When I was in the 6th grade I read The Golden Compass and loved it. I think The Subtle Knife was out but I had to wait for The Amber Skyglass. I was in love with the story and the world until the last half of The Amber Skyglass. That’s when the story fell apart because he went hardcore preachy, as in, “God hates people” preachy, which doesn’t really vibe with me first of all as a Christian, second of all as a writer.
Now as a Christian it’s a little obvious and it’s the reason middle-school-shannan didn’t like the book. But reflecting on it now that I’m a writer it shows poor writing skills. If you have a view point, it should be obvious without spelling it out or hitting your readers over the head with it, and I got the proverbial wind knocked out of me. But even with how much I wound up being disappointed by the series, I can’t say it was the worst book I ever read, because it was an early lesson in literary critic and deciding how I was going to process the information coming at me and what I was going to believe about it.
I want to reread at least The Golden Compass and see if that theme was there all along or if he really just through it in at the end of the series. We’ll see if that ever happens. But at the end of the series I was just disappointed, because it seemed like a bait-and-switch more than anything.
| The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman Publisher/Year: Knopf Books for Young Readers Pages: 399 Series: His Dark Materials 1 Genre: Fantasy Format: Hardback |
The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman Publisher/Year:Knopf Books for Young Readers Pages: 326 Series: His Dark Materials 2 Genre: Fantasy Format: Hardback |
The Amber Skyglass by Philip Pullman Publisher/Year:Knopf Books for Young Readers Pages: 544 Series: His Dark Materials 3 Genre: Fantasy Format: Hardback |
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