I don't know just didn't go off with this one. Such a shame since the other two were some of the best books Ive ever read. Still gave it to one of my friends though and I know he's gonna cry at the ending. He's gonna love this. But I don't ( )

I have read the first book in the trilogy and I don't understand the hype.
It's the story of a little girl, who is always in trouble.
It reminded me of the comments about the LotR movies. It is the story of a girl that goes from one place to another.
And for a "practical girl, with no imagination" Lyra is a damn good liar and story teller...
I think I'll read the other books, but only because I'm obsessed with collections and I already have them in my bookshelf.

I finished the second book. I think it was better than the first one, but it still feels too slow for a fantasy book.
It's starting to feel like LotR and HP7 all over again, but without the great world to save it. It's just a little girl and a (not so little) boy side kick (I actually think that Lyra is the sidekick in this book) walking around from one point to another while things happen to them.

And we don't even know what is their goal, or who are the bad guys... I'm starting to agreed with Luis Sepúlveda when the old man in "The old man that read love stories" said "He thought the author was quite right to make it clear from the outset who the bad ones were. That way you avoided misunderstanding and misplaced sympathy."
I feel Lyra's mother isn't a good person, but is her father the good guy? Or is he simply a lesser evil? I would be admired if in the end he was the bad guy, and considering all the other characters in the book he woul be a really bad guy!

But this is just my thoughts at the end of the second book, with the ending that doesn't say a thing and the monstrous cliff hanger for book three. ( )

Pullman writes quite well, he has a good imagination, and some of his imagery is memorable. But his imagination seems to me undisciplined: there’s not just one fantasy element here but many, a stack of different weirdnesses piled untidily on top of each other. As a general rule, I disapprove of fantasy that runs riot like that. Even Terry Pratchett has more discipline, and he writes comic fantasy in which it doesn’t matter so much.

Pullman’s characterization is good only when he concentrates. His main characters, Will and Lyra, are quite convincingly drawn and I came to care about them, but the other characters in the book, even quite important ones, are only sketched and don’t exist in any depth.

Although Will and Lyra are juveniles, this is a very serious adult story in which seriously bad things happen. It doesn’t make comfortable reading, and I’m really surprised that it became so popular.

I should perhaps mention that Pullman appears to be virulently anti-Christian. This isn’t a particular problem for me as I’m fairly anti-religious myself, but I was a bit startled by the strength of his feelings.

When I finished this trilogy, I was disgusted with the ending.

On a cosmic level, the right side wins. But, on a personal level, it seems that all the characters end up dead, unhappy, or no better off than they’d been at the start; and Will and Lyra in particular seem doomed to live unhappily ever after.

When you write fantasy, particularly with the sort of wide-open licence Pullman gives himself, you can have any sort of ending you want. If he gives us an ending no better than that, it’s because that’s the sort of ending he wants, which indicates that he and I are thoroughly incompatible. I don't expect I’ll ever read any of his other books, because plainly he has no intention of delivering the kind of book I want to read.

There are rarely happy endings in real life; but we experience real life whether we like it or not. We read fiction by choice, and I choose not to read fiction that allows me to emerge at the end feeling dismal and let down. Fiction is entertainment; if I’m not agreeably entertained, I don’t come back for more.

It’s admittedly difficult to imagine an ending for Will and Lyra of the form “… and so they lived happily ever after.” Neither of them was suited to be written off in such a quiet and peaceful way. Any happy ending for them would really require several more books to be written about their subsequent adventures. Indeed, even with the ending as written, I suspect that they got up to many unreported adventures after the end of the story.

The really unpleasant thing is that they were condemned to do so separately. Pullman contrived that they eventually fell in love with each other and were then almost immediately required (for bizarre reasons of cosmic expediency) never to see each other again. It might even have been preferable if one or both of them had died.

I was reminded of the story of John Lennon’s first meeting with Yoko Ono. He was at an avant-garde art exhibition, and one of the exhibits involved climbing up a ladder and peering through a magnifying glass at something. When he did so, what he saw was “Yes”. He was pleased that the message turned out to be positive, and sought to meet the artist.

With Pullman, I felt that I spent quite a long and weary time climbing the ladder, looked through the magnifying glass, and saw “No”. I feel no desire to meet the artist.

