audiobooks

First of all, The Golden Compass was the best children's book I read in the last ten yars. Unfortunately, Pullman not only fails to deliver on the promise of that book, his final work is more backfire than dud.

The wonderful characters introduced in the previous two novels end up reduced to two dimensional representations of their ultimate role in this atheist allegory. Worse still, they are not even rationally consistent with the characters of yore. Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter are the most disappointing, as there is no good explanation for why they should change so dramatically in this final book. Some of the other villains are implausibly irrational, sacrificing self and world for an ideology that could easily embrace more constructive interpretation. Even Will, Mary, Lyra, and Iorek become feeble echoes of their selves in the previous works.

The culmination of the narrative is predictable -- and a huge let-down. You can feel Pullman laboriously tying together all the loose ends even as you long for the vibrancy that brought tears of joy and sorrow in the first book.

Moreover, all of this appears to be in service to an atheist theology that will please no one: The Amber Spyglass is guaranteed to offend christians and most other theists with its total rejection of God. Is Pullman trying to be the stridently atheist C.S. Lewis of our generation? In any case, it is just strange that he has so strongly denounced God (either as top angel or as creator) in this work, and yet neither confronted nor mentioned the prophets of God: why usurp the myth of creation, and only mention in passing the teachings of Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha, etc? It may make his argument appear a little stronger on the surface, but it leaves a lot to be explained.

I can't imagine this pleasing atheists either given its thick use of biblical imagery, the depiction of life after death, the presence of angels, the lack of any effort to refute or explain the spiritual teachers/prophets/redeemer mentioned above, and, of course, the fact that the whole thing is heavy handed and artistically weak.

I realize I will get slammed for this review by all the Pullman/Dark Materials fans -- but until I read this I was a Pullman fan too. I loved the first book, and liked the second a whole lot. I like the Sally trilogy as a fun but less ambitious undertaking. So, I am sorry Pullman fans. I wish he had written a different Amber Spyglass.

Philip Pullman's last installment of his Dark Materials masterpiece stands high above the previous two books.Pullman builds this phenomanal world through his books which fully captivates the reader. Pullman artfully ties up the loose ends from his previous books creating suspense which builds to a massive climax near the end of the book. The best thing about the Dark materials trilogy is the different levels at which you can read it. You must remember that the book was aimed originaly at children and you can definitely see the appeal it has to children through Lyra and Will's adventure, one which many kids will envy. To escape to another world! Do not pay attention to stuffy reviews about the blasphemy and anti Catholic theme of Pullman's writing. Although he displays many theological and metaphysical ideas in his world,some of which are anti-
Church,they do not actually affect the story in any way. The fact is if you put those ideals to the side you still have a great book!

The only fault of the books is that it ends!

I'm sorry to say that Pullman's main achievement in this last book is to create yet another soppy paean to adolescence. I was really disappointed in the weakness of the plot and characters. Through most of the book, Pullman is crudely trying to jerk the reader's emotions around... Oh, the sadness! Oh, the joy! Oh, the tragedy! It's all surprisingly amateur, simplistic, and it doesn't work. At least not for an adult reader. But I couldn't like this kind of sci-fi hackery even when I was an adolescent myself. Oh Asimov, Tolkien, where are thou???