The Amber Spyglass: His Dark Materials [Mass Market Paperback]

Philip Pullman (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 9, 2003 | Age Range: 10 and up | Series: His Dark Materials (Book 3)

In the astonishing finale to the His Dark Materials trilogy, Lyra and Will are in unspeakable danger. With help from Iorek Byrnison the armored bear and two tiny Gallivespian spies, they must journey to a dank and gray-lit world where no living soul has ever gone. All the while, Dr. Mary Malone builds a magnificent Amber Spyglass. An assassin hunts her down, and Lord Asriel, with a troop of shining angels, fights his mighty rebellion, in a battle of strange allies—and shocking sacrifice.

As war rages and Dust drains from the sky, the fate of the living—and the dead—finally comes to depend on two children and the simple truth of one simple story.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

From the very start of its very first scene, The Amber Spyglass will set hearts fluttering and minds racing. All we'll say here is that we immediately discover who captured Lyra at the end of The Subtle Knife, though we've yet to discern whether this individual's intent is good, evil, or somewhere in between. We also learn that Will still possesses the blade that allows him to cut between worlds, and has been joined by two winged companions who are determined to escort him to Lord Asriel's mountain redoubt. The boy, however, has only one goal in mind--to rescue his friend and return to her the alethiometer, an instrument that has revealed so much to her and to readers of The Golden Compass and its follow-up. Within a short time, too, we get to experience the "tingle of the starlight" on Serafina Pekkala's skin as she seeks out a famished Iorek Byrnison and enlists him in Lord Asriel's crusade:

A complex web of thoughts was weaving itself in the bear king's mind, with more strands in it than hunger and satisfaction. There was the memory of the little girl Lyra, whom he had named Silvertongue, and whom he had last seen crossing the fragile snow bridge across a crevasse in his own island of Svalbard. Then there was the agitation among the witches, the rumors of pacts and alliances and war; and then there was the surpassingly strange fact of this new world itself, and the witch's insistence that there were many more such worlds, and that the fate of them all hung somehow on the fate of the child.

Meanwhile, two factions of the Church are vying to reach Lyra first. One is even prepared to give a priest "preemptive absolution" should he succeed in committing mortal sin. For these tyrants, killing this girl is no less than "a sacred task."

In the final installment of his trilogy, Philip Pullman has set himself the highest hurdles. He must match its predecessors in terms of sheer action and originality and resolve the enigmas he already created. The good news is that there is no critical bad news--not that The Amber Spyglass doesn't contain standoffs and close calls galore. (Who would have it otherwise?) But Pullman brings his audacious revision of Paradise Lost to a conclusion that is both serene and devastating. In prose that is transparent yet lyrical and 3-D, the author weaves in and out of his principals' thoughts. He also offers up several additional worlds. In one, Dr. Mary Malone is welcomed into an apparently simple society. The environment of the mulefa (again, we'll reveal nothing more) makes them rich in consciousness while their lives possess a slow and stately rhythm. These strange creatures can, however, be very fast on their feet (or on other things entirely) when necessary. Alas, they are on the verge of dying as Dust streams out of their idyllic landscape. Will the Oxford dark-matter researcher see her way to saving them, or does this require our young heroes? And while Mary is puzzling out a cure, Will and Lyra undertake a pilgrimage to a realm devoid of all light and hope, after having been forced into the cruelest of sacrifices--or betrayals.

Throughout his galvanizing epic, Pullman sustains scenes of fierce beauty and tenderness. He also allows us a moment or two of comic respite. At one point, for instance, Lyra's mother bullies a series of ecclesiastical underlings: "The man bowed helplessly and led her away. The guard behind her blew out his cheeks with relief." Needless to say, Mrs. Coulter is as intoxicating and fluid as ever. And can it be that we will come to admire her as she plays out her desperate endgame? In this respect, as in many others, The Amber Spyglass is truly a book of revelations, moving from darkness visible to radiant truth. --Kerry Fried --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

