.

This is the conclusion to the trilogy known as His Dark Materials. I’m glad I was told about the connection to Milton, but in this last volume there are hints enough for the reader in form of poems and quotes at the beginning of each chapter; of William Blake, Emily Dickinson and John Milton.

The Amber Spyglass is about Will further travelling through the worlds, now in the possession of the Subtle Knife (how much I love that boy with his quiet courage and sense of duty and faithfulness). Lyra has been taken and is kept sedated by Mrs. Coulter and has to be rescued – or be taken by enemy forces who have also found out where she is being kept.
Accompanying Will are a number of new companions (first two gay angels which I thought a brilliant characterization and for whom I almost cried because their fate was heartbreaking, then two miniature creatures riding fireflies and spying for Lord Asriel).
We learn that many places known through myths and fairy tales (such as the Kingdom of Heaven, the world of the dead etc) are simply other worlds in the multiverse. However, about 300 years ago something went wrong with dust and caused problems throughout them all.
Mary Mallone, the physicist Lyra encountered in the previous book, is also travelling through the worlds, guided by the I Ching, which is basically another version of what the alethiometer is, settling eventually in a very interesting one populated by elephantine creatures that use seed pod wheels for transportation.
Simultaneously we have Lyra’s parents and their respective secret plans helped by all kinds of peoples.
Last but not least, we also meet some old friends such as Iorek and his panserbjØrns (though I was a bit disappointed as he didn’t seem as faithful a friend as Lee Scoresby or the witches) and all of them, alive and dead (for bad things have been done to the dead as well), play a role here because the end battle is against the Authority (God) itself, represented by Metatron as well as the entire army of Heaven.

What I love is that you can never truly be sure which person is good and which one is evil. For example, we know that Lyra and Will are innocent, despite them having had to kill and lie.
The only true enemy is the Authority as he is an oppressive „higher“ being (interesting twist that it only claimed to be the creator of it all without actually being it) who wants to limit the knowledge and awareness of all evolved beings throughout the multiverse in order to exert greater control (interestingly enough, Metatron is even worse although he was only turned into an angel by the Authority).
Thus, even though I’m not a fan of Lord Asriel's, I understand why he does what he does and agree that the war with the Authority is necessary. Enlightenment instead of blind obedience.
Nevertheless, no matter what was said and done by him and Mrs. Coulter in this book, they are simply irredeemable to me.
But Pullman never makes it easy and so all of the characters have good and bad sides and most of the time the author even plays with our expectations and our definitions and turns them upside down to emphasize that neither any world nor any creature therein is black-or-white.
The fact that while the battle has of course a gigantic scale, it’s not really about it (not only), was a wonderful notion as well. Because the battle is not won on a classic battlefield alone, but in the hearts and minds of people like Lyra and that exposition was beautifully done.

Moreover, I very much enjoyed the exploration of the multiverse by all kinds of different people as well as the different worlds themselves. All questions are answered, all events and encounters (such as the spectres) explained.
Most importantly, Pullman said Lyra's sexual awakening "is exactly what happens in the Garden of Eden … Why the Christian Church has spent 2,000 years condemning this glorious moment, well, that's a mystery. I want to confront that, I suppose, by telling a story that this so-called original sin is anything but. It's the thing that makes us fully human."
Isn’t that a lovely idea and an immensely important one as well?
Which is why it is an abominable crime that the American version of this book was changed (the North American edition censors passages describing Lyra's incipient sexuality)!

Despite the grande scale of the battle, we’re still getting the delicate undertone of growing up and finding out who you are, being true to yourself, even if it is hard and risky and you’re absolutely not sure at all that it’ll be alright in the end, which (to me at least) was one of the most important messages throughout anyway.

Personally, I’m an atheist but I do think Pullman pulled off something remarkable here. He doesn’t make it a fight between believers and non-believers; all he’s saying is that even if you do believe, no being has the right to suppress others and knowledge (learning, understanding, making technological advancements to create a better life) is not a sin.
Not many authors are capable of weaving such a complex story with so many layers of meaning and symbolism that is still thrilling and full of adventure as well as relatable fantasy elements and great and vivid characters.

