His Dark Materials III: The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman > Reviews > Dust, Sin and Love

Author's product rating:   

Would you listen to it again?	Yes
Story	Outstanding
Characters	Good
Listenability	Once you start it, you won't be able to switch it off!

Advantages:	A  superb book written on several levels that will appeal to 'children' of all ages .
Disadvantages:	Some people think it is heretical .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The Dark Materials trilogy is surely destined to become a classic. I read all the books over a period of two weeks and it is difficult to express my admiration for Philip Pullman who has masterfully created them.

I guess the main reason that I became so hooked on these books was that, apart from being a brilliant read, they concern the things I am most interested in. With my background in theology, mysticism and other more magical interests I was soon aware of the deeper issues that Pullman raises in these books.

It is interesting reading other reviews on the books because it becomes very apparent that they have that special quality of being accessible to different readers at different levels.

The books have frequently been described as children’s books and although the Amber Spyglass has won a children’s books literary award it is quite clear that Pullman did not only have children in mind when he wrote.

Some of the reviews speak only of the story and plot and this is indeed one level of the trilogy. I am quite new to the fantasy genre so it is difficult for me to compare this plot with others and cannot say how well it compares to similar. I have read the Harry Potter books but Pullman’s are in a completely different class in all respects.

It took me a while to adjust to the world in which Northern Lights is set. This was made doubly difficult no doubt because the book is set in Oxford where I also happen to live. But this isn’t my Oxford. At first sight it appears to be another Oxford in another more ancient time. But no, it is a completely different Oxford inhabited by people who are also completely different.

Lyra, the young heroine of the story, is an unkempt ragamuffin child who is being raised by scholars in an Oxford college. Like everyone else in her world she has a daemon, who takes the form of an animal and accompanies her everywhere. Daemons are visible representations of souls or something similar and cannot be parted from their person without disastrous consequences.

In Northern Lights the story follows the adventures of Lyra as she becomes involved in a dastardly plot to separate daemons from children in order to save the world from ‘dust’. The church, aided by Lyra’s own mother, is behind this.

By the end of the book, which discloses that Lyra is the new ‘Eve’, I was hooked.

The second book, the Subtle Knife, is set, or at least opens, in my Oxford. Will is the young hero and when he accidentally finds a window to yet another world he meets Lyra there. This adventure is exciting as the first and involves the discovery of a very subtle knife indeed with properties which are as ambiguous as the plot of these novels.

The award winning Amber Spyglass is also the longest and although some reviewers have said they found it disappointing, for various reasons, I just couldn’t put it down until it was finished.

The Dark Materials trilogy is not simply another fantasy or adventure story it is a profound cosmological drama. It takes difficult issues of origins, ecology, religion, science, life, death, meaning and purpose and sets them in the unlikely context of a pair of adolescent children struggling not only with their adventures in the various worlds but with various pubescent feelings.

There is a great deal of, no doubt purposeful, ambiguity surrounding some of the issues. It is not, for example, always clear who is good or bad or why particularly in relation to Lyra’s parents.

Some people say that the theology in the series is heretical but I am of the opinion it is only heretical if one insists on taking a preconceived idea about ‘the truth’. This in fact is one of the subtler aspects of the books for by making an attack on the dogmatic religion, Pullman also challenges those who argue that it is heretical or those with a worldview that has lost the very purpose and meaning of ‘story’.

If someone argues that it is an attack on the church and God they are showing themselves to be viewing the story from a particular perspective. I would imagine that one of the whole points of setting the stories in parallel worlds is to demonstrate that there are many different perspectives in all things. The characters also show this beautifully.

From the perspective of the official Christian church then some parts of the story are a bit heretical. However, it is a very ancient heresy. The idea that the Judeo Christian God the Father was not the creator but himself a created being, another angel, is in fact a part of the so called Gnostic heresy.

Those who argue that Lord Asriel, Lyra’s father, has a mission to destroy ‘God’ or as he is more commonly named in the series ‘the Authority’ have suggested that Asriel is a type of antichrist or the very devil himself. But this is not the intention of the series. Lord Asriel does not destroy ‘the authority’ although he does destroy another very powerful angel. The ‘Authority’ is actually released or saved by Lyra and Will from an awful existence. I will say no more.

I would argue that if there is an attack on the church it is upon the church in the age of inquisition and translated into modern terms this would be an attack on any form of fundamentalism whether it be religious or scientific.

If there is an attack on the Church there is an equal or greater polemic against science. In Lyra’s world the church and the theologians are much more scientists than spiritual people. And it is certainly no coincidence that Mary Malone, in the third book is or was a nun scientist. So interestingly we have in the story of a new creation not a devil/serpent who tempts but an ex nun who is also a scientist. It is also interesting to note that the problems the worlds are suffering from began about 300 years ago – that would make it just about the age of Enlightenment wouldn’t it?

Some people have complained that the book has an unsatisfactory ending. But I wonder if that is not part of the intention. We are aware that a major theme is the story of the fall in Genesis and surely one of the points he is trying to get across is that that story was thought to be unsatisfactory too. Is this the end of the book or a beginning?

Mary Malone was a modern nun who trained to be a scientist, a marriage of religion and science, but she fell in love and ‘lost’ her faith. She explains that “the Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all.” Is this why Mary is cast in the role of the serpent? It may be but not only for that reason.

A damning statement from Mary indeed, but perhaps, set in the complete context of the story it should be seen differently. One of the themes of the books is about sacrificing something important to gain something even better. Mary sacrificed her religion and then her scientific research because an angel on her computer told her to. She hadn’t ‘lost’ faith at all it just developed in a different way.

The major theme of the books has been Lyra as the ‘new’ Eve, which presupposes another ‘new’ creation. It is made quite clear that Lyra is the new Eve but it is never made explicit that she is also in some sense the equivalent of Jesus, a saviour of the worlds figure, Mary was told she was to play the role of the snake and so what of Will? The apocalyptic battle has been fought and at the end of the book we are in that new creation. There is a deeper more universal spirituality which links the worlds and the inhabitants and there is hope.

Right having said my piece on this brilliant trilogy and being lucky enough to live in Oxford I am just off to Sunderland Avenue where I believe there is a window to another world or maybe not!