This is the conclusion to the His Dark Materials trilogy which started with The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife.
This one jumped to 522 pages and some of the time I had to put it down and catch my breath because I was so worried for Lyra and Will and at other times because I felt the end coming and was worried how it would end and didn't know if I wanted it to.
I have also been listening to a podcast, Extraneous His Dark Materials, that does a deep dive on the books and also the first season of the HBO series. It is from my friend Melissa over at Mischief Media and there are a bunch of great podcasts there, including the newly added deep dive into the Disney+ collection by my dear friend Josh and his husband Clancy and if you want to laugh until you pee these are your guys!! Plus it is super interesting.
Anyway, about this book...It was an interesting ending. I am a bit torn because it is kind of a sad but happy ending and I don't know yet how I feel about it. I think I need to sit with it a bit.
Will and Lyra are so amazing it is too easy to forget they are barely teenagers. In this book we learn more about the nature of a person's relationship with their dæmons and the strength of the bond. The religion is laid on thicker here than in the first two books but it isn't, at least in how I read it, a pro-religion book but more anti. And by that I mean it feel like what Pullman was doing was preaching against the dogmatic, authoritarian nature of Christianity and religions in general.
Some of the questions (and not all of the questions raised get answered) tackled are what happens when we die, how is what we will be formed by our actions and how much is fate or destiny and if it is a preordained destiny then do we really have free will?
Will addressed this wonderfully when he decides he doesn't want to know the answer to something because then if he chooses to do it he will be resentful at having had no choice or feel guilty for choosing not to and the consequences of that. Instead he decides to just go on doing what he thinks is right and if it turns out he did what he was destined to do he won't know it so it will have been his choice.
Lyra and Will grow up so much in this book. They feel it and to some others it is visible and it is kind of lovely really, but also a little "much" given their ages. But when you travel the worlds as they have and do what they have age as a number might become slightly irrelevant.
I don't want to put any spoilers in this post though I wonder how many people are like me in that they are coming to this series from the 1990s for the first time...but just incase no spoilers...I will just say I totally love Lee Scoresby, Serafina Pekkala, and Iorek Byrnison. As to Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter, I don't know..I am truly torn as to how much I actually despise them...and I can't say why or more about it. Though I will say I wonder what happened to Mrs. Coulter in her life before we meet her in The Golden Compass to make her like she is or if she is just a nasty piece of work. I don't believe that all "bad" characters have to have been turned, I believe that characters sometimes can and should be just awful, much like real people are. I mean no doubt sometimes something that happens to a person can change them, but not always, sometimes people just are who they are...
As a wrap up, I am truly glad I read this and probably wouldn't have if it hadn't been for the HBO series. I liked the books better but still enjoyed the series and will watch the next season when ever that comes...Also at some point I think I will grab the prequel books to this, The Book of Dust and The Secret Commonwealth.
(Finished April 30, 2020)
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