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fjerda's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Pullman’s writing is concise and gorgeous: lush in the extreme. Lyra and Will pull on my heartstrings deeply. A very well executed finale.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Genocide, Gun violence, Animal death, Blood, Death, Mental illness, Torture, Murder, Violence, War, Death of parent, Child death, and Gore
anni_swanilda's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Animal cruelty, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Toxic relationship, Death, Death of parent, Gun violence, Torture, and Violence
Moderate: Child abuse
monoliloquy's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
This book asks a lot of questions about faith. I get the sense they are trying to be universal questions but end up being Christian-centric, but that may be my own bias when it comes to any Christian-centric criticism of religion. I think the book accomplishes what it sets out to do as a sort of anti-Narnia. It's beautiful. I love it a lot.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Gore, Confinement, Death, and Death of parent
ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
“We are all learning new ways, even witches.”
Ok *now* that I’ve finished the entire trilogy I feel like I can talk a lot more about what i did and didn’t like and did and didn’t understand about this series. There is a *lot* to unpack though and I’ll probably miss out something that might get added later as I remember everything and even maybe after I reread at some point because I definitely think I will. (Also now I get why the Christians are offended by these books. 😅🙈😬)
Ok so, first of all I guess, let’s talk about the problematic colonialist themes that have been peppered throughout the series. Particularly there’s like a weirdly apologistic quote about colonialism? 🧐🤨 on page 210 of my edition (ISBN 9780375823350) in Chapter 16… maybe I misinterpreted it but it made me feel a little ??? idk about this… 😬😬 King Ogunwe is talking to Mrs. Coulter and he says: “He led us here because this world is empty. Empty of conscious life, that is. We are no colonialists… We haven’t come to conquer, but to build.” And like… 😬 That seems terribly vague and seriously problematic…
I guess that also kind of illuminates one of the other main issues I have with this book and that’s the dichotomy between “conscious” life and “non-conscious” life… which to my mind rather than rejects judeochristian doctrine, rather reinforces that division between human life and the rest of the natural world… I was surprised that Pullman would make this mistake? but perhaps I have misinterpreted the meaning here… It just seems like in the books, across all of the worlds, there are conscious “persons” who are not humans, but since they possess “consciousness”, they are considered “people”. However, when you then look at our own world, the only beings with “consciousness” (according to that understanding) *are* humans, and therefore all the other lifeforms are denied “personhood.” Which again, is straight up judeochristian ideology. 🧐
I mean this kind of ties into my thoughts concerning the mulefa as well… I never really decided whether or not that was a sort of noble savage trope? Or was it an impressive understanding on Pullman’s part about the importance of reindigenization…? (esp pp 127-128, Chapter 10). I feel like the contrast of the mulefa with the panserbjørne from Lyra’s world seemed to suggest that the mulefa were not supposed to be tropey but rather reinforce Pullman’s belief that humans needed to derive their spirituality from Nature rather than God and that reindigienzation was part of the key to achieving this, which I agree with, *but* in the end, did anything really come of that? Idk… I mean… the mulefa “needed” Dr. Malone (a white female human) to save them and… 👎🏻 yeah that’s straight up white savoirism right there…. 🚫🚫
Also the philosophical implications of what Grumman says on p 363 (Chapter 26) are…. confusing? possibly suspect? And it ended up being extremely important to the plot and how the entire series ends and I’m still not sure how I feel about it… I also want to know like what Will, Lyra, and Dr. Malone really took away from everything they’d experienced and what was actually learned by what they went through and how they then applied that to their future lives because I thought that the point of the book was unlearning harmful beliefs about religion, the world, etc., but at the end the book seemed to be about love? but also not…. Idk. Was it about Fate? Isn’t Fate related to predestination which is a Christian belief and this book is supposed to be anti-Christian so where did they get their “Fate” from? idk idk idk
And Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel? Seriously how did those two characters manage to stay so obnoxious and so unsympathetic to the very end?? I *never* “got” Asriel’s character—he wanted to “destroy” the “Almighty” (who, didn’t even need destroying? like what was that even about?) and then Mrs. Coulter, did she try to “redeem” herself? I mean… she was pure evil the whole time. Her freakin monkey was tearing wings off live bats and she was worse than murdering children? I…. I don’t know. Those characters remained a big no for me to the very end and yeah. Not sure what Pullman was trying to accomplish there with them at all. Really don’t know.
There is SO much going on in this book and Amber Spyglass was SO long and I know that I missed a lot of what Pullman was probably trying to say. That’s why I keep saying I’m definitely going to have to reread at some point because I think so much just went completely over my head. I also want to explore his other books from this legendarium and even look up what other readers have said about the series and really fill in a lot of the holes that I still have in my understanding of his work.
(I also want to mention the epigraphs at the beginning of all of the chapters, because I thought that was a cool touch, a way to tie the themes of the book in philosophically with the history of our own world and some I understood the connection, but others I didn’t. It’s such an interesting group of authors too that Pullman pulls from and I would *love* to read an analysis of these selections.)
“Can is not the same as must.”
“But if you must and you can, then there’s no excuse.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood and Violence
Moderate: Death and Death of parent
Minor: Blood, Death, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Religious bigotry, Toxic relationship, and Violence
This book also features a depiction of severe separation anxiety that is really difficult to read.
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