Imagine if Frodo stopped his quest and decided to go back to Hobbiton in order to return a library book.

“We have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are, because for us, there is no elsewhere.”

WARNING: I cannot, under any circumstances, be objective about this book.It is physically impossible to be! The passion I had when reading this for the first time at 10 will be preserved under glass (or in amber?) and buried with me, I refuse to let it go. His Dark Materials has meant the world to me and more for nearly a decade, and I still can’t believe the series adaptation is already coming to a close (what is time???).

Now I’ll be honest, I didn’t love this reread quite as much as my earlier experiences with the series which is somewhat of a bummer, but isn’t that how revisiting childhood favorites usually goes?

It pains me to say that I do agree with some of the criticism surrounding this final installment, especially when it comes to Lyra’s character ‘assassination’, to put it dramatically. I guess I didn’t realize it when originally enjoying the series, but the way her usually fiery personality seemed to bend to Will’s will (haha) in this book was disappointing to say the least. Becoming more vulnerable and emotional isn’t inherently bad, but falling in love doesn’t (and shouldn’t) have to change your entire personality! We know Lyra has a good head on her shoulders, so seeing her consult Will before doing practically anything in this book really got on my nerves.

It is a bit funny though since, looking back, the romance in The Amber Spyglass was probably my favorite aspect of it. I vividly remember bawling my eyes out at the ending and obsessively rereading all of their scenes together for weeks after finishing the series. Was I sobbing this time around? No, but I have a hard time believing that I’ll ever read the “Every atom of me and every atom of you” monologue without shedding a few tears, let’s be serious.

All criticism aside, Philip Pullman is still such an incredible author and one of the most creative minds that I’ve ever been fortunate enough to read from. To this day, it’s been hard for me to find a series with world-building that compares to how out-of-the-box and clever his multiverse is, especially in this book. I mean come on now: the mulefa? The land of the dead? The Gallivespians? Tell me His Dark Materials isn’t a masterclass in fantasy, and I’ll laugh in your face.

Regardless of any negativity further analysis might bring, I’m confident that nostalgia will draw me back to Lyra’s world time and time again, and I couldn’t be more overjoyed! In short; beautiful series, beautiful ending to a series, beautiful lessons to learn, beautiful world-building, beautiful *almost* everything. Read it and thank me later.

“Every atom of me and every atom of you… We’ll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams… And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won’t just be able to take one, they’ll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we’ll be joined so tight…”

(This fits within the scope of my review of the full series)

Book three was just a mess. It's almost nonsensical as it strives against reason and its own narrative to bring the story to some kind of resolution. The great betrayal prophesied? Not really a betrayal at all. Lyra being tempted? Never happens. Mary playing the role of the serpent? Nope. She just kind of stands around. Oh, and the big plan to take war to heaven and kill God? Has nothing to do with anything in the story really. Though they do end up killing the Enoch from some world. The last 250 pages are baffling. There is no climax. The plot contrivances are painful. I'm not even sure what the point of the story was. Things happen because in Pullman's mind they need to, not because it would make any sense for something to happen a certain way.

It's hard to believe it but this book was worse actually than The Da Vinci Code. At least that was merely stupid. This was stupid, senseless, and (perhaps worst of all) boring. It's what I imagine Eragon would have been if I would have made it past page one hundred.

I just wasn’t a huge fan of this series in general but really wanted to complete the trilogy and give it a fair chance.

For me too much was happening in this book, one wild thing after another. It also seemed kind of fragmented.
The ending wasn’t very satisfying, with lots of the ‘answers’ or ‘missing pieces’ being filled in by more minor character who figured it out with any explanation, they just turn up with the knowledge we have been looking for in three books.

I’m giving it three stars because I can see why someone else might have enjoyed it. It’s clever and interesting.

Mi aspettavo un finale più d'effetto ad essere onesta, o perlomeno un finale degno della grandiosità di tutta la storia. Da una visione multiplanetaria di torna ad una molto più singolare. Un lieto fine che non è lieto, ma che ti lascia un sapore dolce e amaro. Nel complesso comunque tirando le somme, la trilogia sicuramente merita di essere letta..

«Forse a volte non facciamo la cosa giusta perché la cosa sbagliata ci sembra più rischiosa, e non volendo sembrare paurosi andiamo a fare la cosa sbagliata soltanto perché è più pericolosa. Ci preoccupa di più non passare per paurosi che pensare con giudizio.»

