Even with Will and Lyra, the 'young and innocent' protagonists, they have to do what it takes to fulfil their quest, even if it means lying, threaten and even kill! Pullman gives his characters very human qualities, not completely black and white, good or bad, but somewhere in between that it sometimes twists your expectations of what to expect from certain characters, adding many layers of depth to his characterizations. We also meet some familiar faces that we've gotten to know over the course of the trilogy, which was very welcome, as well as some new ones too. The slower momentum of the story isn't a complaint, far from it, but just an observation, as it certainly drew me more into narrative and into the characters of Will and Lyra.

As such, it felt like the story matured alongside Lyra as she became of age. The pace here was a lot slower and as a result I felt the story was given more time to grow and flesh out the details more. An excellent read and conclusion to Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' series.Īfter the cliffhanger ending from the previous book, 'The Amber Spyglass' picks up the pieces with Mrs Coulter holed up in a cave 'looking after' a sedated Lyra, and Will, still smarting from the death of his father and the disappearance of Lyra, is now accompanied by a pair of angels in his search for her, and with the Subtle Knife still in his possession, Will must travel through other worlds in order to rescue Lyra before the Magisterium can get to her.Īs Pullman's trilogy has progressed, so the tone of the story has gotten that little bit darker with each subsequent book (Not least because we visit the land of the dead here, which also happened to be one of my favourite sequences in the book), but so much so, that 'The Amber Spyglass' feels so far removed and more sedate than the beginning of Lyra's journey in the more action packed and faster paced 'Northern Lights / The Golden Compass'.

The amber spyglass by philip pullman