Rating: 
Summary: Heartbreaking
Review: Have you ever read a book that literally broke your heart? If not, you are missing out on one of life's greatest experiences - and you should immediately read Pullman's trilogy, in particular, The Amber Spyglass. Pullman's exploration of religion and its place in human life may be impressive and thought-provoking, but the greatest feat of his trilogy is to make you feel not only FOR the main characters but THROUGH them as well. When Lyra and Will's deep friendship develops into an intense love, you experience it along with them. Pullman makes it seem so pure and true, you envy these fictional characters - you want that love for yourself, even though it is impossible to achieve. And when they are torn apart forever, if you have a heart, it breaks. At the end of this amazing story, you are left feeling shattered, and maybe angry at Pullman for putting you through this experience. But it is well worth the pain.
Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: At first I heard about the 'His Dark Materials Triology' when my friends kept saying it was crap. Then I bought it in a book fair, and as I read it, I was transported into a whole different Universe.
I didn't understand some bits until I got the two prequels.
I give 'The Amber Spyglass' TWO THUMBS UP!!!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: SLOP
Review: A sickly treacly addition to the political emetic that is modern fantasy. As subtle as the neon in Piccadilly circus. As gross as Ursula K Leguin's feminist tracks in never never land. However Pullman does compliment the drab landscape of progressive England "like communist Romania with fast food joints" as one one of Murdochs tabloids chirruped.
Rating:
Summary: Christianity gets a bad rap in Amber Spyglass
Review: C.S. Lewis wannabe, Philip Pullman, has got my back up by rejecting Christianity if favor of a formula Sword and Sorcery tale. You know the formula. The youthful pilgrim saves a world by gathering together an odd collection of creatures, including a pretty girl, and trekking to hell and back beset by creepy critters.Please bear with me while I define some terms. It seems to me that while Philip has read Paradise Lost, he has NOT read the Bible.
Paradise Lost is a work of fiction written by an individual. In Paradise Lost Satan is painted as the "bloody but unbowed" champion of human curiosity, intelligence and determination. God is portrayed as an arbitrary despot. The Bible is a collection of national history, poetry, parable, letters, wisdom, etc, etc. etc. written down by a wide variety of individuals over hundreds of years. If you read the Bible from cover to cover, there seems to be a amazing consensus that God is a creative, caring, just, endlessly patient (with occasional fits of exasperation) Being. God is shown to have provided Jesus and the Holy Spirit so that He is NOT a remote, unfathomable, creature. Those who turn to Him find God loves them and accepts them right where they are. Guidance for the fallible people of the real world is provided. The Bible is a survival manual with really good interesting stories. In the newer portion of it a youthful hero saves our world by trekking to hell and back. (There are some fascinating individuals and creatures, but sorry, no pretty girl for this hero - try the earlier part, Song of Solomon, for romance.) By and large, it's a much better read than Amber Spyglass. If you are looking for the meaning of life, you are much more likely to find it in the Bible than Amber Spyglass. In the Bible, as opposed to Paradise Lost, Satan is described as the devourer, deceiver, and a regular "evil-doer" with no redeeming social or moral value. He tempts humanity into the heresy that we can gain true wisdom without knowing God. He is NOT described as a misunderstood questor after knowledge who was dumped out of heaven for being uppity. Now I abhor anti-intellectuals as much as the next literate person, but valuing metaphysics and striving to see the really BIG picture does not exclude science and learning for the joy of satisfying curiosity. On the contrary, it INcludes them. As for the virtues of "thinking, and feeling and reflecting, gaining wisdom and passing it on, kindness, patience, cheerfulness, and curiosity." What do you suppose impressed them upon our "I want what I want when I want it!" western society, starting with the Romans, as virtues in the first place? - Christianity! In the Bible we are given a history of the tidal ebb and flow of the relationship between God and humankind. In Amber Spyglass we are given zephyrs of spooky-dust! You choose which to read.