If you haven’t read the ENTIRE three books, please don’t read any further. I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you because the ending is so endearing and…..lasting, that I would HATE to take it away from you.

I absolutely fell in love with Lyra. Didn’t you? She was the sister I wish I would have had growing up. She was myself as I played with all of my brothers in the mudfields, she was the daughter I’m sure every woman would yearn to have. In my opinion, Philip Pullman was brilliant in his creation of this little girl. Her flaws were her strength just as much as her strengths were her salvation. And when you take her inquisitive innocence and throw in Will’s brave maturity…..together, the two of them are almost too much to bear. I was heady with adoration for the two of them combined. I’m sure some would say they were too perfect together, too sappy, too trite. But my cynicism runs deep and my heart was still touched. Maybe it’s because I’m a girl or because my heart still remembers the depth of that first love. The absoluteness of it. My heart remembers “Going to China”, (haa haa) and it longs to visit again.

Will was the boy every girl wants to fall in love with. Loyal, strong, clever, honest, sweet and faithful. I hated him for agreeing to close every single window except one, but loved him for his dedication to do what’s “right”. I wanted to shake him and tell him that when he gets older he will realize that one more window wouldn’t have mattered – that what he was at Lyra’s side was worth one silly little window in the fabric of the worlds. But of course, he wouldn’t listen to me, because he is young and doesn’t know how rare True Love is. So I sighed (and cried) and watched them (felt them!) split forever. And I agonized over whether they would ever figure out how to Astral Project into eachother's lives. And if the one would wait for the other when they died, so that they could walk out the window they created hand in hand. I could literally picture them sitting there on that bench for an hour each year, aching for eachother once again. Sigh....

I liked how Mrs. Coulter was deep enough to be both intrinsically evil and love Lyra with a blindly, maternal love in the end. I liked how the Master at Jordon and John Faa were father figures in their own ways. I liked little Roger’s complete faith and how Iorek’s devotion was tempered with a knowledge that was higher than either of the children’s.

I did find Mary Malone unbearably boring and found myself wishing away any chapter having to deal with her and her mulefa. Get back to the real story of Lyra and Will! I could have done without her entire story line.

And of course there was Pantalaimon. How much do we all wish we had a dæmon that we could see, touch, talk to, rely on? How much fun would it be to have a morphing little partner in everything we do? Ahhh, was a fun concept to explore and probably the very secret to HDM’s success. Pullman’s descriptions of the different dæmon’s throughout each book were descriptive, imaginative and comical.

All in all, an excellent book. I wish I would have read it slower so that I could have enjoyed Lyra and Will's company a little longer.

This was a huggable book for me.
You know the ones... You REALLY don't want to go to bed, but you have to. You're not ready to leave the story, so you hug it to your chest while you sleep, not unlike a cuddly toy. And maybe, just maybe, you might absorb some of the story through the pages.

No? Just me?

The first twenty percent of the book took me a lot longer to read than usual, but I blame that on a few real life things, rather than on the book. Though the opening was a little bit less compelling than the other two books.

There are just so many things to say about this book, that I don't know where to start.

The jumping between POV characters, while necessary, can be a little frustrating. It was used well, in that the reader often finds themselves at a cliffhanger. But when you're reading past your bed time, and keep saying "one more chapter", it's harder to justify "two more chapters of a different POV and THEN another one" about the character you're wanting to get back to.

I can't fault Mr Pullman's writing. His stories are so very epic, planned out, and his characters so real that sometimes you really don't know what to make of them. Characters I hated early on in the series or in this book changed, did something that made me want them to live long lives, or at least long enough for someone ELSE to know that they hadn't been all evil. The story definitely picks up pace again around page 180.


I think Mary Malone best sums up the people in this book, and the people in our own world.

n  "...I stopped believing that there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels."n

Sometimes people do good things, sometimes they do bad things, and some people have more of a penchant for one than the other.


