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| His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass) (His Dark Materials) | 
 enlarge | Author: Philip Pullman
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Category: Book
List Price: $60.00
Buy New: $36.79
You Save: $23.21 (39%)
New (28) Used (11) Collectible (2) from $34.05
Avg. Customer Rating:  1081 reviews
Sales Rank: 9682
Media: Hardcover
Reading Level: Young Adult
Number Of Items: 3
Pages: 1312
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4.1
Dimensions (in): 8.7 x 6.1 x 4.3
ISBN: 0375842381
EAN: 9780375842382
ASIN: 0375842381
Publication Date: August 28, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 First Book is Great, the last two crap out January 28, 2007
198 out of 278 found this review helpful
Let's face it: most books are terrible. However, many readers get sucked in by a great first chapter---and then watch in dismay as the rest of the book seems to be a slow slide into poor writing, contrived plots, irritating side stories.
The Golden Compass was very, very good. Lyra was amusing, brave, and the surrounding cast of characters; the gyptians, Lord Asriel, Iorek.... It was an excellent book, with a fantastic ending. I highly recommend this first book. It is both satisfying and tantalizing---you can read just this book (which, frankly, I would advise) or launch eagerly into the next book. Given that several characters are left kind of dangling, you will probably do so immeaditely.
You will be slightly confused when, instead of continuing with Lyra's story, we dumped into our world, or rather, Will's world. You're told way too much about his mentally disturbed mother, his missing father (oh, oh, THAT'S original) and watch with bland interest as he manages to (accidentally) kill a man. Poor Will.
Magic appears in the form of a `window' into another world. That's convenient for lil Will. My biggest problem with the whole windows into other worlds and the handy *subtle* knife is that it means that Asriel's accomplishment is rendered completely unremarkable. You're expecting that Asriel is going to step into some marvelous world, the Northern Lights world.
Instead, we barely hear about Asriel, and Lyra is practically abandoned so we can follow Will around. Will is a weirdly stoic, dull, uninteresting, unamusing and nasty character who belongs more in some morbid `literary' novel. And he gets PAGES of screen time. Since he managed to get the immensely powerful Subtle Knife (hint: it's far, far from Subtle) he effs off anyone who gets in his way.
He effs off angels, even helpful angels, and basically sends one to his death. He offers no comfort to the grief-stricken angel who is left behind. The character of Balthamos, who added much needed sarcasm and humor, is effectively castrated when he promises to be nicer (hint: much more boring) to the irritating Will.
Will is exactly the type of character that C.S.Lewis would have parodied with sly and biting humor. I hate Will. He is an immense bore, who quickly grows tedious in his continuous use of this all-powerful knife. He probably attended Experiment House.
I realized from the first that Pullman disliked Christianity and organized religion. However, whether through poor writing skills, or the rabid rage that blinded him, the last two books totally dissolve. There are brilliant scenes interspersed---and then there are the hideously irritating side plots. Mary, the ex-nun, offers an idiotic reason why she left her religion. Basically, she falls in love, and decides that God doesn't exist. Her reasons as follows
1. He just doesn't.
2. It's more fun and convenient.
3. Physics are more interesting.
She also is the protaganist of a side story that creaks and groans and screams to any sensible editor KILL ME! Wheeled elephants, who are sooo cute in their wisdom and sweet, innocent ways, show what Pullman thinks the world could be like if people just didn't believe in God. Wheee! Mary's role as supposed serpent/tempter never materializes. Likewise, neither does Lyra's supposed role as Eve, etc.
The Great Battle That Never Was:
Little to no tension is built up when SUDDENLY we're expected to care about this battle. However, much more time is spent in the world of the dead, where Lyra and Will free the ghosts from the hideous, Hades like underworld. However, like obedient readers, we trot along.
Then, WHAM, WHAM, WHAM! Pullman, in obvious desperation and frustration, kills Asriel, Mrs. Coulter, and Metatron in a scene that disappoints on every level. You keep waiting for Mrs. Coulter to pull of one of her marvelous and wicked schemes that leaves everyone else gasping in the dust. Instead, she turns all sweet and gooshy, swearing that she loves Lyra, and ends up `standin by her man' and expiring alongside Asriel and that stupid angel. Asriel is built up as a fascinating, amazing, cruel, brave and incredible character that ends up dying in this crappy scene. Ugh. Mrs. Coulter is completely given the shaft with this last minute redemptions that destroys her intricate character.
