Si no ha leído los tres libros, no sigas leyendo esta review. No quisiera estropearlo porque el final es tan entrañable y... perdurable, que odiaría quitarte esa ilusión.

Me enamoré absolutamente de Lyra en este libro. En mi opinión, Philip Pullman fue brillante en la creación de esta pequeña niña. Sus defectos fueron su fuerza tanto como sus puntos fuertes fueron su salvación. Y cuando tomas su inquisitiva inocencia y arrojas la valiente madurez de Will ... juntos, los dos son casi demasiado para soportar. Estaba embriagada de adoración por ellos dos juntos. Estoy segura de que algunos dirían que eran demasiado perfectos juntos, demasiado cursi, demasiado triviales. Pero mi cinismo es profundo y mi corazón todavía se conmueve. Mi corazón recuerda "Ir a China" y desea visitarla nuevamente.

Will era el chico del que toda chica quiere enamorarse. Leal, fuerte, inteligente, honesto, dulce y fiel. Lo odié por aceptar cerrar todas las ventanas excepto una, pero lo amaba por su dedicación a hacer lo que es "correcto". Quería sacudirlo y decirle que cuando sea mayor se dará cuenta de que una ventana más no hubiera importado, que estar al lado de Lyra valía una pequeña y tonta ventana en la fábrica de los mundos. Pero, por supuesto, no lo hizo porque es joven y no sabe cuán raro es el verdadero amor. Entonces suspiré (y lloré) y los observé (¡los sentí!) Divididos para siempre. Y me angustié sobre si uno espera al otro cuando mueran, para que puedan salir por la ventana que crearon de la mano. Pude imaginarlos literalmente sentados en ese banco durante una hora cada año, adoloridos por los demás una vez más...

Me gustó cómo la Sra. Coulter fue lo suficientemente profunda como para ser intrínsecamente malvada y amar a Lyra con un amor ciego y materno al final. Me gustó cómo el Maestro del Jordan y John Faa eran figuras paternas a su manera. Me gustó la fe completa del pequeño Roger y cómo la devoción de Iorek se atenuó con un conocimiento que era más alto que cualquiera de los de los niños.

Encontré a Mary Malone insoportablemente aburrida y me encontré deseando terminar cualquier capítulo tuviera que lidiar con ella y su mulefa. ¡Quería regresar a la historia real de Lyra y Will! La historia sin su personaje hubiera sido igual, no hubiera implicado ningún cambio.

Y, por supuesto, estaba Pantalaimon. ¿Cuánto deseamos todos tener un "demonio" que pudiéramos ver, tocar, hablar, confiar? ¿Cuán divertido sería tener un compañero pequeño en todo lo que hacemos? Ahhh, fue un concepto divertido de explorar y probablemente el secreto del éxito de la materia oscuro. Las descripciones de Pullman de los diferentes daimons a lo largo de cada libro fueron descriptivas, imaginativas y cómicas.

En general, un excelente libro. Desearía haberlo leído más despacio para poder disfrutar un poco más de la compañía de Lyra y Will.

- George, wake up!

- Ungh... what time is it?

- I think about four am. You were having a nightmare.

- Mmmn.

- Hey, you're shaking. Come over here. It's alright. Do you want to tell me about it?

- Ann Coulter and Satan jump into the void and pull him down with them. The evil archangel.

- I'm sorry?

- Ah, it doesn't make much sense, does it? But it did in the dream. It was even noble and tragic. I think.

- What else happened?

- Well, I know I shouldn't have stayed up reading that physics book. There was something about dark matter and angels. I think angels were dark matter? But they weren't dark when you looked at them in the right way. I built a sort of telescope and I could see them.

- You should have come to bed with me. Remember that next time.

- I will! And, ah, let me see, God lived in a Calabi-Yau manifold...

- A what?

- One of those twisty six-dimensional shapes that string theorists like. I showed you a picture, right?

- Oh yes, now I know what you mean. So God's in his... whatever... and all is well with the world?

- No, he's tired and he has some kind of accident. That was a good thing though.

- You're still not making any sense.

- I know, I know! And they can't ever see each other again. They're in different branes. That was so sad.

- Different brains?

- Branes. B-R-A-N-E-S. You know, parallel universes floating in multi-dimensional space. Anyway, he has to return to his brane and he's lost her forever.

- George, try to go back to sleep. We'll be so tired tomorrow.

- I just want to write this down before I forget it. It was really good. I think I could turn it into a book.

- Tomorrow, George.