I had my own copies of these books, but I later got rid of them. This is not the sort of thing I want to reread. ( )

LOVE! The final book makes all the others worth the time. ( )

MASTERPIECE. There are so many deep ideas at play by the time this trilogy reaches its stunning conclusion. I thought I might not get as emotional rereading this book as an adult, but NOPE, it hurt just as a much as it did the first time. There is no way to get through this book without WEEPING (at multiple points in the story, might I add). Also… has there every been a children's series as concerned with death as this one?? ( )

The story loses something in this book--really seems to be more about the agenda than the plot or characters. ( )

Not quite as strong as the previous two, especially the first. The exposition is a bit blunt here, as Pullman tries to cover a lot of mythological ground in a relatively short space. It's certainly an adequate finale to the series, though. ( )

IT was a good ending. to the three books. I guess I expected more based on all the controversy this book set has brewed. over all I like ( )

- 2020 Rereading -
Oh well. I knew how I'd bawled my eyes out reading the final chapters 12-13 years ago, so why should this be any different? Only now I understood this book even more. It was always my favorite and there are so many great scenes that I can't wait to see adapted. Especially the World of the dead, Metatron and Lyra and Will's relationship. That final scene when they realize that they're never going to see each other again and come up with the idea with the bench always gets me. Oh, it gets me sooo bad.


"I'll be looking for you, Will, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we'll cling together so tight that nothing and no one'll ever tear us apart. 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.." ( )

Really closes off the first trilogy well, and is by turns both very exciting and very moving, especially the ending. This trilogy is masterful. I read the audible edition, which had glosses at the beginning of each chapter, tying the book to Milton and Blake. Probably the best book of the first trilogy. ( )

The conclusion of the trilogy was another good read. It pains me a little not to give full marks to such an ambitious and original story, while I give five stars to many books that do not aim so high. However, the fact remains that this story is flawed in some ways. Too much exposition and too much editorializing about theology.

Having said that, it remains an epic story, and it felt original and different. I'm happy I read it. ( )

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS
(Print: ©2000; 9780375846731 Random House Children’s Books)
(Digital: Yes, 9780375890031).
*Audio: ©9/23/2003; 978-0739345054; Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group; Duration 15:53:42; 12 parts; unabridged
(Film: The first book of the series, The Golden Compass (AKA, The Northern Lights), was made into a movie, The Golden Compass, with Nicole Kidman. This one didn’t make it into production—there are a few theories about why. HOWEVER, a television series was created and this one will be available this month (11/2021) on the BBC.)

CHARACTERS: (Not comprehensive)
Lyra [Silvertongue] Belacqua – child on a quest
Pantalaimon – Lyra’s daemon
Will Parry – child on a quest – friend of Lyra
Lord Asriel – Rebel against the Authority / Lyra’s father
Serafina Pekkala – a witch
Lee Scoresby – an aeronaut
John Parry—Will’s Father
Professor Grumman (sp?) – A shaman
Stanislaus Grumman – a shaman
Marissa Coulter – Lyra’s mother.
Balthamos – an angel
Baruch – an angel
Metatron – an archangel
Lord Roke – representative from the Magisterium
Chevalier Tialys – a spy for Lord Roke
Lady Salmakia – a spy for Lord Roke
Mary Malone – a former Oxford Physicist
Iorek Byrnison – a warrior bear