The final novel in a classic fantasy trilogy that will stand the test of time!

It is difficult to find enough superlatives to describe Philip Pullman's masterwork fantasy trilogy HIS DARK MATERIALS. Heart stopping adventure pitting good against insidious evil and weak against strong, a cast of magnificently crafted characters, compelling dialogue, a child's sense of awestruck wonder and insatiable curiosity, the heart wrenching sadness of unexpected death, a healthy serving of ultra-modern science and cosmology cleverly juxtaposed against a soupçon of old-fashioned Victorian lifestyles and a completely original "world" will all ensure that HIS DARK MATERIALS has a place in the classics section of libraries for decades to come. It has earned that status and will hold its head high beside other ground-breaking fantasy adventures such as LORD OF THE RINGS and DUNCTON WOOD.

If anyone reading the trilogy had any doubts at all, THE AMBER SPYGLASS will put paid to any remaining thoughts that his story is anything but an eloquent and powerful, stinging diatribe against the patriarchal power grab and drive for self-perpetuation that gave rise to organized monotheistic religions. Pullman makes it abundantly clear that today's organized religions are and have always been the single greatest source of hatred, violence, and warfare that mankind has ever inflicted on itself and our embattled planet. Consider, for example, the satirical, sanctimonious, and outrageously bombastic name that Pullman assigned to one of the organs of Church administration, “The Consistorial Court of Discipline”. Another, “The Society of the Work of the Holy Spirit” is so plausibly realistic that one has to wonder whether he phoned the Vatican for help with the name. One particularly lucid line that doesn’t appear until very close to the end of the novel summarizes the thesis of the entire trilogy, “The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all”. Pullman makes it quite clear that organized religion is an existential threat to mankind and to the planet itself. Lyra’s and Will’s ultimate peace and happiness are contingent on the extinction of the church and their consignment to the pages of history books.

THE AMBER SPYGLASS is everything that an epic fantasy should be – thrilling, heartbreaking, warm, convincing, evocative, thought-provoking and compelling from first page to last. Science nerds will also be thrilled to note that the multiverse world of HIS DARK MATERIALS doesn’t stint on accurate modern scientific thought either. On chaos, for example, “The telescope brought it closer, but there was no more detail; cloud still looks like cloud however much it’s magnified.” Or on the controversial multi-dimensional nature of space, time and matter in string theory, “He had suggested that there were more spatial dimensions than the three familiar ones – that on a very small scale, there were up to seven or eight other dimensions, but that they were impossible to examine directly.” The geek in me warmed to my very toes.

Highly recommended. Treat your copy well because it’s a virtual certainty you’ll return to it at some point in the future to read it again.

Paul Weiss

Considering all the recent controversy surrounding Pullman's Dark Materials, I was careful to avoid reading any articles or reviews that would taint my opportunity to judge this book on face value. I found it to be an incredible story. Pullman drew from history, religion and science to form his own unique creation. I can't say that it was remarkably uplifting, or inspiring, or even that it made me question my view of life and how my religion plays into that. In fact, it probably only solidified my views. Sometimes readers who claim to be religious do themselves a disservice by criticizing books that disagree with their beliefs. First, they are only confirming what many athiestic authors claim: that religion closes the minds of men. Second, they fail to see what common ground there is between us as members of humanity, believers in God or not. Third, they can't seem to recognize such books for what they are: fiction. That is exactly what it was for me. A compelling, don't-want-to-put-it-down work of fiction.

3.5
I finally finished this series! I've read the first two books in the series a long time ago, but I've never finished this last book. This year I decided, cause why not, to reread this series to finally fnish it and know how this ends. And I did it! I'm so happy that I read this!

As with the first two books, I had a problem with the pacing. It was alittle bit wired. Sometimes it was very slow and there were times, like the end, when it started moving faster.

I wasn't the biggest fan of the end. I really hoped it would have a happier ending, but well some books are just supposed to break my heart.

I’m rating this at 4 stars, but really I feel like it should be 4.25 or 4.3 or something like that. Although I didn’t love it as much as the first two books, I found it to be a realistic and satisfying ending to the trilogy.