Oh, and yeah, and God/Authority blows away. Yup. He blows away----you know how you turn a mostly empty bag of chips upside down, and the crumbs somehow end up all over your lap? Well, that's basically his end. 0 stars for this empty chip bag death scene that ultimately showcases Pullman's none too subtle message to Christians: just let God die, even he'll be happier!
Basically, the whole last books craps out on everyone. Lyra isn't Eve, and the temptation never happens. The idea of Dust is explained, and the focal point becomes this epic battle against the Authority, a battle that never happens and merely is a vehicle for Pullman to spew out his trembling dislike of Christianity. Oh, and you thought that Lyra's great betrayal was betraying Roger? Nope. Pullman actually has to TELL the reader what the big betrayal is.
I'm left with questions. Did this trilogy collapse because Pullman is a lousy writer, or because he let his rabid hate of Christianity muddle the story.
Well, the Golden Compass seems to indicate that he can write well. However, the last two books just crumble under his attempt to show
1. How idiotic Christianity is
2. How smart atheists are
3. How nice they are
4. How Christians are easily fooled, killed by the smarter atheists, and generally, fairly easily defeated by the marvelous atheist heroes.
Pullman can write well. However, he carries over crippling hatreds into his writing that just ruin the book. Frankly, if he managed to write the last two books as well as the Golden Compass, I'd simply suspend moral judgement and enjoy the books. I would disagree with his atheism---but I would enjoy the excellent writing.
However, he couldn't restrain himself. He managed the Golden Compass, and for that, I am thankful. It was simply painful watching the slow, certain slide into oblivion and poor writing. It was rendered more painful by occasional glimpses of the writing skill that delighted us before. Certain characters, ideas and scenes are thrown like scraps to keep us limping on through the waste land.
I am very sad. The trilogy promises much and then blows up in your face. Let's get this clear: I disagree with Pullman on many points, but was willing to forgo those points because I enjoyed his writing. However, when his writing disintegrates, those points simply grate louder.
I exit, weeping.
His Dark Materials Trilogy September 1, 2006
116 out of 178 found this review helpful
I have had these books on my shelf for a number of years, having never gotten around to them. They should have stayed on the shelf, as I now know.
I read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy, so I recognized many of the tropes that Pullman tries to pull off. I must say that Holly Lisle pulls off the multiverse much better than he does, and that's not saying a whole lot.
Like most people here, I found myself drawn in by the first book. That one was well written, if a bit heavy handed in how good Lyra was, how brave she was, how she could do anything even if it was previously impossible for anyone else to do - like break her father out of his Svalbard prison. However, the books declined in quality from the first page of the second book. Will takes it much too easily when he finds that he has committed his first murder, especially for a boy of 12. As a reader, I am willing to suspend belief quite a bit, but this particular plot point snapped that thread for me. Once that was lost, it was extremely difficult for me to engage myself with the text once again.
As far as the ending goes, what a disappointment. It seems as if the third book was trying to tell three vastly different stories. Frankly, if Pullman had created a novel entirely about Mary Malone slipping into the world that she did and studying it in a scientific capacity with no way to return, that would have kept my interest much more than his rabid defamation of Christianity. Also, Pullman fails to deliver on the cohesion of comparing Mary to the serpent, Lyra to Eve, and Will to Adam. There was no offering there by Mary of something to tempt Lyra with as happened in the Garden of Eden. Without this crucial component, there is no way that Lyra can be Eve reincarnate.
The propaganda that Pullman purports as truth would be all right if he was claiming it as his own, and that if others believed it, that would be okay. However, he very cleverly lulls the uncareful reader into believing that what he is saying is a universal truth. I had no idea that atheism was so nihilistic, yet that is the view I came away with when I finished this trilogy.
I would never recommend these books to anyone. Rather, I would steer them towards better fantasy novels - like Rowling, Tolkein, Robin McKinley, Patricia McKillip, and Ursula K le Guin.
Starts off well, but seriously flawed. Not for kids! October 21, 2007
114 out of 156 found this review helpful
This trilogy was one of the most annoying works I have ever read. (And I have read a lot - I'm a retired English Lit teacher and adjunct professor.) The cosmology of this story is not only deeply, deeply flawed, it is inconsistent, ill-conceived and poorly conveyed. I felt that I was waiting in suspense for a overarching explanation that would clarify how it was that good was evil and evil was actually good, but I was left instead with a confused collection of twisted scenes from Paradise Lost that was obviously written by an author with a hatred of the Church and disdain for Christianity as a whole.