SERIES: His Dark Materials Book 3

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
I’d listened to “The Golden Compass” (AKA, “The Northern Lights”) years ago, and couldn’t find the sequels. When I saw a print copy of Book 2 in a bookstore, it reminded me I had never completed the series so I procured Book 2, and now this book (3) from Overdrive in audio format.
Among other things this is Sir Pullman’s re-casting of the conventional (miss-) assessment of the Biblical account of Adam and Eve.
A young reader recently reminded me that it’s nice to have the print book, even if you listen to the audio, because the versions differ. As a librarian, I do know this, but often forget to consider it. The presentation of the print—the art of the fonts, the spaces and lines between the text to delineate time passages, and the emphasis of italics and insets alone can provide added depth to one’s understanding—not to mention the illustrations. Even the digital version can often vary from the print, as is apparent with the version of this book I found in Overdrive which does not include the introduction nor the preface. Amazon’s “Look inside” reveals that there is an introduction but does not include it. And Wikipedia hints that illustrations in the print are provided by the author. I will have to seek out the print version to spy these treasures I have missed in the audio. BUT, I would never go so far as to say the audio is inferior for those reasons! Sir Pullman is also the primary narrator of this book, and narrates splendidly! Other narrators join him, making the presentation an enthralling dramatic experience.
In the preface, seen via Amazon’s “Look Inside”, Sir Pullman speaks of his writing process, which sounds very much like what I believe to be J.K. Rowling’s process, of letting the book write itself without excessive planning. Some writers, he tells us, begin with a theme, and then create characters and a story to express it, whereas with him, he believes a theme does not lead a good story, but rather emerges during its writing –it is something strongly felt by the author that cannot help but emerge. Once it does, he says, the author will probably reshape some of the story to best express it. This trilogy took him 7 years to write.
According to Wikipedia, “The Amber Spyglass won critical acclaim and became the first children's book to win the Whitbread Book of the Year. It also won the British Book Awards, Children's book of the year, American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults, Parents' Choice Good Book Award, Horn Book Fanfare Honor Book, New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age and ABC Children's Booksellers' Choice, and became a New York Times Bestseller.
In 2019, it was ranked sixth in The Guardian's list of the 100 best books since 2000.[8”

My only complaint about the story, is that I was often confused about who was on which side—the magisterium side or Lord Asriel’s—especially the duplicitous Mrs. Coulter whose every word was untrustworthy.

QUOTATIONS: William Blake’s “America: A Prophecy”; Rainer Maria Rilke’s “The Third Elegy”; Emily Dickinson; John Milton's Paradise Lost; John Ashbery’s “The Ecclesiast”

AUTHOR:
Sir Philip Pullman (10/19/1946). According to Wikipedia, Sir Philip Pullman “is an English author of high-selling books, including the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials and a fictionalised biography of Jesus, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. In 2008, The Times named Pullman one of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945".[1] In a 2004 BBC poll, he was named the eleventh most influential person in British culture.[2][3] He was knighted in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to literature.[4]
Northern Lights, the first volume in His Dark Materials, won the 1995 Carnegie Medal of the Library Association as the year's outstanding English-language childrenn's (sic) book.[5] For the 70th anniversary it was named in the top ten by a panel composing the public election for an all-time favourite.[6] It won the public vote from the shortlist and was named all-time "Carnegie of Carnegies" in June 2007. It was filmed under the book's US title, The Golden Compass. In 2003, His Dark Materials trilogy ranked third in the BBC's The Big Read, a poll of 200 top novels voted by the British public.[7]”

NARRATOR(S):
Sir Philip Pullman and Full cast (Terence Stamp, Ray Fearon, Emma Fielding, and Philip Madoc)

Terence Stamp (7/22/1938). According to Wikipedia, Terrence “is an English actor. After training at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London, he started his acting career in 1962. He has been referred to as the "master of the brooding silence" by The Guardian.[3] His performance in the title role of Billy Budd, his film debut, earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and a BAFTA nomination for Best Newcomer. Associated with the Swinging London scene of the 1960s – during which time he was in high-profile relationships with actress Julie Christie and supermodel Jean Shrimpton – Stamp was among the subjects photographed by David Bailey for a set titled Box of Pin-Ups.[4]
Stamp played butterfly collector Freddie Clegg in The Collector (1965), and in 1967 appeared in Far from the Madding Crowd, starring opposite Christie. His other major roles include playing archvillain General Zod in Superman and Superman II, tough guy Wilson in The Limey, Supreme Chancellor Valorum in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, transgender woman Bernadette Bassinger in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, ghost antagonist Ramsley in The Haunted Mansion, Stick in Elektra, Pekwarsky in Wanted, Siegfried in Get Smart, Terrence Bundley in Yes Man, the Prophet of Truth in Halo 3, Mankar Camoran in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and General Ludwig Beck in Valkyrie. He has appeared in two Tim Burton films, Big Eyes (2014) and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016).
For his acting, Stamp has won a Golden Globe, a Mystfest, a Cannes Film Festival Award, a Seattle International Film Festival Award, a Satellite Award, and a Silver Bear. Stamp has also had voice work, narrating Jazz Britannia on the BBC, and 1966 – A Nation Remembers on ITV in July 2016 which marked the 50th anniversary of England's 1966 FIFA World Cup victory.”

Raymond Fearon. According to Wikipedia, Ray “is a British actor who has worked in theatre, and is known for playing garage mechanic Nathan Harding on ITV's long-running soap opera Coronation Street.” His Filmography for film television and radio is also a long list.

