Review of “His Dark Materials” and “The Amber Spyglass” by Phillip Pullman
Well... With long reads like this, if they are any good, you get taken on a pretty long ride as you make it through all three installments... So I have a review... Mostly of the last book... Spoiler alert if you plan on reading... But if you have already read them, please share your thoughts! =)
The series was absolutely terrific as a whole. The ideas, questions and imagery Pullman proposes are exciting, beautiful and at times frighteningly thought provoking. The trilogy focuses on two main characters: the near adolescent Lyra and Will, but their journey and challenge is one of universal (or multiversal) intrigue. Pullman is clearly science minded and mentions particle physics almost as much as theology while we discover a plan to overthrow the perils of organized religion, and even "God" himself for the apparent human rights violations they have imposed throughout the ages; namely denying people their most innate human desires (sex, curious thought and other sinful behavior). I am an adult and consider myself agnostic, but I was raised Methodist and Souther Baptist. Even now those thoughts are somewhat trepidatious and yet completely captivating.
And yet in the final installment, when all of these incredible ideas have been proposed, things fall a bit short.
The final battle we had been preparing for through the first two volumes was nearly absent. Pullman briefly explains the monumental war in a few pages, and Metatron and the Authority go down as quickly. All the build up of "immense forges" for new machinery and "intention crafts" barely get a chance to land on the pages before the story moves toward its ending. Furthermore, "the one thing the fallen angels didn't have in the old battle and why they lost the first time" was the knife "The God Killer". Yet, the knife was never used physically in the final battle at all. Why was it even called that? We could say because of its ability to cut into different worlds, it could indirectly be "The God Killer" but that is stretching what feels seamless at other times.
In "The Amber Spyglass" the excitement of the ideas Pullman first proposed never got to reach an end that was even close to the original thrill of the promise of possibilities. We were only shown brief glimpses of the wonder we were so hoping for and that Pullman had fed us so fully in the first installments. Witnessing the Authority in his final state was provocative and thrilling but nothing was offered to satisfy the appetite that remained after the initial description. We didn't learn very much else about the multiverse or the state of this story's reality as it felt we had been promised over and over. We got right up to the moment and then never really got the Authority's perspective (or Metatron's) other than the second hand information we previously had from members of Asriel's army. And finally, although incredibly adventurous and exhilarating as a whole series, nothing really changed in the world after these momentous events took place. When we were excited by Asriel saying he would make death die, he nor Lyra really put an end to death at all, they just made it final and real. Now Dust would stop flowing out of the worlds but we aren't really sure if the Dust leak or the oppression of the Authority was the real problem to begin with. Even if we say they were both the problem, the world is essentially returned back to the way it was with minimal changes to the old system that could have more simply come about by a real world social movement. The ride of this tale warranted more. The story does finish with some heartfelt, wonderfully emotional moments of being torn by personal desires and the reality of what has to be, and offers hope and positive possibilities in the days to come, but the incredible wonder, frightful thrill, and moments of fundamentally challenging the paradigm of human belief systems in the first two installments has been substituted somewhat for a focus on classic human emotion; done very well, but done very well many times before. It was the former coupled with the latter that really made Pullman's writing shine. Still, two big thumbs up for the trilogy =)