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The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3)

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Editorial Review:

In the astonishing finale to the His Dark Materials trilogy, Lyra and Will are in unspeakable danger. With help from Iorek Byrnison the armored bear and two tiny Gallivespian spies, they must journey to a dank and gray-lit world where no living soul has ever gone. All the while, Dr. Mary Malone builds a magnificent Amber Spyglass. An assassin hunts her down, and Lord Asriel, with a troop of shining angels, fights his mighty rebellion, in a battle of strange allies--and shocking sacrifice.
As war rages and Dust drains from the sky, the fate of the living--and the dead--finally comes to depend on two children and the simple truth of one simple story.

From the very start of its very first scene, The Amber Spyglass will set hearts fluttering and minds racing. All we'll say here is that we immediately discover who captured Lyra at the end of The Subtle Knife, though we've yet to discern whether this individual's intent is good, evil, or somewhere in between. We also learn that Will still possesses the blade that allows him to cut between worlds, and has been joined by two winged companions who are determined to escort him to Lord Asriel's mountain redoubt. The boy, however, has only one goal in mind--to rescue his friend and return to her the alethiometer, an instrument that has revealed so much to her and to readers of The Golden Compass and its follow-up. Within a short time, too, we get to experience the "tingle of the starlight" on Serafina Pekkala's skin as she seeks out a famished Iorek Byrnison and enlists him in Lord Asriel's crusade:

A complex web of thoughts was weaving itself in the bear king's mind, with more strands in it than hunger and satisfaction. There was the memory of the little girl Lyra, whom he had named Silvertongue, and whom he had last seen crossing the fragile snow bridge across a crevasse in his own island of Svalbard. Then there was the agitation among the witches, the rumors of pacts and alliances and war; and then there was the surpassingly strange fact of this new world itself, and the witch's insistence that there were many more such worlds, and that the fate of them all hung somehow on the fate of the child.

Meanwhile, two factions of the Church are vying to reach Lyra first. One is even prepared to give a priest "preemptive absolution" should he succeed in committing mortal sin. For these tyrants, killing this girl is no less than "a sacred task."

In the final installment of his trilogy, Philip Pullman has set himself the highest hurdles. He must match its predecessors in terms of sheer action and originality and resolve the enigmas he already created. The good news is that there is no critical bad news--not that The Amber Spyglass doesn't contain standoffs and close calls galore. (Who would have it otherwise?) But Pullman brings his audacious revision of Paradise Lost to a conclusion that is both serene and devastating. In prose that is transparent yet lyrical and 3-D, the author weaves in and out of his principals' thoughts. He also offers up several additional worlds. In one, Dr. Mary Malone is welcomed into an apparently simple society. The environment of the mulefa (again, we'll reveal nothing more) makes them rich in consciousness while their lives possess a slow and stately rhythm. These strange creatures can, however, be very fast on their feet (or on other things entirely) when necessary. Alas, they are on the verge of dying as Dust streams out of their idyllic landscape. Will the Oxford dark-matter researcher see her way to saving them, or does this require our young heroes? And while Mary is puzzling out a cure, Will and Lyra undertake a pilgrimage to a realm devoid of all light and hope, after having been forced into the cruelest of sacrifices--or betrayals.

Throughout his galvanizing epic, Pullman sustains scenes of fierce beauty and tenderness. He also allows us a moment or two of comic respite. At one point, for instance, Lyra's mother bullies a series of ecclesiastical underlings: "The man bowed helplessly and led her away. The guard behind her blew out his cheeks with relief." Needless to say, Mrs. Coulter is as intoxicating and fluid as ever. And can it be that we will come to admire her as she plays out her desperate endgame? In this respect, as in many others, The Amber Spyglass is truly a book of revelations, moving from darkness visible to radiant truth. --Kerry Fried

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

• Stillborn fiction
  I read this trilogy because the minister at my church condemned it from the pulpit. Usually (at least in my church), that's a pretty good indication that a book might have some interest or that it might give a good expression of an interesting point of view---even if it is not the interesting point of view that I accept as true. In this case, this contrarian form of guidance proved useless. The minister was not correct, but his error was in making the book appear as something when it is hardly anything at... more info

• Young adult fiction?
  Pullman is an excellent writer. His stories are wonderfully told. The characters are engaging, and the plot certianly clips along. He has a powerful imagination.
  However, he is dealing with very heavy subject matter here to be calling his books "young adult" fiction. I can totally see why organized religion has a problem with his books. Organized religion, in this trilogy, is the enemy/villain. God himself, and his cadre of angels, are the characters that the protagonists fight against (and defeat).... more info

• I just couldn't get into it...
  
  I couldn't get into this series. It took me forever to read the entire trilogy because I just couldn't engage myself with it. I read the three books a couple of pages at a time with large breaks in between. I finished it out of pure stubborness.
  Its not that the books were bad. Because the idea behind them was quite interesting.
  My problem was that I didn't like any of the characters. The only one I vaguely liked was Will and even then... after two books, I felt like I didn't know him any... more info

• Falling Apart
  Okay, I have to admit that I'm not the greatest fan of the series; Pullman has an axe to grind, and hearing someone grind an axe in narrative is painful (see Atlas Shrugged). However, I really have to say that especially the second book was well written. There was a focus and narrative drive that made it probably the most coherent of the books. Along with this, the characters are most developed in the second volume.
  And then we get to The Amber Spyglass. First off, the name of the book comes from an... more info

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