The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3) (Mass Market Paperback)

In fact, the book can be shown to be unconsciously Christian, and a beautiful reaffirmation of the greatest Christian values which we sometimes tend to forget. In our haste to 'follow the Bible' we sometimes forget who Christ was- a saviour to set Mankind free. Although Pullman has stated that he wanted to revel in the physical world, and intended this book as an alternative to CS Lewis' Narnia, there is an unconscious Christian thread running through the book. First off, has anyone wondered why, with 'christianity', there is no Christ? And that God is so weak?

In reality the God shown in the book is not God at all, but a sort of Satan figure, an antichrist. He calls himself God, but as the angels tell us, he is not the creator. In reality, who is the creator, we learn? It is Dust. And in fact, there is a strong case for showing that Dust is God in this book (although this may seem absurd, bear with me for a while. While we think of God as singular, we think of Dust as plural. Just think of Dust as the essence of God).

In the book, Dust pervades the world, and is the source of the greatest joys. Out of it were all things made. So, let us assume Dust is a sort of non-personal God. In the world, it is the source of spirituality. The Church is a institiution of fanatics, a distortion of Christianity. It is the false church set up by an antichrist.

Now comes Christ. Who is Christ in the book? The answer is, Lyra. Her adventures have a very Christ-like feel to them: she frees the people to search for truth (Christ: 'the truth shall set you free'); she saves the world(s) from sin and fanaticism; she reaffirms the existence of love and the holiness of Dust; and she frees the dead to return to God in the world (to mingle with the Dust).

As for the nature of this 'god', Dust. Too often we think of God as a human, only more powerful, wise, and kindly. Why does God have to be of this type? Can't God be a spirituality, a consciousness, a great and holy essence, that fills the world and clusters around those beings that are conscious? The history of our world, as Serafina Pekkala puts it, is "one long struggle between those who want you to obey and submit, and those who want you to stand tall and think". Only, the Church that we have viewed as Christianity had become corrupted by lesser men only a few hundred years after Christ. Those who are truly spiritual and call themselves Christian will find that they need not be tied down to the Bible always, and that consciousness is the greatest gift of all. Holiness is in thought, not in repeating words mindlessly. And this book is truly great. It reveals to us these values, and it awes us. Truly a book for the ages.

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!