The Amber Spyglass (2000)

http://purplemoonmyst.blogspot.com/2012/01/review-amber-spy-glass.html ( )

Phillip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy is such an ambitious undertaking that I wondered if he’d be able to pull it off. The answer is: sort of. The quest is momentous, the stakes high. The premise and themes are as lofty as you can get—the very purpose of human existence.
If I were to compare this trilogy to The Lord of the Rings, I’d say the story is more nuanced than the good and evil of LOTR, the plot less linear. And while no world building can match Tolkien’s, the worlds that Pullman’s creates are amazing: Citegazze with its specters and the inventors of the subtle knife; the world with the Mulafa, who learned to travel on wheels, developed in a symbiotic relationship with trees; Lyra’s own world, so similar to ours but so different; the world of the dead; and our own world juxtaposed with all of these.
The writing is good and seemed to improve with each book. And yet despite all of this, it failed to rise to the level the premise deserved. Why? Emotion comes not just from plot but from how the characters react to it. And in this regard, the author failed to let us deep enough inside the characters to fully experience what the situation deserved.
The premise should feel more cataclysmic than LOTR, not merely the triumph of good over evil, but a more multi-layered conflict between seekers of knowledge and those who would deny the human race growth. So why doesn’t it feel more powerful? The answer lies in how close we get to know Frodo and Sam, the intensity of their relationship, and the depth of the secondary characters.
Mr. Pullman doesn’t let us that close to his characters, perhaps due to his choice of omniscient perspective. But I can’t help thinking what this series might have been.
The author’s diatribe against the church is mild and not pro or con religion, but for or against open-mindedness and the quest for knowledge. There are believers and agnostics that come down on both side of these issues.
This trilogy was broad, original, well-written, dramatic and with lofty themes. But stories are told through their characters. And whether it be Lord Asriel or Mrs. Coulter, Lyra or Will, I never felt deeply about them. This is a great series that rises well above most of what we see today in fiction. With a bit more it could have risen to the level of a true classic. ( )

a disappointing, too science-fictiony, end to the fantastic HDM trilogy. ( )

See this review and more on The Moonlight Library!

The Amber Spyglass is the third and final book in the His Dark Materials trilogy and tells the closing chapter of Lyra and Will’s tale – and also that of Dr Mary Malone, a few random miniature spies that ride dragonflies, Mrs Coulter and Lord Asriel, a pair of gay angels, and a priest who sets off to murder Lyra. It’s a big cast, but that’s okay, because it’s an epic fantasy.

It’s a huge story, and frustrating at first because the whole thing is handed over to Will, our resident Gary-Stu who is amazing at everything and a perfect match for Lyra. Our formerly kick-ass barbarian child is in an enforced slumber courtesy of Mrs Coulter, and Will must rescue her before he does anything else, like lend his awesome magical knife skills to Lord Asriel’s army in an attempt to overthrow God.

The thing that annoys me the most about this book is that Pullman has clearly tried to create a world where religion is evil and all that, but it’s not an atheist book like so many are led to believe. There is a God, there is an afterlife, there are angels – it’s simply that nothing is how the modern Christian church has led anyone to believe. To be a truly atheist novel there would be no God, or afterlife, or anything like that.

Mrs Coulter’s character comes alive with all kinds of intriguing backstabbing conniving wiliness. She’s an amazing character, and one I never truly appreciated before this. It’s so hard to cast her in shades of black and white when she’s clearly (now, to me) all kinds of grey. It’s not as simple as her love for Lyra redeems her, because we clearly see her behaving in a non-loving manner towards Lyra. She’s a very complicated character and a lot of the time I couldn’t tell if she was telling the truth or not. Did she really love Lyra? Were her intentions really honourable?

As for Lyra and Will – well I don’t think it’s a very good love story. For a start they are only twelve or thirteen, way too young for an epic kind of love that supposedly saves the worlds. Romantic love is a very grown up concept because adults have mature bodies and minds. Lyra and Will have only just hit puberty. They feel shy around each other on occasion because their bodies are changing but then all of a sudden it’s BAM “We’re in love and it’s so awesome and epic that we just saved the multiverse just by being ourselves and doing normal things, nothing out of the ordinary here.” I don’t buy it, and I feel that the solution to the worlds ending (or at least free will/consciousness) is to have two unique special children fall in desperate love so strong that… well it’s not really described. Somehow their love stops the Dust from leaving all the worlds and we’re just supposed to accept that ON BLIND FAITH. In an ‘atheist’ novel.

Yeah, right.

Look, whilst reading (or in my case, listening to) this novel, it is an amazing story. It’s beautifully written and you genuinely care for the characters. It’s afterwards that the whole entire build up seems rather anticlimactic. Lyra’s prophecy about betrayal is supposedly addressed but it seems pretty suss to me, and her other prophecy about being Eve and ‘falling’ to temptation also seems pretty cruddy. She does fall to temptation, basically, and like the previous Eve, it is a good thing. It saves the world. But no one is sure what her temptation would be or if she would fall. And while Lyra is a brilliant, original character who, although she is loved by everyone like a Mary-Sue, has some very bad points about her (the lying), Will is just too perfect and teaches her all about the world and looks after her and basically all of Lyra’s awesomeness flies out the window when she meets Will.

Overall it’s an enjoyable novel that wraps up the story in an unexpected and anti-climactic way. All of those promises we’ve been given fizzle out to nothing. The writing is beautiful, and the character development even more so, but the plot lacks an oomph, especially when compared to Northern Lights. It also seems that a lot of the novel is simply filler – the story of the priest who tries to murder Lyra is simply there to create further anxiety for the readers on behalf of our beloved blonde darling.

However the audio book itself is again a masterpiece. Pullman delivers the narrative in fine voice and the actors playing the cast are so filled with emotion and generally awesome in their performances that I cried on more than one occasion. ( )