The Amber Spyglass

I really liked the ideas the book proposes surrounding the movement from childhood to adulthood being the movement from grace to hard work. It meshes very well with my own feelings of child development, and that point at which you realize people aren't going to hand you magic objects anymore. That said, I thought this books ideas on the way to lead a good life were the most bluntly stated in the trilogy. It's philosophy I agree with, but I'd rather it wasn't spelled out in quite such large letters. Let the message of the story speak for itself.

On that story, I really love the parallels being drawn between Lyra and her mother. At the end of the book, I still don't feel I truly grasp Mrs. Coulter as a character. I'm not sure if that's a failing in my own reading or in the storytelling. The same could be said of Lord Asriel. Lyra and Will, on the other hand, are such deeply gripping characters that I couldn't put the book down during their chapters and got rather frustrated with anyone else's point of view. Ah well. A great book, though still stretching the definition of “children's literature,” publishers. Pullman never intended them as such, but I'm still shelving them there because thoughtful, mature children should read them.