Rating:
Summary: Better than Ever
Review: This is my favorite book in the world. I've reviewed it before because it is just SO GOOD. I'm in the middle of the Golden Compass for the 8th or something time and I'm realizing how many subtle hints Pullman uses to foreshadow stuff in The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. You'd think that he had already written this third one. The Amber Spyglass is one of the only 2 books in the world that made me cry (Bridge to Terebithia was the other one). People who dissed the ending, shame on you! It was magnificent but SO SAD:( And people who say Pullman is sacreligous and everything...TOO BAD FOR YOU. It's his opinion and a solid one, I think. I'm not Christian but my friends are and THEY didn't mind it. The book is worth it. The whole symbolism of the trilogy was about religon so T.A.S. was rightfully concluding that. A little extreme, I admit, but still. GOOD. Well if I keep on thinking abut this book I'll get sad again so I'm just saying THANK YOU to Mr. Pullman for writing this book and SEE? so all of y'all who say "kids shouldn't read this!!" know that I read it, I think it's good, and I was not "corrupted" by it. Yeah, sure I think daemons are awesome...who wouldn't pay to have one? They rock!
Rating:
Summary: I can't recall ever being so disappointed in a book.
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed the first two books in this trilogy, which made The Amber Spyglass that much more of a disappointment. The whole work seemed slapped together, as if the author had no idea what was going to happen next when he ended The Subtle Knife. Some major plot elements are handled quite sloppily: the notion of having the armored bears move to the Himalayas merely because there is ice there is evidently as foolish to Pullman as it was to me, since he has them move back to the Arctic after King Iorek fulfills his critical role in the plot. The assassin sent after Mary Malone is foiled in a way that is curiously unsatisfying. Mrs. Coulter displays some sort of magical ability at a crucial moment that is never explained. Will's father acquires secret knowledge of a plot worlds away that is explained by simply saying "I'm a shaman, I see things." Steel is forged in circumstances that are more unbelievable than magical. And the tragic ending is so drawn out that rather than being bittersweet it is excruciating.
I also seem to remember Pullman's writing style being more solid in the previous books, but maybe that was just because I was enjoying them more. In this book the viewpoint jumps willy-nilly from character to character without warning, and we are continually told what characters are saying rather than listening to them in dialog.
These things didn't ruin the book for me. What ruined the book was being suddenly and without warning in either previous book being dropped into a diatribe against Christianity. I didn't feel that my beliefs were being questioned so much as being made responsible for all the evil in the world. No attempt is made to place any religious characters in a favorable light: they are unremittingly portrayed as either wicked or cowardly.
One other caveat: there is quite a bit of not-too-subtle sexuality in this book, more than I'm comfortable letting my ten-year-old son read.
Notwithstanding, the cast of the unabridged audiobook did a fine job. No complaints there at all.
My final recommendation is that you read the first two books of His Dark Materials (why are they called that? I still don't know) and make up an ending of your own. It will be more satisfying.
