Worth the Wait? (The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman)

Member Name: catatonic

Product:	The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman
Date:	06/11/00 (328 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: if you read the first two you have to read it!

Disadvantages: disappointing after a long wait..

Five Years ago Philip Pullman published the first part of his Dark Materials trilogy 'Northern Lights'. Winning several awards, and studied on Children's Lit' courses everywhere, it was heralded as the best thing since Tolkein's Lord of the Rings and C.S.Lewis' Narnia books. Two years later saw the equally acclaimed publication of the sequel 'The Subtle Knife'. Finally, after many promised dates and set-backs, the concluding part 'The Amber Spyglass' has reached the shelves but has it been worth the wait?

Picking up where the last book left off Pullman plunges his reader straight back into the story, if you've been waiting three years for this you might be advised to refresh your memory before picking this one up, with the seemingly evil Mrs Coulter holding our heroine Lyra captive in a cave. Introducing a new character 'Ama' at the outset and throwing in all the old characters within a couple of pages it's not long before you find yourself drawn into the story and devouring the pages with the same fervour the previous novels inspired. Having said that there are some very noticeable differences between this book and its predecessors - for starters this one is considerably darker..

The first part of the book deals mainly with Will and his quest to rescue Lyra. Whilst she lies unconscious and dreaming of her dead friend Roger he sets about searching for her, embarking upon a series of adventures in which he is aided by angels and eventually meets the great armoured bear ' Iorek Brynison'. In a dramatic rescue, which sees the Subtle Knife broken, Will and Lyra are reunited and together face their greatest trial yet.. journeying to the world of the dead.

As the story unfolds we meet Lord Asriel, intent on setting up the bizzarly named 'Republic of Heaven' . Mary Malone, the scientist Lyra befriended in the last book, aiding a new species 'Mulefa' and endeavouring
to work out why their world is dying and the evil 'Metatron' who seems intent on destroying everything and everyone. As the story progresses these stories begin to interlink building up to a 'dramatic' conclusion that leaves pretty much everyone dead and doesn't offer much in the way of a happy ever after!

Whilst I loved the first two books in this series the last left me with a rather bitter after taste. The Amber Spyglass is less about fantasy than morality, the dominant religious overtones resulting in a kind of Pilgrim's Progress for the millenium! Unfortunately this wasn't the only problem I had with it! Whilst in the previous books Mrs Coulter's overt sexuality was obvious it was always understated - in this book she becomes positively rampant! I was also rather uncomfortable with Lyra, ok so we all knew she was growing up!, but she seems to make the transition from tom boy to love lorn teenager with unseemly haste! Perhaps it is her tender age, she's only thirteen, that make her words of undying devotion sound rather insincere but Romeo and Juliet - Will and Lyra are not and I was singularly unmoved by what had promised to be an emotional conclusion.

If, at the close of the last book, I'd been asked what I wanted to know most about the next it would have been, without doubt, what Pantalaimon settled as... surprisingly this momentous event was lost in the sermonising and ended up being relatively unimportant. If you read the first two books in this series then of course you'll have to read the last! Personally I was disappointed by it but then after waiting three years for it maybe my expectations were just a little to high..

( If you plan on buying this waterstones online are probably offering the best deal at the moment ( 50% off cover price ) and if you have the book sent to your local store you can even save on P&P )

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