Leonardo

I really loved this book. I think it is the only book that really kept me reading without ever boring me. It is more dark and hopeless than the first book, and it introduced a lot of new concepts and plot points. It is full of action, there is always something happening and you can feel the constant tension that pervades the story, it even manages to be more deep about some topics without feeling pretentious or blatant. The characters are always under a lot of stress and difficulties, and it allows to see more of their nature and personalities.

The new characters were all likeable, Will, especially, was a really interesting character. In regard of the already known cast, it was a pleasure to read more about them since they were not so explored in the first book. But I missed the most important one: Lyra. In this book she feels different, in the first 2/3 chapters she seems almost out of character. It's not all for the worse, we can see her becoming more mature, having doubts, failing, and I think it adds depth to the character. At the same time, she felt almost useless in some scenes, like the fighting scene on the tower, or when the kids are trying to kill them in the temple, she doesn't do a lot, Will always overshadow her and that felt like a betrayal to the character if you compare her to the first book.

One of the thing that I appreciated the most is still the idea of daimons, often the author gives some detail about these relationships and how they works, like when Lee and Hester die, or with the relationship between Will and Pantalaimon and many other scenes. I really liked that this book adds more fantasy to the story, even if sometimes these fantasy elements are not so well explained and I hope that with the third book this problem will be solved. Especially because there are too many things that feel almost lazy: Marisa and Asriel are too much powerful without a reason, Marisa can see witches through their enchantments, and control the spectre/ghosts/spirits, Asriel builds an enormous castle out of nowhere, and they kinda control what happens with their wills. The witches are always saving Lyra at the last minute like they know where she is (and it seems there is a reason), the alethiometer acts strange, ecc...

To conclude, I think this is a great set up book for the third one, so most of my enjoyment comes from the faith that I put in the third one, because most of this book flaws come from the fact that it doesn't spend much time on explaining the mysteries surrounding the story.

This book really moved me, at the same time it is far from being perfect, so it's hard for me to judge. I think most of the negative aspects of this book come down to being forced in some parts of it. I felt that some of the problems got solved too conveniently and some of the characters decision and action were believable but still underexplained. Mary plotline felt a little boring sometimes, but I still appreciated it. In general I felt that this book was slow, sometimes for the better sometimes for the worse. Another thing that annoyed me, but I accepted, is that too many elements are introduced and poorly developed.

Despite these problems, I really liked this book: the ending was really emotional, I loved the dynamic between Will and Lyra (even if Lyra is not anymore the Lyra of the first book, and I hate this kind of submission that she has towards Will) and their trip to the land of the dead(I don't know how it is called in english), Marisa and Lord Asriel had a beautiful conclusion even if I would have liked to see more of them, and above all I liked the themes of the book religion, love, maturity, morality.

I still decided to give it five stars, I don't know why, the positive aspects were so captivating for me that I just forgiven all the negative ones. And the ending, even if it suffer of some problems, was really emotional and beautiful.