#19 The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman

Third in the series, obligatory read. This book report does contain SPOILERS.


The Subtle Knife introduced us to Will, the brave character from our reality who accidentally kills a man by pushing him down the stairs and then follows a cat into another dimension where he meets Lyra. Lyra and he get the Subtle Knife, which allows Will to cut from dimension to dimension and travel from world to world with ease. They also met a friendly ex-nun scientist who is studying the mysterious Dust particles of consciousness that communicate with Lyra through her Golden Compass, so that she can find out the answer to any question. Amber Spyglass picks up after Lyra has been kidnapped by her unscrupulous and estranged mother, Ms. Coulter, after Will has met his father who is abruptly murdered by a witch. And after their scientist friend has come independently through into another world. The series has been preparing for the ultimate rebellion where an alliance of men and angels and other beings fight against the Authority who is not actually "God" but a very powerful angel ruling as God. That should really be a big finish, shouldn't it?

The best moments of Amber Spyglass take place in the land of the dead, which is the portion of the hero's journey where Lyra and Will lead all the ghosts out of wherever they are into the real world again so that their atoms can be recycled back into the universe. The worst moments occur throughout the book as Lyra and Will fall in love with each other despite being twelve, and then I think they have sex. But that was left in terrible ambiguity. When I arrived at that point in the book I was reading very quickly and mayhaps I drew one too many conclusions, but I certainly felt sex was implied. Lyra was supposed to be "Eve" and I deduced the tree of knowledge was knowledge in the biblical sense. All I know is I didn't read about no apples, and there weren't no snakes NEITHER.

As a novel, this trilogy lacked strong characters. It was so plot-driven that whenever it stopped to consider the feelings or emotions one of the major characters (especially Ms. Coulter, a conniving and sexy woman whose name begs comparison with a certain modern day zealot) I just didn't know what the heck to make of them. I think the only character I liked even a little bit was the King of the Bears and he was almost not in the third one at all.

The rebellion is given such little address, that I couldn't help but feel it was completely unessential, despite being the central motivation for basically every characters' actions except for Will and Lyra, who didn't seem to care about it at all. I am a little befuddled as to how exactly such a feat was accomplished, you know, from a writing perspective.

In any case, it's over, and I wouldn't mind discussing the book with people. It has merits I am not really mentioning here, but I retract my previous implication that I would be recommending this book to my sisters. There are better books I would like to discuss with them.

posted by Gabe @ 10:16 PM