- Okay, it'll wait until the morning. And you know what?

- What?

- I'm so glad we're in the same space-time continuum.

- Oh George, that's the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me!

- Heh. I thought you'd like it. Goodnight sweetheart.

- Goodnight George.

- Mm.

- Mm.

4.5
“I stopped believing 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.”

Anti-authoritarian tales abound in YA and Children’s Book. Only look at the Hunger Games to name one. This novel from Pullman, the third in His Dark Materials, does so by dealing with theology, and in particular his own re-telling of Paradise Lost. This intend becomes ever so clearer, not only with the players but finally with the Conflict. This subject, and in particular the author’s position on organised religion, is not going to be to everyone’s taste, but it will definitely make you think and question your opinions, which is ultimately what literature excels at.

Additionally, this is by far not the only theme OR the main one. Indeed, the narrative focuses on Lyra and Will’s development in the middle of this power struggle, their first steps towards adulthood and self awareness, and offers at the same time a compelling fantastic adventure spanning several worlds, with a large and varied cast that is not easily defined. Through these protagonists, Pullman highlights his life-affirming belief in free will, the power of rationalism, but also the beauty and wonder of Life, which reminds me of some of my favourites lines from the poet William Blake:

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”
beginning of ‘Auguries of Innocence’

This controversial series has been analysed to death due to its richness of content, but essentially this is also a very good yarn. The Reader of any age can choose which aspect to focus on :O)

This review and reviews of the two other books in this trilogy are posted on my blog at http://inputs.wordpress.com/2008/12/1...

This book is well written and the story really hooks you in, but I really disliked the philosophy Pullman is pushing. This philosophy seems to be a kind of Nietzschean materialist version of gnosticism (phew!). His is a universe which allows only of one interpretation, a place where the event is nothing but the intervention of chaos and the void and must be negated so the status quo can be restored in the full glory of its disciplinary order. It is a universe where the human curiosity for knowledge leads to ruin and annihilation (although the author overtly claims the opposite) and where the fluidity of identity must be replaced by the supremacy of the rational and by fixed identity.

Just to break down those abstractions a bit. The ‘event’ is the opening up of windows to other worlds by scientists – Lord Asriel and the scientists in the Cittagazze. This leads to the beginning of the breakdown of the universe and the potential annihilation of consciousness. It is scientific curiosity about what is out there and other worlds that leads to this situation.

Views on identity centre around daemons (souls). Children have daemons which can change shape until they reach puberty. After that, they become fixed which Pullman indicates several times is a good thing and a sign of maturity and wisdom. This identity also appears to maintain the social order. Once a servant always a servant. As Lyra explains in The Amber Spyglass the daemons of servants are usually dogs, indicating that these are people who need to be led and ordered around. One is not a servant due to unjust social circumstances or questionable social hierarchies but because that is what one’s nature is and one must remain as ordained. Entire armies of Tartars have wolf daemons. If one is not happy with one’s daemon – too bad – you are stuck with it. So much for social justice or working on the self as a project.

Lyra, when she hits puberty, loses her intuitive ability to read the alethiometer and must then be formed by the disciplinary institution of the (boarding) school in order to develop rational techniques to read it. It is the Modernist idea that fantasy and intuition are the province of childhood and are properly replaced by adult ‘rationality’. C. Wright Mills provides a classic example of this kind of thinking in his 1959 work The Sociological Imagination.

Dust appears to be conscious matter which works in sync with humans – it is both attracted to humans and generated by humans. It relies on humans to aggregate into a conscious form. Angels are beings who can’t quite pull it off in terms of really existing because they have no real material body. They are half existences (even if they are powerful) and envy the body of humans.

A propos this angelic nature, Will is content to ask entities such as angels whether they are stronger or weaker than humans. When the first angel he meets, Balthamos, replies he is weaker than humans, Will bluntly tells him that he has to do what he orders him to do in that case. This theme of exploiting his position as the strongest emerges again and again. If Will thinks he can exercise power over somebody or something he doesn’t hesitate to do so. The Nietzschean hero indeed.

‘God’ or ‘the Authority’ is an evil being who only wants to dominate and control Man and is frightened of the power of the latter. What we have here is an old-fashioned modernist anthropomorphic view of the universe. Humans (and the equivalents thereof) are the centre and the raison d’être of all conscious being.

On another topic, the idea of a romantic interlude between two twelve year old children resulting in the salvation of the universe both present and future is both tacky and unconvincing. Why should ‘Dust’ (aka conscious matter particles) find such an event to be the stabilising point?