Emma Fielding (7/10/1970). Wikipedia tells me Emma is an English actress. Her long Filmography includes Foyle’s War; Midsomer Murders; Star Wars: The Old Republic – Rise of the Hutt Cartel; Inspector George Gently; Silk; This is England ’90 and Doctor Who among many others.

Philip Madoc 7/5/1934 – 3/5/2012. According to Wikipedia, Philip “was a Welsh actor. He performed many stage, television, radio and film roles, and was recognised for having a "rich, sonorous voice" and often playing villains and officers.[3] On television, he starred as David Lloyd George in The Life and Times of David Lloyd George (1981) and DCI Noel Bain in the detective series A Mind to Kill (1994–2002). His guest roles included multiple appearances in the cult series The Avengers (1962–68) and Doctor Who (1968–1979), as well as playing the U-boat captain in the Dad's Army episode "The Deadly Attachment" (1973). He was also known to be an accomplished linguist.”

GENRE:
Fantasy; Juvenile Fiction; Juvenile Literature

LOCATIONS:
Cittagazze; Oxford; multiple other worlds including “The Land of the Dead”

SUBJECTS:
Occult; Dust/Dark Material; witches; daemons; child heroes; power struggle; rebellion; multiple worlds; magisterium; theocracy; alethiometer; prophecy; death; mulefa; harpies; spectres; religion; Christianity; mythology; Adam & Eve

DEDICATION:
Not found—perhaps it’s in the print version.

SAMPLE QUOTATION:
From Chapter 2-Balthamos and Baruch
““Be quiet,” said Will. “Just be quiet. Don’t disturb me.”
It was just after Lyra had been taken, just after Will had come down from the mountaintop, just after the witch had killed his father. Will lit the little tin lantern he’d taken from the father’s pack, using the dry matches that he’d found with it, and crouched in the lee of the rock to open Lyra’s rucksack.
He felt inside with his good hand and found the heavy velvet-wrapped alethiometer. It glittered in the lantern light, and he held it out to the two shapes that stood beside him, the shapes who called themselves angels.
“Can your read this?” he said.
“No,” said a voice. “Come with us. You must come. Come now to Lord Asriel.”
The two figures were silent for several seconds. Then they drifted away and spoke together, though Will could hear nothing of what they said.
Finally they came close again, and he heard:
“Very well. You are making a mistake, though you give us no choice. We shall help you find this child.”
Will tried to pierce the darkness and see them more clearly, but the rain filled his eyes.
“Come closer so I can see you,” he said.
They approached, but seemed to become even more obscure.
“Shall I see you better in daylight?”
“No, worse. We are not of a high order among angels.”
“Well, if I can’t see you, no one else will, either, so you can stay hidden. Go and see if you can find where Lyra’s gone. She surely can’t be far away. There was a woman—she’ll be with her—the woman took her. Go and search, and come back and tell me what you see.”
The angels rose up into the stormy air and vanished. Will felt a great sullen heaviness settle over him; he’d had little strength left before the fight with his father, and now he was nearly finished. All he wanted to do was close his eyes, which were heavy and so sore with weeping.
He tugged the cloak over his head, clutched the rucksack to his breast, and fell asleep in a moment.”

RATING:
4 stars.

STARTED-FINISHED
11/1/2021-11/14/2021 ( )

This book, and the series as a whole, just elicits an emotional reaction in me which is produced by few other books. It's not without its plotholes, conveniences and logical fallacies, and rereading it is an adult, I can see how the somewhat heavy handedness of the theological message and the writing of some female characters are valid criticisms. However, ultimately, reading a good book should make you feel things strongly, and whether it is due to its vivid characters, its imaginative worlds, its emotional conclusion or just pure nostalgia, The Amber Spyglass engages me on an emotional and an intellectual level, and leaves me perhaps less generically amazed than my younger self was, but all the more reflective and appreciative of Pullman's writing. A perfect book it may not be, but I think I will never not enjoy losing myself in it. ( )

Read it right after it came out in 2000. Hard to believe how young I was then---12---and now that I'm thinking of it, I'm curious if it'll read differently to me today.

