Review

I think when you get the near immortal people out saying shit like "Umm, age is like, just a number." you need to take a step back and reevaluate your position. So to be clear, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a 20 something and 30 something year old shacking up. I do, however, find it endlessly icky when that 30 something has known the younger person their whole life. That completely changes the situation! Just no. Every single time we talk about Lyra being a woman now was nasty and I hated it. Will Parry 4 Life. Malcolm can take a hike. He ain't nearly interesting enough to make me put up with this.

On the whole, the Book of Dust trilogy does not hold up to His Dark Materials. I've not read any of the other little additional books Pullman has put out, just the main ones in each series. But it's hard to follow up the big adventure series with a smaller more introspective one. So Book of Dust had its work cut out for it. I wasn't generally against the more mundane tone. I just felt that not enough ground was covered. Loved the setting, I was interested in seeing new places in Lyra's world and the mystery of what might be in the red building was a good hook. But I mostly felt that we didn't really do enough between Secret Commonwealth and Rose Field. I felt like there was another book's worth of content missing in the trilogy.

In particular, I think the ending couple chapters leaves a lot to be desired. I was shocked when I realized we were going into the red building and there was like 2 chapters left. Insane. There is not nearly enough runway in place to land this plane. Firstly, what even was the point of having this whole Magisterium army invading the East if they're just going to...blow themselves up? Also, that whole sequence feels really weird. I don't really understand what happened. They have the bomb in the building. The army gets blown away by it because...but the president, Pan, and Bonneville who were all also in the building are totally fine? How? I don't understand the physicality of what's happening. Maybe I accidentally skipped something. I use an ereader. But how did we all get there? The last I remember with Pan was him going ahead of Bonneville to get to the red building. But suddenly everyone is there at once? Very strange.

I didn't really understand what we were trying to go for in the first place with Olivier Bonneville. When would this tryst between his father and Mrs Colter have even taken place? She has one child out of wedlock and it's this big scandal. Now two? And with a totally separate man? It feels like an ass-pull, but I don't really know for what reason. What does him being Lyra's half-brother add? Also I guess fuck Mrs Coulter's motivations. She'll have actual character development and come to love Lyra and sacrifice herself to keep her safe. But fuck that other kid, I guess. And didn't Bonneville hate Lyra the whole time? So why the fuck in the end does he walk right up to her and act like all is cool now? Nothing has happened to precipitate that.

And what a sudden ending it is. I knew I was getting to it, but even then it still sort of surprised me as I was reading the last few sentences. Had a very "that's it?" feeling. I'm just sort of amazed how quite literally none of the plotlines have been wrapped up. And that we've gone back on the central takeaway from Amber Spyglass without pointing out what a big deal that is. Are the windows good or are they bad? Do they need to be closed to prevent Dust from leaking out or does them being open allow Dust to flow? Why were the angels, who said they were going to close all the windows, such a spectacular failure in doing their job? They've had a decade. Are they really that shit at it? There are seemingly more windows around now then there were before. Why does Lyra not immediately realize that, apparently, if the windows being open is not a big deal at all, and she has a mini Subtle Knife, she can see Will whenever she likes? That seems like something the character would have realized and would have mentioned. But no. And I have no idea why. If we were trying to set up Malcolm and Lyra (gross), why did we not go all the way? What was all that foreshadowing for? What was with the spangled ring? That was clearly going to be something, but no it was seemingly totally irrelevant. Why is Malcolm a perfect little Mary Stu? Can we please have some sort of interesting thing with him? He bores me to tears. Every time we went to him, I immediately wanted us to move away. Why did we even bother with the gryphons and the witches? They didn't end up doing anything except transport us around. Why did we kill Seraphina Pekkala off-screen if we were just going to replace her with her daughter? Why did we set up a whole big reunion between Lyra and Pan at the Blue Hotel at the end of book 2, making it super clear it's gonna happen at the beginning of book 3. Then we just...punt it off to the very end of book 3. What were the voices Lyra heard in those ruins anyway? We get no followup to that. Also by the end of the book Lyra is a wanted person and the pope has just been assassinated. Do we want to deal with the fallout of any of that? No...

Secret Commonwealth and Rose Field desperately needed to be one book. This trilogy could've been a duology. You got La Belle Sauvage as a prequel to HDM and whatever this combined book would be as a sequel. Nice little bookends. As it is, the latter two books in the Book of Dust trilogy are both way too long and full of plots that go nowhere. But also they don't extrapolate on any of the points that they actually need to and make me feel like there's a missing book somewhere.

Just no good. A waste, really. I like a good portion of the worldbuilding we get, and it's a breezy read. It's just not going to any higher purpose. I don't feel like we've come to any greater truths than we had been at by the end of Amber Spyglass. I personally did not grow up on these books. I read them later, I believe early in college. But they were enjoyable and I can easily see how much more I would have cared about the series if I had read them as a kid. But god, I can't imagine if I had grown up on these and had been looking forward to the Books of Dust stuff. What a disappointment.