There is no room for multiple interpretations of elements within Pullman’s cosmology, which makes it a very closed and small universe. At the same time it is hard to pin down what is actually going on satisfactorily and it all seems very confused and self-contradictory at the edges. It would appear that both scientific and spiritual forms of experimental knowledge are dangerous to the well-being of the entire universe and that the best we can do is conform to a rigid disciplinary status quo which will preserve our nature and protect us from the danger of annihilation. There is nothing but a gaping void beyond or outside of this status quo. Even when you are dead you are recycled to guarantee the ongoing existence of this ghastly stasis.

In conclusion, one is left with nowhere to go at the end of Pullman’s trilogy but that would appear to be the author’s aim in any case.

3.75 stars

*** 3.33 ***

I see the reviews vary widely among my GR friends, and I noticed that the subject matter was what bothered the ones with the lower ratings... I had no issues with the subject matter. I actually had issues with the execution, the writing itself. It is written for the third grade level of reading and comprehension, while tackling themes of philosophy and those of when do we grow up, what does it mean to be grown up, original sin, what is sinful, what is good or evil, what makes learning and science good or evil, what is living and dying, what is compassion and cruelty, or just fantasy and reality... I understand the intention of the author to work on developing theses on such themes by using the Fantasy medium and trying to simplify it by making it into a story of kids on the verge of puberty. There is a way you tell a story to kids and adults who have trouble understanding complex concepts, which is exactly how this is written. Nothing wrong with it, but the subject often gets too big for the medium used, and it felt like wearing a shirt too tight to be able to breathe most of the time... And from what I have seen by the author, it feels that he could have done much better.

Despite all that, I enjoyed parts of it, others I cringed my way through... At least it was well wrapped up and we were not left hanging. There were a lot of characters sacrificed needlessly, but I guess it was part of the author's lesson on loss and moving on. If so, point made , but not very well. There were other characters who truly got a grip on my heart, and I was glad to see some of them survive the whole ordeal.

Overall, maybe if I had read it as a child, I would be much more enamored with the story as a whole, as I said, it was written in a way children would relate to well, but I need better writing on otherwise imaginative story and rich thematic material.

It's good to know that this book can still break my heart as much as it did when I was 12.

My entire review could be this: Phillip Pullman's "The Amber Spyglass" is one of the poorest closing books of a trilogy ever written.

But I feel compelled to continue. At one point, I actually stopped reading "The Amber Spyglass," put it down and vowed not to finish, but I wanted to be able to slag off the book with authority, so finishing became a must. And I even had a slight hope that Pullman could save his series

I did finish, but it never got any better.

Mulefa? Gallivespians? Iorek Byrnison fixing the incredibly fragile subtle knife? The knife breaking at all? Mrs. Coulter continuing to live? The incredible coincidence of everyone meeting the same Cittàgazze kids? It was all too much, and it only got worse as the book went on.

Thematically it was equally frustrating. There has been so much talk about Pullman's anti-religiosity, but the most offensive part of The Amber Spyglass is Pullman's portrayal of women. I wouldn't go so far as to say that Pullman is a misogynist , but he does seem to have a poor understanding of women.

The five main women in "His Dark Materials" are a catalogue of feminine stereotypes. Lyra, as her name so clumsily suggests, is a consummate liar, who eventually becomes a moony-eyed, love sick teen, subordinating herself to her lover Will. Mrs. Coulter is a manipulative femme fatale whose only hint of goodness is her inexplicable maternal instinct. Mary Malone is the pure ex-nun full of kindness and curiosity, blessedly open to all new things. Seraphina Pekkala, the loyal witch, is the classic "heart of gold" character (usually she'd be a whore with a heart of gold, but in a kids book witch with a heart of gold will do). Then there is Mrs. Parry, Will's mom, and her madness (other women appear in the story more, but they're not as important as Will's mom). There are few if any shades of gray in these women, and as the book drew ever nearer the close I found myself hoping desperately for the women to do something unexpected. My wish went unfulfilled.

Maddening, frustrating, and a great disappointment because of what it promised, China Mieville got it right when he made his list of 50 books every good Marxist should read and said, "in book three, 'The Amber Spyglass,' something goes wrong. It has excellent bits, it is streets ahead of its competition… but there's sentimentality, a hesitation, a formalism, which lets us down."

On second thought, Mieville was too nice. "The Amber Spyglass" should be avoided like a plate of raw chicken meat on a hot African day. Read "The Golden Compass" and skip the rest. Period.