It was great to see Iorek Byrnison, the armoured, talking polar bear, again. He gets to be the voice of the natural world, warning against doing something “just because you can” and about unknown consequences of actions. Pullman had managed to include so many interesting creatures to inhabit all of his parallel universes! Witches, dæmons, angels, spectres, gyptians, ghosts, just to mention a few.

Lyra & Will are on the cusp of adulthood in this book, but have already taken on adult-level responsibilities. They handle them much better than I would have at the same age! But didn’t we all feel “all grown up” at that stage? I couldn’t understand why adults didn’t see me the same way! Their reluctance to trust me with any kind of burden seemed very insulting to me at 17 or 18 years.

I can also see why very religious people wouldn’t care for Pullman’s worldview, but since I’m not a religious person, I was perfectly comfortable with it. A recommended series.

I’ve finally finished my reread of His Dark Materials before starting The Book of Dust. It is literally decades since I read it and all I could remember was that I loved it, and the mulefa. But of course there was so much more to it than that. And I cried my eyes out at the end.
It also made me feel like I’d love to chat to Philip Pullman about his metaphysical beliefs and the meaning of life. Wonderful writing. Wonderful story.

Okay....first...make no mistake, this review contains spoilers.






Now, having read the first book (5 stars) and the second book (3 stars) I had some hope for this book. But, this book was an excruciating head-hammering look at an author making all the wrong moves.

1: Lyra's sublimation to Will becomes utterly complete. Hell, women are supposed to bend to men, aren't they? Lyra quit taking a step without fearing it would cause Will to raise his eyebrow.

2: Lyra's mother (who had been SUCH a wonderfully evil character) and father both find ultimate redemption in their love for Lyra. Whoopee. In fact, EVERYBODY finds redemption in this novel. Everybody. The evilest creatures in existence, the harpies in the lands of the dead, are transformed by Lyra's music in about 3 pages, and become her stalwart and forever allies. Cripes.

3: Lyra and Will gettin' it on! Yeah, hello? We knew from point one that Lyra and Will would eventually get busy...did it have to be Sex That Saves the Universe? Cosmic Humping That Restores the Fabric of All Reality? Wait, was I supposed to be taking LSD when I read that part? Damn, dude, you should have packaged a tab with the book!

4: More damn characters. More damn MAIN characters. Suddenly we've got Important People on Bugs. Pullman continues to pull in so many disparate characters and plot threads that EVERYTHING is diluted into a big stinky morass.

5: Theology aspect. One of the reasons I was attracted to this series was because of Pullman's strongly anti-religious take...the man wrote a blurb for Dawkins' "God Delusion" for freak's sake. So, umm, why was this book sooooo religious? The dust? Well, the dust is all-knowing, even of the future. And there is indeed a land of the dead. So, we have afterlife, and pre-ordainment, in an anti-religious book? Sweet, how does that work? Well, it doesn't. Angels are flying around, and they're the good guys. No, wait, they're the bad guys. Well, no matter, I mean, there IS a god, but he didn't make all creation. That was, apparently, maybe, the dust. Seems to me that if you're praying to dust, rather than God, it doesn't make any difference. Religion is religion, and this was a religious book.

6: Easy ending. Okay...I saw most aspects of the ending coming from about 700 pages to go. Couldn't Pullman throw me some surprises beyond How Damn Long He Took to Get Around To It?

7: Easy ending, take 2: Let's see, Will and Lyra fight against God and All the Angels, against the pull of their own daemons, against not only all creation, but all of creation on multiple universes, they lose friends to bullets, explosions, souls ripped out, and a myriad other ways as legions of people die to either protect them personally, or what they stand for, the two of them travel to the freakin' Lands of the Dead in order to remain together, and they eventually get it on in all sorts of transcendant-garden-of-eden ways, restoring the entire multi-verse with the Glory of Their Hot Sweaty Action, and then....

and then...

and then an angel says, "Oh, you guys can't stay together, cuz a some bad stuff would happen then."

And in ONE PAGE they say, "Jeepers, that's too bad. Any way around it?"

Angel says "Nope."

And they don't even try. It's just ta-ta, been good knowing you.

That's it.

Well, trilogy, it actually hasn't been so good knowing you.

Pullman continues the tale begun in The golden Compass. It remains fascinating, moving and carries significant intellectual payload, although I expect much of that will go over the heads of younger readers. One of the best series of its generation.