In concluding the spellbinding His Dark Materials trilogy, Pullman produces what may well be the most controversial children's book of recent years. The witch Serafina Pekkala, quoting an angel, sums up the central theme: "All the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity. The rebel angels, the followers of wisdom, have always tried to open minds; the Authority and his churches have always tried to keep them closed." Early on, this "Authority" is explicitly identified as the Judeo-Christian God, and he is far from omnipotent: his Kingdom is ruled by a regent. The cosmic battle to overthrow the Kingdom is only one of the many epic sequences in this novelAso much happens, and the action is split among so many different imagined worlds, that readers will have to work hard to keep up with Pullman. In the opening, for example, Lyra is being hidden and kept in a drugged sleep in a Himalayan cave by her mother, the beautiful and treacherous Mrs. Coulter. Will is guided by two angels across different worlds to find Lyra. The physicist and former nun, Mary Malone, sojourns in an alternatively evolved world. In yet another universe, Lord Asriel has assembled a great horde of otherworldly beings-including the vividly imagined race of haughty, hand-high warriors called GallivespiansAto bring down the Kingdom. Along the way, Pullman riffs on the elemental chords of classical myth and fairy tale. While some sections seem rushed and the prose is not always as brightly polished as fans might expect, Pullman's exuberant work stays rigorously true to its own internal structure. Stirring and highly provocative. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Age Range: 10 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Laurel Leaf (September 9, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440238153
• ISBN-13: 978-0440238157
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1 x 7.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (972 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #75,638 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

77 of 90 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing and unfocused November 21, 2000

By E. Dalton

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I loved "The Golden Compass." I was intrigued by "The Subtle Knife." And I tried to prepare myself to be a little disappointed by "The Amber Spyglass"-- trilogy conclusions are rarely as good as the first book. But I had hopes. The first two were so good....

This was nowhere near as good.

The various plot threads are all wrapped up, more or less. But the ending is forced. Other reviewers have pointed out the flat and inconsistent characterizations, the scattered plot, the valueless sub-threads (like Father Gomez). The useless spyglass. And even those who loved the book found the ending of the romance disappointing.

Ultimately, the book fails to deliver on the themes that were begun in "The Golden Compass," including one of the most important. Am I simply not getting it? How was Lyra's position anything comparable to Eve's? She finds love (with almost no character build up), she gives it up for the sake of the world(s). As other readers have noted, she's arguably a Christ character. But not much like Eve. Unless you count the temptation to sex (in a world with giant apple trees that contain the essence of sentience), and frankly, I don't think that was especially plausable. Eve, according to Judeo-Christian theology, succumbs to temptation (for knowledge, not sex) and gets everyone kicked out of Eden. I suppose Lyra resists temptation (to continue a relationship) to help everyone build a new Eden. But it's a tenuous connection at best, because the "only one window, not two" argument is so weak and last-minute, and she and Will can only affect one world each at best, with no way to travel between them. (And if Pullman wanted to redefine Eve to mean something else, a lot more work was needed.)

Aother of the great disappointments was the hesitant flirting with Wisdom. Evidently Pullman has come across feminist spirituality interpretations of gnostic gospels and eastern church references to a female Wisdom character (Sophia) who predates Yaweh (in some traditions). I kept waiting for him to develop this theme. Instead she (Xaphania, the only female angel) merely appears as a "Deus ex machina" and answers the kids' questions before sending them on home. I suppose Pullman realized he was getting too close to replacing a God with a Goddess, and backed down rather than give up his anti-theistic theme. I suppose that's forgivable, if all he wanted to do was write entertaining fiction. But if he wanted to actually make a point about theism, it's an act of cowardice.

Unlike most other reviewers who panned this book, I don't mind the anti-organized-religion slant. As a Quaker, I'm not much on organized religion myself. I didn't think the book is as inherently anti-Christian as some of the reviewers seemed to think, either. To my mind, Lucretia Mott had it right when she encouraged us to "doubt more, in order that we might believe more." Looking at other possible theologies can help us get at the root of what we really believe. But I think Pullman ran out of steam --or maybe even courage-- before he finished developing his ideas. This book needed at least one more major rewrite before publishing, to shake out the loose pieces and add the richness to the characters and themes that was so evident in his earlier books. Maybe Pullman was just too tired to do the necessary work. Or maybe the publisher was impatient. Or maybe Pullman himself started to lose faith in his anti-theism, and didn't have the courage to write details that would force him to acknowledge his dependency on divine powers in the story (Xaphenia, the angels, and most of all, Dust).