I have read that Pullman considers himself an atheist, yet this is not the work of an atheist. Consider that the books require a cosmology that includes a God (the Authority,) His angels, and fallen (Rebel) angels. A true atheist isn't against God - that acknowledges God's existence. An atheist does not believe in a spiritual world at all.
Pullman writes well at times, but many characters are flat and evoke little interest. His novum of visible animal souls is a creative stroke of genius - and I think a strong contender for why so many people are enamoured of the books. Pullman is, in the end, unable to pull it all together to create a world where there is a moral structure that works. He manipulates the forms well, brilliantly at times, but left me with a distinct empty feeling, and one of disatisfaction.
These books are not for children, and I would question the appropriateness of providing them to children without some sort of guidance - again, these are not godless - as the Harry Potter novels have been acused of - these are books in which God is killed.
Pullman is an artist, but his art is used to twist things so far that even his best efforts are incapable of connecting them again, and so this trilogy falls as flat as a Saturday morning cartoon that readily reveals that it's true goal is simply to sell toys to children, not to tell a story. Only Pullman isn't just selling harmless toys.
Completely disappointing October 6, 2003
113 out of 156 found this review helpful
I read the opening chapter of the first book in a book stall and on the basis of that, bought the book. I quite enjoyed the first book and as I am a completist bought the last two. I then sold all three on ebay, why? because I have never seen such a waste of ideas as evidenced in this work before.
It starts well, in fact it has an amazing opening, but goes downhill from there and becomes lurid, bigoted and completely forgettable. The characters are not detailed at all, the potential of an alternate world is never fully realised and the final ranting completely leaves me cold. I am a pagan, I have issues with organised religion, but the authour's views were hammered home with all the subtlety of a jackhammer.
I have seen the reviews praising this work and am completely surprised at the love people profess for this, yes it's dark, yes it has adult themes, but it isn't Milton and it's not even well written. The authours self proclaimed hatred of fantasy fiction is evident. He had a wonderful opening, that I agree with, but he ruined it by using the book as a platform for his views.
Lyra who I was intriqued with in the beginning, became irritating and I rapidly did not care about her. The revelation and introduction of Will, was rushed and incomprehensible and I blanked most of the supporting characters. They were not memorable, likeable or even interesting. The plot bounced around with no real direction except to ram home Pullman's prejudice and it rapidly got boring.
I had high hopes for this book, but I was very disappointed. I don't care about his views, only that he did not deliver the read that I was anticipating.
 A brilliant fantasy trilogy September 20, 2007
112 out of 125 found this review helpful
Philip Pullman's dark fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials, ostensibly written for children, is actually literature of a much higher order. The title of the trilogy comes from a particularly powerful passage of Milton's Paradise Lost, the great religious epic poem whose central story is the thematic basis for this trilogy. Another important influence on these three novels is the Christian Parsifal or Sir Percival story, which dates back to the early middle-ages as part of both the King Arthur and the Holy Grail cycle of tales. From its very first page, Pullman's crisp, evocative writing creates a world not quite like ours but just similar enough to be uncomfortable and strangely familiar. As readers of the trilogy know, most of the events in these books do not occur on our world or even in our universe. Of course, because this is post Tolkien fantasy, Mr. Pullman has absorbed all of the usual fantasy tropes and has no desire to repeat them. So what he writes is new, deeper, with fully rounded characters that come alive on the page. His courageous young heroine, Lyra Belacqua with her daemon familiar, Pantalaimon, always by her side, is one of the great creations in "children's literature". Lyra and Pan make an especially entertaining, often very amusing, pair. Her fearsome Uncle, Lord Asriel, is one of those rich, ambiguous creations that keep you guessing as to their motives, reminiscent of Professor Snape in J. K. Rowling's Potter novels. Pullman's writing is lean and well crafted and exciting to read. Once started, it is very difficult to set aside.
This three volume boxed set contains the books in hardcover with their original dustcovers. Their artwork is lovely. It also contains a map: a necessity in today's complex world of fantasy. The first volume, The Golden Compass, has been filmed and was recently released on DVD. The two succeeding books, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, will presumably follow thereafter. This set makes a lovely gift for an older and mature reading child or an adult who still retains memories of childhood and all of its dark mysteries. Strongly recommended.
Mike Birman
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