Philip Pullman
465 pg., U.S. Mass Market Trade Paperback
5 of 5 Stars
One Star for Character Development
One Star for Plot
One Star for Flow
One Star for Conflict and Resolution
One Star for Ending
i. CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
Being as this is the third, and final, book in the His Dark Materials series, the characters are pretty well developed. I know Lyra and Will's character almost like the back of my hand. I use a method where, if I put the characters of a book in a whole new scenario, I would know what they would do, how they would do it, and why they would do it. Lyra and Will, I feel, are two totally opposites that morph together to make one entity in this book. Lyra becomes a much more aware and less-instictive in this book, whereas Will gains more instinct and seems to be the hero who saves the day, like Lyra originally was. Mary Malone, Mrs. Coulter, and Lord Asriel's characters have not really changed. Mary is still the inquisitive, yet competent, scientist she's always been. Marisa Coulter does show a side of love for Lyra, but in a way most odd to anyone not in her situatuon. Lord Asriel still maintains that feeling of authority.
We are introduced to several new characters in this book: the Gallivespian spies, Tialys and Samalkia, the Regent angel, Metatron, No-Name, and later Gracious Wings, the harpy, and we see the Authority.
ii. PLOT
The main plot of this book varies from Lyra and Will's perspective, to Father Gomez's perspective, to Mary Malone's perspective, to Serafina Pekkala's perspective. Lyra and Will are focusing on thwarting Lord Asriel's plans to separate daemons from their masters and study Dust in more depth, going to the Clouded Mountain, where the Authority and Metatron are.
Father Gomez has a quite morbid role in this book, killing things and people, and believing that God will be grateful for the killings he has done.
Mary Malone finds herself in a new world inhabited by creatures called mulefa. She studies these creatures, and stumbles upon the Amber Spyglass, a spyglass that can identify Dust.
iii. FLOW
The story had nice flow, but there was one thing I didn't like. Say we were in Mary Malone's perspective and then there is a break between paragraphs, implying that there will be a change in subplots, which there should be. In this book, many breaks only faulted different lines in one plot, separating a dialogue between Mrs. Coulter and the king Ogunwe to Mrs. Coulter with Lord Asriel ten minutes later.
Lyra and Will stay in the Land of the Dead for a while, which was nice, but I was happy that they escaped when they did, otherwise the story would have dragged.
iv. CONFLICT & RESOLUTION
The main conflict in this book is that Asriel has plotted to confront, and destroy, the Authority and take over the position as the Head of the Magisterium, and conquer Dust. Lyra and Will, on the brink of adulthood in their world, must stop Asriel.
In the end, Asriel, Coulter, and Metatron end up tumbling off of a cliff and into an abyss in a fight they were consumed in. Lyra and Will attempt to free the Authority from the crystal prison that Metatron has contained him in, and once he is free, he dies of frailty.
Lyra and Will end up in the same world as Mary Malone and discover Dust is slowly beginning to stop flowing when Lyra and Will kiss ever-so-passionately, and we find out that throughout the whole series, they seemed to be the answer.
v. ENDING
I feel like I described the ending above, but like I said: Lyra and Will love each other, but are forced to go back to their own worlds for the sake of Dust, but meet every year in the Botanical Garden in Oxford.
It was a very bittersweet ending: not everything was fixed, but not everything broken. Will and Lyra are torn from eachother, and Pantalaimon(Lyra's daemon) and Kirjava(Will's daemon) settle into their final forms, something we've been alerted to since The Golden Compass.
--Riley
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