Rating:
Summary: Some people take this book far too seriously
Review: First off, this book is NOT, for the last time, anything about SATAN and God isn't given so much as a personality. God is there, all right, and he does die, but that doesn't mean that the author suports Satan. He simply supports being human, which to him, means not being ruled by some higher power in the Heavens, but by being a republic. To him, Heaven is not supposed to be a kingdom in the clouds somewhere, but on Earth where people take care of themselves. However, we seem to be horrible at doing that with all that's happened. Nevertheless, you should not completely trash this book just because God dies. There is so much more in the book than just that. What Philip Pullman is focusing on isn't really God but something better. His message is to not wait to go to Heaven to have a better life. You should take control of yourself and try to have a better life on your own! His idea of Heaven is a place where everyone is in control of himself/herself, doing good things on their own. In our world, though, things are much more complicated than that and at times I do wish that Philip Pullman would realize that. But this was a series that became his own idea of what the world ought to be. That's what some writers do, answering their own questions of life and death. It's whether people agree with them that's the problem. But I'm not going to argue anymore. I've ranted enough and I've defended the book enough. Judge it however you like. It just annoys me very much to see all these people saying that the book is bad because they think that Philip Pullman supports the Devil. Well, people, get better educated. All People who don't believe in God don't all believe in the Devil. Some do, but there are other religions out there! Philip Pullman is what is called an athiest. He doesn't believe in God or the Devil. So he wrote a book saying that we don't need God to live and we don't need Heaven and Hell to keep us from doing bad things. Due to this, I can understand how people can be offended. Some people aren't. They understand the message and accept it. I understand it, though I don't necessarily accept it. It's a new point of view and it doesn't deserve to be stampeded across on. END
Rating: 
Summary: A Certain Reader From Boston Knows Virtually Nothing
Review: I don't think you even read the book because it hardly mentions Satan and doesn't give so much as a personality to God. Yes, God is there. But not completely and it never says that He hates sex or that Satan provides knowledge. What this book is about is a girl named Lyra and a boy named Will who put their goal in front of themselves right until the end of the book. In the beginning of the trilogy, Lyra tries to help save these children who were kidnapped by people called "Gobblers" and taken to the north to perform experiments on, concerning their souls, called daemons. These daemons, in their world, can change into any animal form until they reach puberty when they settled into permanant shapes, reflecting their partners' personalities. Lyra receives a golden compass that can tell her the truth about everything she askes of it through pictures. In the second book, she meets a boy named Will who becomes the owner of a knife called the subtle knife that can cut through anything-even the material between worlds. In the third book, they learn more about their souls, daemons, the world of which the dead are kept, and God Himself. They learn the truth of temptation and why they have to stay in their own worlds in order to rebuild Heaven. Not a kingdom of Heaven, but a Republic. So as you can see, this book and the series it belongs in has nothing to do with Satan. If you don't believe, go read the books yourself. And actually READ THEM before forming conclusions about them. Lies are not appreciated by true readers. Neither is ignorance. If you have legitimate reasons for disliking the book, I would be happy to hear them.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing for the whole family
Review: While we totally enjoyed Philip Pullman's first two novels of His Dark Materials, we can't help but think that he was setting us up for a fall, in more ways than one, with the third. While I read the favorable reviews that children wrote for this book, I can't help but think that they who wrote them have had little or no religious instruction in their lives, and they certainly don't believe in God. Pullman is only reinforcing these views in "The Amber Spyglass". Besides his obvious disdain for religious authority, he goes too far by exclaiming, in several places in the novel, that God is dead or never existed in the first place.
Beyond his attempt to pull us into his anti-religious views, his novel begins well and ends with a resounding "THUD". Where is the climax, the great battle that we are lead to believe will take place? There is a short tussle between the two leading adults, Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel, and the powerful angel, Metatron, that seems like more of a cat fight than a battle. Unfortunately, we hear only secondhand how it all ends.
What a disappointing novel in so many ways! My children and I were left with only compassion for the author's personal life, but certainly not for his characters. I only hope Mr. Pullman can find redemption on a personal basis, as his novel definitely is beyond help.
Rating:
Summary: Um... read it!
Review: What odd ideas people get! Pullman stupid? He thinks America is full of fundies? He he! Anyway, I used to be dissapointed with this book after the glory of The Golden Compass and the slightly less glory of The Subtle Knife. But its grown on me. I was nitpicking before, which is fine: it's good to know a books faults. But I don't care about them any more. Sure, it's flawed, but overall, it's magnificent. If the structure is a little weak, and the ending slightly confused, the book still comes off as sweeping, with a powerful force behind it. As for talk of hateful anti-Church-ism, firstly: so what? If a writer wants to express any opinion at all, even one you don't like, it's their right to do so. Secondly, it wasn't overbearing. Pullman knows how to write. It wasn't a liteny against the evil of the Church. He gently raised some isses (not made up, they are issues in our own world too) and pointed out some things. He gave another opinion on the fall - not by preaching against Christian teachings, but with the ending that was its own story. So don't be put off if you're a Christian. Surely a true believer SHOULD read this, because blind faith is nothing - only with an informed brain is faith valuable.
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