I gave it three stars, because it's worth reading, if you liked the first two, just to tie up the loose threads. But it's not on par with them.

65 of 77 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary fantasy with unusual theological underpinnings December 12, 2000

By Mr. T. Pitt-payne

Format:Hardcover

This book brings to an end a rich and strange fantasy trilogy. The books tackle huge themes: the nature of consciousness, the Fall, the relationship between body and soul, and the conflict between what Pullman calls the Kingdom of Heaven and the Republic of Heaven.

It's interesting to think about this trilogy in comparison with C S Lewis's "Narnia" chronicles. Like Lewis, Pullman writes out of total immersion in the Western literary tradition. His obvious influences are Blake, Milton and the Book of Genesis: but there are also traces of Homer (e.g. the fight between Iorek and Iofur in the first book of the trilogy reads like a clash of two Homeric heroes). At a less exalted level, I suspect that Kingsley Amis's "The Alteration" contributed something to Pullman's picture of an alternative Oxford. But in Tolkien's words a book like this is written "out of the leaf-mould of the mind", and if one can discern the shape of one or two of the leaves that doesn't in any sense devalue the originality of the work.

Both the Narnia Chronicles and Pullman's trilogy are imaginative responses to the Christian tradition. The difference between Pullman and Lewis is that Lewis's reading of the Bible is that of orthodox Christianity, whereas Pullman's reading derives from Blake and from Gnosticism. In Pullman's version of events, the God of the Old Testament is not the creator of the Universe, but is a lesser figure (like a very powerful angel), and also a tyrant; the serpent in Eden is an embodiment of wisdom, not a malevolent force; and Eve is a heroine, whose choice of experience over innocence is the very thing that makes us human. The Church is seen in unremittingly bleak terms: Pullman's Church is a synthesis of the worst bits of medieval and Counter-Reformation Catholicism with the worst bits of Calvinism.

Is the book anti-Christian? It's certainly anti-Church, and in a sense also anti-God. But the most curious omission in the book is that Pullman (unlike Blake and unlike the Gnostics) appears at first sight to have nothing at all to say about Jesus (either directly or allegorically). Yet at the same time, although his heroine Lyra is presented as a new Eve, she also has Christ-like characteristics: a child whose destiny is to save the world, threatened by cosmic forces, and capable of sacrificing herself for love (even at the cost of a descent into hell). Pullman would certainly endorse St Paul's view (on this point if on no other) that the greatest love is to lay down one's life for one's friend. In short, the book embodies what are usually regarded as Christian values, but it then uses those very values to attack both the Church and the God who is portrayed in the Old Testament.

Should you read the book? If you are interested in speculative fiction or in theology, then yes. Like C S Lewis, Pullman is the sort of author who can be a gateway into the Western literary tradition. Like Lewis also, he needs to be read consciously. Agnostic parents who give their children the Narnia books should be aware that these books are brilliant Christian propaganda. And Christian parents who give their children Pullman's trilogy should be aware that it 's brilliant Gnostic propaganda.

In short the comparison with Narnia is apt (despite, or perhaps because, of the fact that Pullman has gone on record about how much he hates the Narnia books). In both cases readers may get considerably more than they bargained for!

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars "War is Coming. I Can Hear it Approaching..." November 5, 2004

By R. M. Fisher TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

At the end of "The Subtle Knife", things were dire. Lyra had been kidnapped by her mother Mrs Coulter, whilst Will was left in the company of two angels with the subtle knife (which can create windows between worlds) and the altheiometer (that communicates with the mystery substance known as `Dust'). Refusing to accompany them to Lord Asriel, who is on the verge of war with Heaven itself, Will enlists the angels help in tracking down Lyra, and is soon joined by Iorek Byrnison, the king of the polar bears. Meanwhile, Lyra herself is forced into an enchanted sleep by her mother, whilst the powers of the Church and the Authority close in to end her life and thus the terrible threat she poses against them. When the two children are reunited, they hatch a plan to go right to the end of where the subtle knife can take them; right into death itself.

