Reviews tagging 'Gun violence'

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

7 reviews

ladythana's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious 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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Religious bigotry

Moderate: War, Abandonment, and Violence

Minor: Grief, Death of parent, Confinement, Blood, Gun violence, Child death, Kidnapping, Animal cruelty, and Injury/Injury detail

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. 

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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

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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

orchidlilly's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-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

3.0

I have a lot of opinions on The Amber Spyglass, many of which aren't very popular.

First the good: when people said the books got too religious, I expected a thinly veiled Jesus metaphor like is found in Narnia, instead I was pleasantly surprised with the opposite. It's really quite refreshing to read a book whose religious themes are critical of the church as opposed to praising it. I found the whole 'kill god' basis of Asriel's motivation rather amusing and the commentary on the church is, as a Christian, very accurate and not without basis. The writing is, as always, impeccable, and I found myself becoming very attached to the minor characters of Dr. Mary Malone, the Galevespians, Balthamos, and Baruch.

The bad: It annoys me greatly that Lyra is once again reduced to nothing more than a damsel in distress for Will to moon over. For the majority of the book, Lyra is asleep and helpless, and once she wakes up, she becomes a nervous, clingy, mostly useless ingenue. The only time we get to see the old Lyra is in the land of the dead, and that fire is short-lived. For all Will loves to wax poetic about how strong and stubborn Lyra is, we get to see exactly none of it. There is also the matter of the character deaths. After Scoresby and Mr. Perry, the deaths of our beloved side characters begin to feel very forced and unnecessary very quickly. Asriel and Coulter's "redemption" is so short, abrupt, and seemingly out of character that it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. Worst of all, is the romance between Will and Lyra. The entire book, the budding romance feels both painfully obvious and forced. The love conquers and fixes all theme is tired at this point, and it only works if the characters have any chemistry as lovers, these two are just about as ridiculous as Romeo and Juliet. So many questions are left unanswered that the story almost feels unfinished, which is a great disappointment given Pullman's in-depth worldbuilding from the two previous books.
 Three stars because up until the last seven or so chapters, the story is just as captivating as its predecessors.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal death, Child abuse, Death, Death of parent, Murder, Physical abuse, Domestic abuse, Mental illness, Kidnapping, Violence, War, Toxic relationship, Blood, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Gaslighting, Religious bigotry, Sexism, Animal cruelty, and Grief

Minor: Alcohol, Chronic illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Classism, Genocide, Colonisation, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Suicidal thoughts, and Infidelity

bi_n_large's review against another edition

adventurous emotional reflective 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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Death, Child death, and Abandonment

Moderate: Toxic relationship, Child abuse, Death of parent, Violence, and Gun violence

crykea's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional 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? It's complicated

4.25

Wonderful wonderful wonderful! Finishing this book made me go "well, what  the fuck."

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Confinement, Death of parent, Kidnapping, War, Violence, Death, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, and Gun violence

Minor: Alcohol, Animal cruelty, Blood, Child death, Mental illness, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Stalking, Suicide, and Terminal illness

The minor content warnings are mentioned briefly in the

realm of death.

. Alcohol is drunk by characters throughout the book. Will's mother is mentioned in a few cases, hence the mental illness warnings. Animal cruelty happens throughout the book since the characters have daemons. The golden monkey especially likes to hurt animals. (Stalking)

will and lyra are stalked by father Gomez in the mulefa's world

Explicit content warnings: the book takes place during a religious war. There is a scene with a bomb (hence the fire warning). Confinement, kidnapping, death and grief warnings:

mrs coulier is kidnapped and confined by multiple people throughout the book, most often lord Asriel. Lyra begins the book in confinement after being kidnapped by Mrs Coulier as the end of the last book. The death of a parent tags refer to Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulier in the Metatron scene. The book has a through line theme of grief but it is especially poignant st the end in reference to will and lyra parting ways.

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.” 

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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.