I'm so FRUSTRATED.
This series had so. much. potential.
2.5 Stars from me.
I did like the way things wrapped up but still had soo many issues with this. Really wish things went in a very different direction.

“I will love you for ever, whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead I’ll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again.” Philip Pullman

Ova trilogija je definitivno bila posuta zlatnim prahom, jer me je neizmerno usrećila, podsetila na detinjstvo kada sam kupio prvu knjigu, a njenom završnicom učinila zahvalnim što poput njenih glavnih aktera i u mom životu postoji neko ko će moći da razume ljubav koju su mi ove knjige pružile i podeli moje ushićenje u vezi magije koja je prisutna na svakoj njihovoj stranici.

A daring, haunting, triumphant finale to a trilogy I ritualistically revisit since I first stumbled across it in elementary school. Apart from nostalgia, the following tidbits stood out from my latest retracing of the adventures:

1) Ecosystems and anthropology:
--I’ve grown to appreciate Dr. Mary Malone’s time with the wheeled mulefa with each rereading. This adult protagonist’s calm-and-collected observations in the mulefa’s seemingly-isolated world helps balance the raw adventurism of the children protagonists and their escalating conflicts of Biblical proportions. This helps avoid the tendency for the trilogy's finale to lack subtlety and lose all sense of proportion.
--The mulefa’s world offers curious ecological and anthropological (this book celebrates consciousness, and clearly portrays mulefa as “people”) questions…

--Mulefa are in the center of their world’s ecosystem and act as caretakers. Their evolution is a curious mix of chance and adaptation. There is a curious passage comparing their need for teamwork in tying knots for fishing nets given their singular trunk (like elephant), and how this initial disadvantage becomes an advantage of mutual dependency and thus sociability (in contrast to humans with two hands, succumbing to individualism in this small example).
--Their reciprocity with nature reminds me of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, which carefully unpacks the difference between the scientific method as a tool for learning vs. the “scientific world-view” of mastery over nature, “the illusion of dominance and control, the separation of knowledge from responsibility” (in contrast with the “indigenous world-view” of reciprocity with nature, where non-humans are subjects instead of objects, where nature is sacred).

...“Science” is vague (just look at the messy Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science). We can clarify the essence of the “scientific world-view” by considering political economy, i.e. capitalism’s separation (ex. industrialization) and abstraction (ex. objectification) of our relations with nature and with each other (esp. labor):
a) Marx’s value theory (use value vs. exchange value, commodity fetishism): brief intro (Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works - and How It Fails) and dive (Capital, Vol. 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production)
b) Debt relations meet capitalism, becoming exact quantification enforced by violence: Debt: The First 5,000 Years
c) "Metabolic rift" between humans and natural processes: The Ecological Rift
--Pullman’s story sadly lacks analysis on industrialization/capitalism, apart from a brief mention about the mutual aid of witches in the first book. The focus is mostly on religious dogma vs. scientific liberty, although within science there are questions on morality. Climate change is tied to amoral scientific explorations, thus bypassing analysis of capitalism/political economy.

2) The (miniature) Underworld of the dead:
--It’s always strange when authors do not seem to grasp the scale of their settings. The underworld of ghosts is supposed to be where basically ever conscious being of the endless multiverse end up for eternity (exclusions mentioned include: those who become angels, those already in the underworld with special assignments, those who fall into the abyss where the subtle knife cuts into, and armored bears for some reason even though they are clearly conscious).
…So, it was a bit off reading the small scale of everything about this journey through the underworld. Sure, we start with intermediary stations, but even in the final land of the dead we’re still dealing with “thousands” and “millions”.
--It was interesting considering the Harpies, whose “nature” was assigned (thus, not a biological “nature” but a social role) by God to feed on the worst of people (now ghosts) to guard the underworld, and how this was changed by providing them with a more-worthy task.
…Carnivorous animals feed on others. Just look at your pet cat playing with insects and rodents, which from the victim’s perspective is torture. If we distinguish based on “consciousness” and move to humans, we also get into the pop psych “human nature” trap where personal (often reactionary) ideologies get re-enforced. What about “nature” is predominantly based on social roles assigned, and how can these be changed? There was a good bit about there being no “good or evil” humans (too complex, i.e. contradictions), only good or evil deeds.

--I was recently reminded that the author expanded on the trilogy, starting with La Belle Sauvage (2017)... This will be my first time reading an expansion of a series with such an age gap in between...

Semplicemente meraviglioso. La mia recensione qui:
https://youtu.be/qZcbV125t4A