The Amber Spyglass
The Amber Spyglass is the third book in the Philip Pullman series His Dark Materials. I would give this book a 9.9 out of 10 because it is excellent, but kind of leaves you wondering what happens in the end. I give the series a 10 out of 10, and it has earned its place in my favorite collection of books, along with Harry Potter and Artemis Fowl.
The Amber Spyglass picks up with Lyra and Will planning to go to the land of the dead to apologize to Roger because Lyra caused his death. Will also goes along to talk to his father.
When they reach the land of the dead, they are told they must leave their daemons behind. Lyra decided that she had to, and Will didn’t know his daemon so he went along too. When Lyra and Will met up with Roger and Will’s father, they plan to help the ghosts escape from the land of the dead. With the help of some harpies, they manage to reach the surface. Will cuts a hole into another world, and the ghosts leave, spreading their atoms into every thing in the worlds.
Meanwhile, in another world, Mary Malone (a doctor from Will’s world) created an Amber Spyglass - a spyglass that can see Dust. She uses it to see that the Dust is being drained from the world. She tries to figure out why the Dust is leaving.
When Will and Lyra are searching for their daemons after freeing the ghosts, they reach the world Mary Malone is in. While they in this world, they realize they love each other. When this happens, the Dust stops draining from the world. Will and Lyra discover that the reason the Dust was draining was because the knife Will had left many inter-world windows, and these all drained into a dark abyss that sucks up Dust. In order to stop this, Will must close all the windows that the knife made.
Lyra and Will decide that they can’t protect the worlds and see each other, so they each go back to their own worlds, despite the fact that they are in love.
I liked this book although I thought it left a few questions, like what the dark abyss was, and what happens to Will and Lyra. I love this series, and it is now one of my all-time favorites.
The Subtle Knife
The Subtle Knife is the second book in the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. It is a very good book, but it is very hard to understand without first reading The Golden Compass, the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy.
The book starts out with a young boy named Will, who comes from Oxford, England. He is going around on his daily business when he sees something out of the ordinary. He finds a window, which leads to another world. He goes through this window into the world of Cittagazze, a world overrun by Specter creatures that eat the souls of adults.
Meanwhile, a young girl named Lyra has just entered a similar window into Cittagazze. Will and Lyra meet and end up deciding to stick together for their journey. First Lyra goes to Will’s world to met up with a scientist, Mary Malone, to talk about Dust, a mysterious particle that Mary studies.
When Lyra and Will go back to Cittagazze. Will goes into a big building, and comes out with a knife capable of cutting through anything, even the very fabric of space. With this knife, Will and Lyra can travel through all the different worlds. Lyra and Will travel through the world of Cittagazze, trying to find the secret of the Dust, and for Will to find his long-lost father.
Near the end of the book, Lyra is captured, and Will is left to decide his next move.
This book is very good, and so is the whole His Dark Materials trilogy. This book ties the first and third books together nicely, but is very hard to understand without reading the first book.
This was my first Middle School book report.
The Golden Compass
The book I read was The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman. It is the first of a 3-book series called His Dark Materials. I would highly recommend this book to people who love fantasy books like Harry Potter and Artemis Fowl. If I had to rate this book on a scale of 1-10 I would give it an 8 because the book was very good, but also very hard to understand.
This book is based on a world like ours with some major differences, such as: there are many fantasy creatures, there are different names for things, the world is run entirely by the church, and that creatures called daemons exist as souls that are not within the body but are still attached to the people. There are also many similarities between the world in the book and the real world, such as: there is the same world map, there are still the same historical events, and there is still a church.
The book starts with the main character, Lyra, sneaking into a room to spy on her uncle, Lord Asriel. The place she lives is at Jordan College and is an orphan as far as she knows. As she is spying on Lord Asriel she sees the college master try to poison him. Lyra tells Lord Asriel what the master did once he is gone. Lord Asriel mentions a strange elemental particle called dust that collects around kids, but no one knows what it is.
Weeks later she is hearing rumors of "Gobblers," a group that is supposedly kidnapping kids. One by one the gyptian chidren are disappearing and Lyra decides to find out whats up. After a while she finally gives up on her search. The master decided then that Lyra should live a life outside of college and sends her to live with Ms. Coulter, a mysterious woman. Before she leaves the master gives her a altheimeter, or truth teller.
After Ms. Coulter threatens Lyra's daemon she runs away. While running she is found by her friend Tony Costa who takes her to his people. His people tell her that Lord Asriel and Ms Coulter are her parents. They also have found out that the kids are in the North Pole.
After months of travel Lyra finally reaches the north, only to get kidnapped by 2 complete strangers. She is taken to a place where her mother is cutting kids daemons away, witch is like cutting your soul away. Lyra finds a way to free all of the kids and leads them into the wilderness. She eventually finds her friends group again and rescues her father from a prison. Her father then kidnaps her friend and takes him to the aurora. Once at the aurora he sacrifices her friend and breaks a inter dimensional hole in the aurora.
This book is the first of the series so the ending is really abrupt. To fully understand the book I would recommend that you read it, because there are a lot of parts too hard and too long to explain