Mary Malone, who has been told that she must "play the serpent", has reached a world where elephantine creatures wheel along on giant seedpods, and may just have the final key to unravelling the mystery of Dust. Pullman brings out all of his previous creations: witches, Spectres, angels, gyptains, daemons and cliff-ghasts are all here in full force, each with a part to play in one of the most exciting, controversial, imaginative and thought-provoking books in recent history. Yet unlike the previous books, "The Golden Compass" and "The Subtle Knife", "The Amber Spyglass" has a few faults that does not make it quite the awe-inspiring finale I had hoped it would be.

Out of all three books, this one is the most blatantly anti-religious; in particular anti-Christian. Now, I have my own religious convictions (though what they are irrelevant to this review), and a critique of faith is hardly going to endanger them. It was easy enough for me to thoroughly enjoy a book without agreeing to its message. After all, religion is a human construct, and I'm sure I'm not the only religious person to recognise atrocities that have occurred by self-righteous fanatics in the name of `religion'. But Pullman takes this one step further and is anti-God. In his literary creation, God was not the creator, but simply the first intelligent being to come into existence. Again, I wasn't that disgruntled: I had to admire the sheer nerve Pullman displays in taking on the concept of God, and anyone who has read "Paradise Lost" (on which these books are based) know that Satan comes across as an epic hero, whilst God is somewhat of a bore.

No, what bothered me about this book was the general attitude held toward all religious people: at all times there is no good that can come from having faith in a deity of any kind, and no chance of a coexistence between those that have faith and those that don't. In my opinion, the key to peace on earth is not religion, nor atheism, but *tolerance*. Pullman displays none of this, and seems to be saying that only way to deal with religious people is with scorn and mockery. Any impressionable young reader will most likely be inspired and enlightened by Pullman's books, but on taking his standpoint, they may also adopt a negative attitude toward anyone that does not conform to atheist beliefs. Just as the stereotype of a Christian is an uptight, Bible-bashing bigot, atheists are steadily coming across as smug, arrogant dictators. Neither is particularly becoming, and the differences between the two extremes aren't really that different. I say again, tolerance is what the world needs, and Pullman shows none of this.

As well as this, there are some very basic mistakes, which come across as sloppy writing - something I thought I'd never, ever accuse Pullman of doing. Serafina is practically forgotten, and the plot thread concerning the arrow she prepares for Mrs Coulter comes to an empty conclusion. Huge amounts of time are given to preparing Asriel's army and the forces he controls, and yet we never hear the outcome of this physical battle. Lord Asriel's statement in book 1 about how he plans to destroy Dust now makes no sense, and Pullman is forced to pull a 360 and claim that Asriel was lying. Lyra claims that she overheard the witch-consul Lanselius comments on her role in the witch-prophesy. But in book 1 Pullman specifically states: "She must fulfil this destiny in ignorance of what she is doing." If she'd overheard this, then she wouldn't be in ignorance, and the prophecy negates itself. As well as this, Pullman tells us that the prophecy concerning Lyra's betrayal occurs when she leaves Pan behind when she crosses into the land of the dead. Not only do I fail to see how this was a betrayal (she had no choice!), but I thought the betrayal had occurred in book 1 when Lyra led Roger to his death. Because I thought it had already happened, my anticipation hadn't been building up for this `real' betrayal.

Then there's the matter of the Gallivespians. Although they are wonderful creations (miniature people with poisonous spurs on their heels) the two that accompany Will and Lyra have no real purpose. The altheiometer insists that they are needed, but on close inspection all they do is convince the harpies of a deal, and get Lyra angry enough to see her Death. In other words, they do squat, at least not enough that justifies their presence, and do nothing that Will and Lyra couldn't do themselves.

At the end of the day, "His Dark Materials" is essential reading, and I don't think any book has stimulated my mind as much as these. Despite some faults in this final book, and an infuriating sense of superiority in the narrator's voice, I have read the trilogy numerous times and enjoy it more each time. Thanks Philip Pullman for an unforgettable, intoxicating, extraordinary read - but I'm still not an atheist.