A review by Devlyn Fennell, published on The Retriever. Peculiar to this review is that the reviewer understood Pullman held a "pro-religion" position – something he has denied in many interviews.
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For those who have been following Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy you probably already know that his third and final book in the trilogy, The Amber Spyglass is at last out in paperback. Those of you who haven’t before heard of the fantasy series by Philip Pullman are in luck. You can now get and read all three of the Dark Materials books without that pesky having-to-wait-for-the-next-one-to-be-published issue that plagued those earlier on the scene.
Pullman wraps things up for us in The Amber Spyglass wonderfully too. In the first book of the trilogy, The Golden Compass we were introduced to Lyra Belacqua, the girl who was being raised on the grounds of a prestigious college in England. Very shortly into the novel readers were clued into the fact that her world is not our own. Differences that are sometimes subtle and strikingly original become apparent as the story progresses.
Lyra, who’s only 11, runs wild through the halls of Jordan College and the streets of Oxford, England. She soon learns that children near her own age are disappearing off the streets of towns all over England, including her own. Tales quickly spread about a mysterious group known as the "Gobblers" that supposedly steal kids and take them somewhere where they’re never seen again. When her best friend Roger joins the ranks of the vanished children Lyra sets out to get him back, following rumors of the Gobblers moving north. With the help of gypsies, armored bears, and witches, she discovers an outstation on the ice where children are the subjects of horrible experiments.
The second book in the trilogy, The Subtle Knife, introduces readers to Will Perry, a 12-year-old boy from Oxford, England in our own world. He meets Lyra after both of them cross over into Cittàgazze; a third world that seems to be populated only by children. Lyra and Will team up and set off to locate Will’s father, who disappeared somewhere in the artic twelve years earlier. Along the way they learn about the existence of the mysterious and much speculated on Dark Matter, or Dust. It becomes apparent that this "Dust" plays a key role in events to come and if they are to succeed then they must understand what it is and how it works.
The final book in the trilogy, The Amber Spyglass, brings readers the resolution that we’ve been anticipating. Lyra and Will have to evade capture from the Church that is all powerful back in Lyra’s world and that wants them dead. Still seeking the secrets of Dust, the two of them will end up venturing even into the world of the dead in their efforts to understand what it is.
Each book is quickly paced and seems to demand to be read in one straight go. As each question that kept readers turning the pages is answered, new questions, each more intriguing then the previous, arise. Like many fantasy books it has the occasional fairy tale type of feel to it, but the final conclusion is anything but. I’m not a fan of fairy tale endings and I appreciated that this trilogy didn’t end in the sappy "The hills are alive" way that so many do. In fact, there was such a dark thread throughout all three books that I was surprised when I learned that, while they were shelved with the adult science fiction and fantasy books, they’re still considered children’s literature. But the dark tone and the pro-religion, but anti-church stance that the books seemed to take didn’t affect its acceptance at all. They were so accepted in fact that his first book, The Golden Compass, won the Carnegie Medal in England in 1996.
Other then medals and awards, books aren’t rated the way movies are with stars and such for potential fans to judge them by. All that really ends up mattering when judging fiction like this is whether or not it’s worth reading. This trilogy is.
[Copyright http://trw.umbc.edu/ : Devlyn Fennell]
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