I now understand why conservative churches ban this series. I still think they're wrong, but I see where they're coming from.

The only thing I remembered from this novel from my childhood reading of it is the scene where Lyra and Will accidentally grab each others daemons. So rereading this was very enlightening.

I feel like this book could've easily been split into more, but I'm glad it wasn't. The pacing is fast but consistent. And finally we get answers to all of the questions set up in the previous novels.

I love the messages Lyra and Will understand at the end and share with us. If everyone lives well, is kind, and keeps an open mind, all the world's will be better for it. Too bad some people will never understand that message since they banned the book. ( )

16

I also liked the third book a bit less than the others. The whole thing seemed rushed, as if he threw together every disparate idea he could think of at the last minute and didn't really plan ahead. I wanted this to be a great series, but it didn't really reach its potential.

I really liked the descriptions of angels at the beginning of the second book, as these strangely alien creatures with wisdom far beyond our own and their attention fixed on other-worldly things. But as the story progressed, it seemed like they became petty and simple and not really any different from flying, glowing humans.

I liked the way he described Mary's conversations with the mulefa in italics, to represent her poor understanding of the language without bogging down the reader with the poor translation itself. I liked the machine-conversations with Dust. I liked Iorek's discussion about how the knife should never have been created, and the observation that someone was going to create it eventually, so it's for the best that good-hearted people hold it.

But some parts seemed quite implausible or unnecessary:

Harpies given the task of tormenting people for eternity, and they just turn around and become nice after being told a story? None of the trillions of dead people from the last thousands of years ever thought to try that?

Shining with brilliance, the angel, second-in-command to God, with the wisdom and insight of thousands of years of existence, is betrayed to his death... by a few minutes of flirting?

And how can Will just teach the angels to close the windows? Isn't that his job alone?

How can you grab an angel by his wings and drag him to his death if angels can change form?

But I liked the whole notion of the war against God, so I gave him some leeway in his attempts to describe it. I like the idea of Will putting God out of his misery, without ever realizing what he's done.

Two chapters from the end, I put the book down and was awash with ideas about religion, authority, war, peace, the "god-shaped hole" that we supposedly try to fill with material pleasures, Mary's ex-Christianity, my own ex-Christianity, and the relationship of all these things to our experience of love and happiness and fulfillment. I was really liking the series, pacing my apartment in excited thought and wanting to recommend it to everyone, especially those with religious backgrounds.

But then all that hopefulness and inspiration is ruined by the needlessly traumatic ending. You have such empathy for Lyra and Will's young perfect love, everything's coming together for good and happiness, without a need for a god, and then Pullman breaks your heart and splits them apart forever. It felt to me like the entire ending was just a series of hastily-invented plot devices existing solely to force the main characters into unhappiness.

"Oh, by the way, you can't live in the same world as each other for more than a few years or you'll die. Annnd all the windows have to be closed, or the world will end. I guess you can have one open, but you can't use it for yourselves. No, not two; just one. And you can't make temporary holes because every one you make kills people. And uh, you can teach the angels to close them even without the knife, so no, you can't go around with Lyra visiting all the different worlds together and closing all of them. Not yours."

Not only that, but he takes away their special abilities and thrusts them into dull normal lives again. Boarding school? Running from the law? Why? I don't know what he was trying to teach by doing all of this. Something about growing up and... what? The whole "Republic of Heaven" ending is lost on me now; all I can think of is the tragedy of their lost love.

This is supposed to be a book about losing faith in religion and finding other meaning in life, but all I got out of it was depressed. Good thing I didn't read this when I actually was leaving my religion. ( )

The problem with this entire series has been that I've enjoyed the books - even though they kinda derailed a bit from the steampunky fantasy stuff in the first book - but the ending has not been good. It was fine in the first two, because I could always hope for something better in the next one, but when the series is ending? Not so much.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the book and the bittersweet ending, but somehow I thought it was building up to something different than this. There was some sort of big battle going on, which was more like it, but then Lyra and Will kinda ... fucked off on a vacation and left the battle behind them? O...k? I don't really know what to do with that.

Wasn't a fan of the big Christian themes either, tbh. Could've done without them. And the developement of certain characters, who became good for no reason? Aww, come on, that's one of my fave tropes and then it was handed terribly.

But other than that, I enjoyed the book a lot, I like almost all the characters and creatures that show up: it's a very creative world, and I must say I like that.

And let's be real, this is hardly the worst last part of a trilogy I've read during the past years. It did much better than most other YA trilogies out there, let me tell you. Just not well enough for 5 stars all the way through. ( )

Ho una sola parola per descrivere questo libro: brutto. Il libro ha una forte connotazione antireligiosa, la religione per l'autore è solo una finzione che tende a privare l’uomo dell’unico mondo che realmente esiste, quello materiale. Una vita dopo la morte non è desiderabile e la nostra aspirazione deve essere quella di dissolverci felicemente dopo aver ben vissuto. Ribellarsi all’autorità è cosa buona e giusta in quanto il tentativo umano di rovesciare il potere divino è la lotta per la libertà che la religione per sua natura nega...
Lord Asriel vuole sfidare, combattere ed eliminare non solo la chiesa, ma addirittura l’Autorità. E nessuno dei suoi seguaci si pone una domanda, nessuno ha il minimo dubbio.
Dio è bene assoluto e ha dato all'uomo il libero arbitrio siamo noi che possiamo scegliere di amarlo e seguire la strada del bene o del male. La religione poi, credo che non ci siano dubbi sul fatto che noi esseri umani non siamo "animali" cioè creature di puro istinto destinate a farsi dominare dagli impulsi ma esseri dotati di sentimenti, di spirito, di anima e quindi capaci di sentimenti più complessi. Che fine hanno fatto i santi? Religiosi buoni come Don Bosco o Madre Teresa non esistono nell'universo creato da Pullman.
Non puoi credere in Dio, praticare la tua fede e goderti il ​​mondo allo stesso tempo? Milioni di persone lo fanno, ma a quanto pare Pullman pensa che ciò non sia possibile.
Questo libro non dovrebbe essere nelle librerie fra i libri destinati ai ragazzi! La signora Coulter che improvvisamente diventa la madre dell'anno non è credibile.
Ciascuno di noi ha anche, oltre al daimon, la sua propria morte che lo segue. Al momento della morte il daimon scompare mentre lo spirito vaga nell'oltretomba. Tra daimon, spirito e morte personale, quante entità ci sono ? Un vero e proprio corteo di accompagnatori!
Il libro è pieno di contraddizioni da un lato, la ex suora non doveva rinunciare al suo amore, per Dio perché ciò è contro la natura umana dall’altro lato, i protagonisti devono rinunciare al loro amore per salvaguardare il desiderio dei morti di morire proprio del tutto e per bene. Chi ha creato la lama sottile? Non ci viene detto! Alla fine del romanzo il male è sconfitto, e tutti sono più tristi di prima. ( )