The Amber Spyglass

Wow.... I was paging through the reviews for The Amber Spyglass on Goodreads and there is a lot of hate.

While TAS certainly isn't perfect, it's still five times better than most fiction people pick up. One reviewer commented on how much better a writer Dan Brown is than Philip Pullman. How anyone could ever arrive at that conclusion is beyond me.

There was a lot of stuff going on in TAS, and I don't think all of it succeeded.

Good Stuff:

I loved the relationship between Will and Lyra. It was pretty perfect.

I thought the evolution of Mrs. Coulter was handled well. She's so diabolical that even when she's double crossing Metatron I thought, “Wait, maybe she's going to screw over Asriel. Again.” But it's apparent at the end that she's got a heart, and it's nice to see.

Revisiting Scoresby, Iorek, and of course Roger was terrific.

Bad Stuff:

There's just too much going on.

The Assassin priest bit seemed anti-climactic. I didn't feel like there was ever any danger for Lyra, Will, or Mary Malone.

Slaying the Ancient of Ancients was over so quickly. When I think about this event, I imagine that there should have been more weight given to it. Wasn't it Lyra's main prophetical purpose, other than to succumb to temptation by Mary? But wasn't it Will who made the cut? I think I will have to re-read this portion to gain better understanding.

There's more stuff, but I needn't really go on. It was still an awesome read. I think The Subtle Knife is still my favorite out of the series.