A few things did bother me about the story, of course.  Like why, for example, did John Parry discover his daemon upon entering Lyra's world, but Will had to go to the world of the dead before his existed in a separate capacity himself.  And other little bits and pieces that I can't call to mind right now.

THANKFULLY there were few typographical issues in the third book, so I didn't find myself jarred out of the story quite as much as I did throughout The Subtle Knife.


I think the main thing that struck me about this book, and will continue to upset me in future reads (but upset in a good way) was the ending. I am the sort of person who likes to hold onto my friends, and there are few things that disturb me as much as the idea that I will never be able to speak to them again.

I cried as much for Mary and Atal as I did for Will and Lyra. And the idea that there are all these people now stuck in their own worlds for the rest of their days, never able to contact those who would understand them the most.

I think the fear of this situation ties in with my zombie love, and the fact that, in the zombie apocalypse, it would be much harder to get in touch with my friends on the other side of Australia, let alone those who live in America or other countries.

The ending of this trilogy is like that, but a thousand times worse. To think of NEVER being able to find those people who are important to you, EVER again. *shudder*


Maybe later, once I have gained some distance and finished with the sniffles, I will be able word my thoughts about this book, and the trilogy, a little better.


Thank you, Mr Pullman, for a story that resonates with twenty-seven year old me just as strongly as teenage me. This remains in my favourites list, and I will revisit it in another ten years when my memories have faded a little and I can feel as though I am *almost* reading it for the first time again.

- Re-read in January 2014 -

I also liked the third book a bit less than the others. The whole thing seemed rushed, as if he threw together every disparate idea he could think of at the last minute and didn't really plan ahead. I wanted this to be a great series, but it didn't really reach its potential.

I really liked the descriptions of angels at the beginning of the second book, as these strangely alien creatures with wisdom far beyond our own and their attention fixed on other-worldly things. But as the story progressed, it seemed like they became petty and simple and not really any different from flying, glowing humans.

I liked the way he described Mary's conversations with the mulefa in italics, to represent her poor understanding of the language without bogging down the reader with the poor translation itself. I liked the machine-conversations with Dust. I liked Iorek's discussion about how the knife should never have been created, and the observation that someone was going to create it eventually, so it's for the best that good-hearted people hold it.

But some parts seemed quite implausible or unnecessary:

Harpies given the task of tormenting people for eternity, and they just turn around and become nice after being told a story? None of the trillions of dead people from the last thousands of years ever thought to try that?

Shining with brilliance, the angel, second-in-command to God, with the wisdom and insight of thousands of years of existence, is betrayed to his death... by a few minutes of flirting?

And how can Will just teach the angels to close the windows? Isn't that his job alone?

How can you grab an angel by his wings and drag him to his death if angels can change form?

But I liked the whole notion of the war against God, so I gave him some leeway in his attempts to describe it. I like the idea of Will putting God out of his misery, without ever realizing what he's done.

Two chapters from the end, I put the book down and was awash with ideas about religion, authority, war, peace, the "god-shaped hole" that we supposedly try to fill with material pleasures, Mary's ex-Christianity, my own ex-Christianity, and the relationship of all these things to our experience of love and happiness and fulfillment. I was really liking the series, pacing my apartment in excited thought and wanting to recommend it to everyone, especially those with religious backgrounds.

But then all that hopefulness and inspiration is ruined by the needlessly traumatic ending. You have such empathy for Lyra and Will's young perfect love, everything's coming together for good and happiness, without a need for a god, and then Pullman breaks your heart and splits them apart forever. It felt to me like the entire ending was just a series of hastily-invented plot devices existing solely to force the main characters into unhappiness.

"Oh, by the way, you can't live in the same world as each other for more than a few years or you'll die. Annnd all the windows have to be closed, or the world will end. I guess you can have one open, but you can't use it for yourselves. No, not two; just one. And you can't make temporary holes because every one you make kills people. And uh, you can teach the angels to close them even without the knife, so no, you can't go around with Lyra visiting all the different worlds together and closing all of them. Not yours."

