Book Review: The Amber Spyglass

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book made it onto my "favorites" shelf, which is a difficult thing to do. Particularly surprising to me because I was pretty bored through the first book and wondered whether I should continue with the series... but I'm so glad I did. This book was nearly perfect as a literary work- you had your heroes (Lyra, Will), your good guys (Iorek, the Gallivespians, the witches, Mary, Lee...), your bad guys (Metatron (LOL at the name by the way... that was distracting), Father Gomez) and those characters you always hated but you come to rather like in the end (Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter).

In addition, this book is an excellent end to a series. Unlike some series, everything is brought to a great, exciting pinnacle; new characters appear and old characters re-appear; the characters change and grow- Lyra and Will, bitter sweetly, grow up.

Maybe because I'm not religious, and so I agreed with a lot of what Pullman was saying, but I loved the message of this book. I can see why some people might be offended, because it can get a little preachy, but the message touched me. I even bent pages down where there were passages that spoke to me, such as this one:

"I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them."

**spoiler alert**
Finally, I *loved* how Pullman wrote the deepening affection and eventual love between Lyra and Will. So many books rush love-relationships and it's so unbelievable, particularly in characters so young, but you could just sense the feelings deepening. When they finally kiss, it's a perfect moment.

The ending made me sad... I wanted them to be together. That was maybe the one part of the book I regretted.

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