I remember it being not quite as perfect as the first two, but still worthy. ( )

Ultimately, Pullman's reach exceeded his grasp. He just tried to cram too big a story into his trilogy (and especially in this last book). There are too many characters with incomplete story lines, who pop into the main narrative a little too frequently and a little too conveniently to save the protagonists. Properly fleshed out, this probably would have gone on for another novel or two. But by then, YA and adult readers alike would have lost interest because the story ultimately just isn't that interesting or satisfying.
The philosophical/metaphysical/theological point that Pullman introduces is just too muddled. Is the Authority God? Is Metatron? How can a being that "runs" multiple earths (if not their whole universes) be tricked so easily? And what the hell happens at the conclusion of the battle with the Kingdom of Heaven? We never learn because Lyra and Will just pop through to a different world and then completely lose interest in whether their friends survive. They never even once mention the battle again! Even 12-year-olds are not that self-absorbed.
In the end, I just kept listening because I had already committed so much time to the book. But had I never checked the book out from the library, I probably would never have missed knowing how the trilogy ended. ( )

I like the message and the ideas behind these books, but the plot didn't really blow me off my feet. Especially the whole big battle is completely underdeveloped for something which was granted so much attention in the earlier books. The dusty conclusion doesn't really satisfy after 3 volumes of building up to... what exactly?! ( )

I suppose the thing about trilogies is that the story builds and builds and then it has to end. And really what ending is satisfying? This series surprised me in its religiosity (particularly the stuff about Christianity being a con) but the ending didn't surprise me at all.

Still, I'd probably recommend it to kids 12 and up who like this sort of thing. ( )

It's fascinating coming back to this series as an adult- when I last read it, I was just a little older than Lyra and Will, but about at the same point in life where the fixing of a daemon's form would be fresh, and coming of age still felt overwhelming to my feelings. I know this is something I shelved long after the fact and didn't write a review then because it wasn't fresh, but I do feel it's more meaningful than 3, probably.

The first two His Dark Materials books seemed to go by quickly, and maybe because the pacing felt more in that cusp between middle grade and YA. I'm most familiar with the first book, and maybe because that's the one I owned a copy of, and The Subtle Knife moves pieces around the board but its shorter than the other two. The Amber Spyglass feels like a full-grown novel, perhaps because the first almost entirely follows Lyra but here we shift from both her and Will's perspectives to that of Dr. Mary Malone, Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel, Iorek Byrnison, and a wider array of characters. I also remembered this book the least, maybe because of everything that happens in it.

Arguably, the series is not kind to organized religion but considering the damage done in the names of those institutions over the centuries, it's not an invalid critique to make the fantastical version look into taking drastic measures. The nature of Dust and its presence in living beings honestly speaks to a viewpoint in finding the divinity in people around you which I find to be considerably more comforting.

Really not sure where the Book of Dust series is going to go with these worlds because it ends so perfectly (maybe that's why they're prequels...) ( )

For some reasons I didn't write anything on first two books, and... well... maybe that is for good. Because...

First book was absolutely astonishing, I was literaly stormed with emotions, thrilled with adventure and hooked to the glimpses of future complexity. It was a book that I would have recommend to anyone. And so I was reading second book, where sense of adventure still exited, where questions were still interesting and future plot still looked promising. With all this behind I open third book, full of hopes...

...what started as epic adventure, was turned into epic drama, and then smashed and grated to the epic sugar jello through which I teared and plowed, crawled and agonized page after page till the very endless end...

You know, usually I try to keep my opinion close to something pleasant, but in this case I can't do anything with this image in my head. I see a person, writer, author who bang his head on the table, throws pens and papers in all direction, smashing walls with his hands and trying to break out of prison in his own mind, trying to understand how he can confront something he actually doesn’t believe exists just because he needs to confront it. And this thing, this paradox of God drives him insane so much that he actually just dumps all his anger and anguish into book without any strength left to MAKE it into something intelligent.

I don't know what problem author have with Church (he clearly have problem with Church, not religion in general), but been more of an atheist I clearly know the difference between stating own opinion and dissecting someone others. And this book does it - dissect, tear, sepparate, name, tag and bag. This is very very wrong on very many levels. And what worse - this book makes all that epic and interesting story in the end amount to nothing. Simply nothing. It don't give anything, it don't make anything, it don't move anything. It just ends in stupid nothingness of blatant banality.