Not only that, but he takes away their special abilities and thrusts them into dull normal lives again. Boarding school? Running from the law? Why? I don't know what he was trying to teach by doing all of this. Something about growing up and... what? The whole "Republic of Heaven" ending is lost on me now; all I can think of is the tragedy of their lost love.

This is supposed to be a book about losing faith in religion and finding other meaning in life, but all I got out of it was depressed. Good thing I didn't read this when I actually was leaving my religion.

OH MY GOODNESS!!! This cannot be a children's book, because I am not feeling child-sized feelings right now....my heart...oh my heart....
This was SOOOO good, the entire trilogy, amazing! This book, however, was the best of the entire trilogy. HANDS DOWN!

Wonderful, amazing, and so damn relevant. What an amazingly brave and thought provoking book....I'm gushing.....This book makes me gush.

I can't wait for the new trilogy to come out...please find a way...(those who read it know what I'm talking about!)

In The Amber Spyglass Philip Pullman commits two serious authorial sins: he gets preachy and he loses control of his story. The result is book that, while excellent in places, is somewhat less enjoyable than the first two volumes of His Dark Materials.

In The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife the narrative focused on Lyra and Will, the two main characters. In this book the action jumps between their story and three or four others, which are at times peripheral and uninteresting. The most egregious case is the storyline that follows Father Gomez, the priest sent to kill Lyra. This story goes nowhere: he never encounters Lyra and is eliminated by a character we thought had left the book several hundred pages previously. His story serves no purpose other than to inject some cheap tension and offer a platform for another dig at the Magisterium/Church through the doctrine of preemptive absolution (a cool idea, it must be said). This seems to be the motivation for many of the digressions. It's almost as if Pullman had a list of neat ideas, realized this was his last chance to get them in the series, and resolved to insert them at any cost.

There is also a great deal of convenience in the narrative. The alethiometers have become both deus and machina: everyone has one and can suddenly read them almost perfectly. This becomes a crutch for Pullman to move the story along without much motivation. Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter, at best morally ambiguous in the previous books, have become good for unclear reasons.

For all these narrative problems on the fringes, the central story involving Lyra and Will is strong. The more serious problem is the preachiness. Narratively the problem is that it's very heavy handed, but I don't want to focus on that. Nor do I object to the content of Pullman's message. My problem is that Pullman seems to be mistaken about what he is preaching.

Pullman has claimed in interviews that he wanted to be the anti-C. S. Lewis and that unlike Milton, who was of the Devil's party and didn't know it, he is of the Devil's party and knows it. These claims certainly helped raise the profile of the books and the film (about which less said, the better), but they are overstated. I believe, on the contrary, that Pullman is of God's party and doesn't know it. Pullman's cosmology is very similar to Christianity's, and his trilogy very similar to more overtly Christian fantasies like The Chronicles of Narnia.

This may seem to be a perverse claim to make. Pullman, after all, has a chacter whom we are supposed to believe say Christianity "is a very powerful and convincing mistake." But it is at least a plausable reading. In the first place, Pullman's world is not atheist. It is pantheist: the universe is god. This god communicates through the alethiometer and other truth-telling devices, which not only tell the factual truth, but also give moral advice. The alethiometer frequently tells Lyra that things are right and wrong, not just true or false.

Second, the relationship between god and the demonic element (The Authority) is exactly the same as it is in Christian accounts of Satan. In both cases a creature falsely claims to be the creator in order to gratify his own pride and exert his own power. This rebellion is the origin of evil in both stories. In both cases things can be set right by recognizing and rejecting the false claims of the demonic authority, a miraculous and unexpected intervention by the true god, and learning to love one another. Admittedly Christians are not pantheists, but most do not believe God is a lion either. Pullman has changed the form, but the content is remarkably similar.

Finally, both Pullman and Lewis show their characters learning moral lessons that the reader is also supposed to imbibe. In both cases the characters learn to be brave, honest, and loyal; to sacrifice their own immediate desires to the needs of others; and to pursue truth and knowledge, including to question authority. Pullman is not exactly tearing up the foundations of Christian morality here.

