The Amber Spyglass - His Dark Materials Book III

So I've completed Philip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy by finishing The Amber Spyglass. And I have to say that I'm disappointed.

One of the things that I really liked about the previous two books was the relationship between Pan and Lyra. I really liked Pan and Pullman decided to remove him from most of the book. Although I have to give him credit for the scene of the children parting from their daemons. It was great and actually had me in tears. I suspect he did it to focus more on the relationship between Will and Lyra but I felt that their story was kind of meh.

The parts dealing with Mary among the mulefa were nearly physically painful for me. They weren't that interesting to me and Mary's view of evolution was flitting awfully close to intelligent design for a book that supports reason as a worthy end goal.

I felt Pullman was a little heavy handed in his completion of the trilogy. I thought he was a little heavy handed in the beginning of the trilogy as well so I can't say I'm surprised. In a world (or worlds) that exhibit the supernatural it's hard to be the champion of the natural. Lyra's story is about accepting free will and actually using it. I liked that message. I think it's an important one. However, one should have to pull down everything to accept one thing. I'm giving this one a 2.