SPOILER WARNING
If you have not read any of the books in the His Dark Materials book series, please do not read the following review. There will be spoilers for the entire series, though I do focus on reviewing The Amber Spyglass. There will be a "Houskeeping" section in this blog post so feel free to skip down to that.
The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman - Review
Well actually, just the first 59 pages, not the entire book
I was really trying to just go and get this series under my belt. I probably should have just left it alone when The Golden Compass didn't interest me enough to pick up The Subtle Knife in the first place. But no, I had to give the series another chance. Well, I'm done now. Not gonna even force myself to finish The Amber Spyglass.
I'm stopping because I just can't bring myself to care about the characters, or what they're doing, at all. Not to mention, there's suddenly a new race of people to keep track of. I understand that in a book series with multiple worlds there are going to be a lot of different creatures. I understand that not every creature is going to be explained in the first couple of books. However, in a trilogy, the last book should not be introducing new players to the mix. We should know who our players are, what they want, and how they plan on getting it. This has not happened with the His Dark Materials trilogy. I still don't know what the hell is going on. The main characters don't know what's going on. No one seems to know much of anything.
The Amber Spyglass starts off with a girl named Ama interacting with Mrs. Coulter. Mrs. Coulter has apparently kidnapped Lyra and has he sleeping in a cave. Yes, sleeping, like, under sedation type sleeping. We then jump to Will, who's got a pair of Angels protecting him in order to bring him to Lord Asriel. The main Angel of the pair, Balthamos, is impatient and rude. His entire plan hinges on convincing Will to go to Lord Asriel but Will would rather look for Lyra. Balthamos gets increasingly tetchy because he apparently can't or won't just grab Will and drag him off to Lord Asriel for some reason. When the second Angel, Baruch, returns from where ever he went off to, he's then sent to Asriel by Will and... captured or something.
Meanwhile, Serafina Pekkala reappears from where ever she went off to at the end of The Subtle Knife. Except, she's in her world talking to Iorek Byrnison about Lee Scoresby and the death she could not prevent. She goes off again, telling Iorek how to get to Lee's preserved body. And apparently, foxes can suddenly understand human speech and tell Cliff Ghasts. Uhm... right, Whatever. Iorek goes off to see Lee and eat him in order to... vengeance. It has to do with vengeance. I was skimming by this point.
Back to Ama. She's decided to go to some monks and get a cure for Lyra, who she thinks is under a spell. When she sneaks into Mrs. Coulter's cave with the cure, she finds out that Mrs. Coulter lies. And then we get some Lord Asriel time. He talks to a Lilliputian - I'm sorry, Borrower? Fairy? Oh! Pixie? No? Gallivespian? That's it, a very tiny person we've never heard of before but are apparently small enough and common enough to be spies... sounds like something a very observant child should have said something about... ya know, if she was at all actually observant.
Yeah... this is where I'm stopping. I didn't even realize the small person was teensy until I read about him jumping onto a not-giant bird. Turns out, I accidentally skipped a rather large paragraph describing the Gallivespians. When I start skipping like that, I know I'm uninterested. So I'm stopping.
My overall opinion of the His Dark Materials trilogy: should probably have been a four book series, at least. It would have given Phillip Pullman enough time to fully develop the characters and better develop the storyline. I'm not saying I could do better, but... the story is choppy at best. I don't care about any of the characters. Only the first universe is really developed in any satisfactory way. I'm just done with it. Probably gonna reread me some Harry Potter... again.
Housekeeping
I did not get around to watching last week's selection of shows. I got home too late tonight to watch Arrow and due to spoiler-y trailers, I'm not watching Supernatural tonight. So... yeah... that stuff's not happening tonight, or it might be, I'm not sure yet.
Anyway... if all goes well, I should have up some reviews tomorrow. Maybe.
Love ya, Jessie. 
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