Rather than seeing Pullman as an atheist or anti-Christian author, it is more accurate to see his as part of a long tradition of English anti-clerical (and perhaps anti-papist, although that's a different review) writers. Many Christians have understood the visible Church to be corrupt and the clergy to be ambitious for power, without ceasing to be Christian. Some might even argue this is an essential truth of Christianity.

Nie rozumiem w tej książce ciągu przyczynowo skutkowego. Słabe

Rating: ⭐⭐ ½
Genre: Fantasy + Young Adult

This is the third book in the “His Dark Materials” trilogy. I will try not to reveal any spoilers about the book, so I will keep this short. Lyra searches for her dead friend along with Will, who has the subtle knife that can cut openings between worlds. The two kids try to find out about the Dust and its mysteries. Two angels try hard to convince Will to go with them and kill God, whom they call the Authority!

Phillip Pullman has many interesting ideas and concepts. However, cramming them into one book didn’t help the story but made it more complex in a confusing way. And what contributed more to this was the introduction of new characters with their own storylines, which caused the plot to be more convoluted. I don’t mind the heavy and dark themes of the book, but what I mind is that these themes are over the top. I know this is a fantasy, but there needs to be some aspect of realism to go with it. I mean, the author didn’t just go with two twelve-year-old kids trying to defy the rules of the universe and free it from whoever governs it, but also fall in love! To me, the two kids felt like two ants on a mission to destroy the sun, and they succeeded in their mission! This book felt more cheesy than the previous two.

Another thing I really disliked was the change in the characters. Whatever evil was in Mrs. Coulter goes with the wind towards the end. This didn’t go well with me. For two books, you build her character in a certain way and then strip her of all that. Not good. The slow pace of the story is another drawback. I felt things were dragging, and the introduction of new characters and their storylines made the pacing worse.

I liked book one and gave it 3.5 stars. Book two was OK, with 3 stars. This one didn’t go well with me, and its conclusion was not satisfying. I’m currently watching the first season of the TV show, which I feel is OK so far. Compared to the movie, I’m not impressed with the casting choices. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I think The Golden Compass movie was more entertaining than the book or the TV adaptation (so far, I've watched only five episodes) because it left out all the boring parts.

Having read the trilogy now, I can say that unfortunately, I’m not a fan. I expected a masterpiece, but what I got was more like “His OTT Materials”!

Mi objetivo era finalizar la trilogía antes de finalizar el año y lo he conseguido.

Inicie a leer esta trilogía porque vi que HBO iba a realizar la adaptación de estas novelas, y al ver el trailer, me llamo tanto la atención que en vez de esperar la adaptación, recurrí a los libros. Y en este momento, me alegra esa buena decisión de no esperar, porque si solo hubiera seguido la adaptación, la intriga habría acabado con mi paciencia de esperar entre una u otra temporada.

¿Se acuerdan de cuando nos enseñaban de pequeños que una historia tenía inicio, nudo y desenlace? Pues bien, la trilogía de La Materia Oscura podría resumirse justamente así: Luces del Norte, el inicio; La Daga, el nudo; y El Catalejo Lacado, el desenlace. En general, es una muy buena historia de fantasía con gran cantidad de hechos, seres y mundos; que provoca, que entre en mi lista de libros favoritos de fantasía. ¿Tiene defectos? Sí, pero aun así creo, que ha sido una gran experiencia leer cada capítulo de estos tres libros.

En cuanto a este libro, al Catalejo Lacado, al principio sentí un poco de pereza, porque se describían muchas cosas al estilo Julio Verne y eso me canso un montón, pero al avanzar, luego no existió parte que me aburriera, porque simplemente estuvo genial. Ocurrieron muchas batallas, aventuras, trampas, acción, intriga y sobretodo muertes y escenas tristes, que me atraparon completamente hasta el final.

Quedo completamente satisfecho de lo que he leído.

Heartbreaking, cynical, beautiful, potentially life-changing.

A great ending to a great trilogy. I didn't love this as much as the first two. I almost feel this could have been split into two books and it would have been even better.