I really hope that after finishing and sleeping over this book author found whatever he was searching for. And for all the love in the world I hope he found it withing himself. ( )

This book, much like its predecessors, is truly a mixed bag. On one hand, the author's imagination has conjured up all these beautiful, interesting worlds with deep and logical histories.

On the other hand, there's an unending line of plot holes and plain stupid behaviour that seems to be the author despairing on how to make all the loose ends come together, very frustrating.

Many plot threads are started, that end up coming to nothing, adding almost nothing to the story. ( )

I thought this final book of the trilogy was just ok. It took me forever to finish it - for one, because I got busy - but also, the book never really hooked me. I found that there were many characters that took up space in the book, but didn't add much value to the story. And the book had too many threads going at once. ( )

IT was a good ending. to the three books. I guess I expected more based on all the controversy this book set has brewed. over all I like ( )

After a false start I finally managed to read this final volume in the Dark Materials trilogy. I found it less annoying and unconvincing than book 2. Partly because a lot of the book consists of action sequences and battles, which Pullman writes well. The irritating whiny angel companion is also removed from the story for a long time after he chickens out during the armed raid fairly early on, when Lord Asriel's lot and one of the factions of the church clash, the church intending to murder Lyra. So there's less of that nonsense.

Also I like the new element introduced - feisty Lilliputian characters who work for Asriel as spies, though you would expect them to have appeared in book 2 as well. Normally I would object to yet another fantastic creature when there are so many, but they liven up the scenes where they appear. I also quite like the wheeled intelligent elephants although I am sure a biologist would tear into the diamond skeletal structure of these and all the other lifeforms in their world. I suspect that they are just as nonsensical as the magic computer in book 2.

However, there is also a lot wrong with the book. For example, the motivations of female characters are all over the place. Even Will is distracted by the charms of Mrs Coulter with serious results, and later on, she manages to seduce God's self appointed successor, although he can see, as he says, that she's a moral cesspool. But we are still expected to believe that her ruthless and cruel drugging of Lyra stems from a maternal love that she didn't know she felt before. She remains deeply unconvincing as a character.

Lyra continues to be a bit soppy over Will though she does start reading the alethiometer again. The first love scenario becomes more obvious through the story, and it is a bit odd that the big resolution to the massive problem of all the Dust going down an abyss which eventually means the extinction of intelligence and imagination in the universe is that the Dust is attracted to Lyra and Will after they fall in love and therefore stops going down the plughole. Similarly, other plotlines such as an assassin going after Lyra, and the death of God and his successor fizzle out very lamely. In any case, the chief rebel angel subsequently tell them that the angels will now close the abyss as well as all the holes made by the Subtle Knife, so what was the problem? I suppose they had to defeat God's lot first who equate Dust with sin, but all the tension in this book is constantly defused. Even the grotesque stinking harpies who thrive on the misery of ghosts suddenly become real sweeties and Lyra kisses and hugs one of them.

The final section when Lyra and Will realise they have to part forever is actually touching, but I do find it odd that their presumably having sex in the woods is referred to as her being tempted as a new Eve, and is made into this pivotal point of the universe. What really makes this event rather than anything else they do, such as releasing the dead, so significant for the whole of existence?

One thing Pullman addresses in this book is how Lyra was able to just magically read the alethiometer, something that annoyed me in book 1, because it turns out to be grace - though not from God in his scenario so where did it come from? - but once she has done everything she needs to, she loses the ability.

Other parts of the book, such as the subplot about Mary, are nice but have no real point. She finds out that Dust is being lost through the Subtle Knife and that the process has accelerated dramatically, after going through a lot of pallaver to make the Amber Spyglass, but none of this is really important. She doesn't even tell the children of her discoveries - it turns out to be more crucial that she tell them about her own first love, who was lost. Again, this is another element that doesn't really go anywhere and the name of the book is a bit misleading - nothing important comes out of its creation.

Fans of Pantalamion or Serafina Pekula will be disappointed, I feel, as neither does much in this book. And all the things that were daft or didn't make sense in book 2, such as how can sentient Dust particles also be individual angels, is not explained.

So the book is well written as a piece of fiction, has some interesting characters in the little people, some good battles and other action scenes, but falls a bit flat because ultimately a lot of it is fairly pointless and fails to deliver by dissipating the tension.

( )

Too many instantly-strong relationships, too many new laws of the universe, and too much explication of those laws by supernatural beings. ( )

The only book thus far that has made me cry. ( )