Big Warning: I may not use cuss words or such to express my rant over this last book of the trilogy, ‘The Amber Spyglass’, but I am taking this one down really bad with my own personal biases. Skip this one for your own sake if you can’t stand some girl talking about Biblical references and complaining how much she really dislikes the author’s writing. And if you’re his biggest fan, STAY AWAY so you won’t have to endure my repetitive, all over the place unreview of this book.
Hey.
I just would like everyone to know that this book, in my view, obviously stinks to high hell. It reeked some sort of social propaganda in the guise of entertainment. I once heard N.T. Wright said about this book being ‘clever’, as in, sly smart. I disagree. I thought this was the most insultingly naive story I’ve ever read in a children’s book. Or any book I’ve ever read in my life for that matter. For those who haven’t caught on with my previous posts on this trilogy, I have to inform you straight how this is not a book review, so obviously it’s got my biases all over this one. Well, rants are like that, right?
Anyway, at this point in my reading journey, I was exasperated and exhausted. This one had too many sub-plots too many characters – and whoa! Lots of new characters galore! Who most, in my honest opinion, don’t even serve much in the story. It doesn’t make it so epically thrilling.It’s as if, the author has run out of original ideas and just, again, mimicked Milton’s Paradise Lost for the framework of the story. And so, I even don’t remember much of the plot. Only in its latter part of this…oh wait! I vaguely remember that this was the thickest book of that trilogy, and it’s even divided into, well, parts! Yeah, stories within stories. This shouldn’t have been a trilogy, if he was going to even present multiples of point-of-views – especially when you can’t tell it properly. Kind of reminds me of that overrated ‘Inkheart’, except that that one didn’t have any interesting characters at all. I’ll probably get to that next time.
From what I can recall from this messy narrative in the beginning chapter was that Lyra had been kidnapped by her awful mother, you guess it – Ms. Coulter. Yeah, I never empathized with this character. No, not because she’s so flawed. She was just so one-noted it’s annoying. She embodied everything of a predictable femme fatale archetype. Darn those annoying character tropes! At one point, suddenly, she became very protective over her daughter. Since when had she even cared? She even almost got her killed in the first book. Is this character just confused over her motives? Blame the author for it. Again, she was already evil and so one-noted it’s not in any way ‘clever’ , ‘poignant’ or ‘mysterious’. Just flat-out irritating. Even a little cartoonish in her villainy- well this is a fictional fantasy story, right? Still, this character shouldn’t be clumsily thought out. It makes me not care about it at all. Be it anger, pain, happiness or sadness. Just irritation I guess- but perhaps not what this author intended it to be.
It didn’t help that Lyra’s character at this point, was just dying in my eyes. Like where is the Lyra that I even liked at all in the first one? Suddenly, she turned bland, weak, needy and a cry baby! Good thing her animal companion hadn’t been compromised. He was one of the only few characters in this whole story that was tolerable. I couldn’t even care less about the ‘uncle’ (I refuse to even acknowledge his real name), so I skipped a lot of his ‘monologues’ or parts where it focuses too much on him. Sheesh. He’s also another main ‘star’ of this book, it isn’t funny. But the way he and his ex-lover died was actually funny. No, dying isn’t funny, but the way these characters died reminded me of many unintentional funny scenes I’d seen in some dead serious movies. I can’t recall any of them, sadly. They kissed and they both fell into that abyss after supposedly defeating tyrannical Enoch character (yeah, like making him anti-thetical to the real person in these ancient documents was really amusing indeed). Oh wait, here goes the anti-theistic smugness again.
Yes, killing God was the ultimate wish for this author. He must be so triumphant that it’s got the skin and nerve of a lot of Christians – like me. Well done, Mr. Angry Author. I know that you are disillusioned about the faith, and so you want your vengeance for what you thought raped your childhood and mind, generally. Seriously? I don’t even remember some Christian author ever presenting non-believers in the most demonizing way. Such as that Tash worshipper in ‘The Last Battle’. It was even evil and Satanic persona that are generally being the ones getting condemning treatments. Like Sauron and Tash itself. Or those dwarfs who started killing those poor horses. And the author didn’t even generalise that all dwarfs even were against the King of Narnia and Aslan. Like how the church, priests and well, all familiar names from the Bible have been treated by this obviously bitter author. They were all just either pathetic bad or cartoonishly bad. Not one of them was ever empathetic. And believe it or not, so were most of the characters in this story.
I felt that this book had more to do with aiming to get the concept of the story done rather than having characters shape the narrative. Hence the treatment of Lyra and most of the others who I should have cared much if it wasn’t for their awful, pretentious and weak-layered characterizations. See? I’m more whinging about the character build-up rather than for its plot. That was how forgettable it was. The only parts I could still remember were, hello, Will Parry’s. Yes, if I have to give some credit to the author, it would be this character. I actually think (and I know that this is a reason fan girls go crazy for the story) that this is what drove me to finish this clunky, naive and insulting book. If it wasn’t Will and if the author had immediately killed him off, I would have instantly shut this book and never again would I have thought about it for a long time. If there is a reason to care in this story, it was my admirable Will Parry. Ooops. I just sounded like a terrible squealing fan girl. Not good. tsk. tsk. But this is, I admit, how much I really like this character so much. He was the only all-rounded human even ever told about in it. The most relatable and sadly the only one who actually looked at people around him as though they, too, were just like him. Is this what the author was trying to do to me? To actually make me care about the whole story, because he made this one character who everybody who’s read it actually so likable? I felt sort-of betrayed in a way when I thought about my liking for Will this much.
He is the poster child of all my childhood guilty pleasures. If this character was just a jerk and a wannabe hero like er um ‘uncle’, I would have hated him so much. But reading through all his thoughts, all he wanted was the best for his only good friend Lyra. Aw…But that didn’t make me completely sold out to him. Especially when he just tagged along with the rest of the ‘heroes’ who sided against all those real bad bad evil rah rah enemies. Yes, the, ahem, the Catholic church in this story. Wait, wasn’t the author raised as an Anglican? I thought that they’re not even loyal to the Pope anymore, eh? But then again, this is how he saw my faith with soooo much narrow-mindedness. And then equating these sets of characters into one despicable thing for the author – authority.
Yes, that stupid authority. Anything authoritative is evil. Can I say the same for the author who’s been playing God in this story? Bahaha! Yes, I’ve been duped this long! So, again, being so sly and cunning (NOT), he painted it this way. And what about the crazy portrayal of Enoch, angels and God here? Yeah, they were just hacked up, character-wise. There are things I’ve noted with these religious figures in this darn awful story: 1) Enoch is some self-righteous hypocrite who was some tyrant who actually was the one controlling evil things in the world 2) the angels have genders? Even Jesus said of them that we (those who want to be with Him) would not get married anymore and be just like spirits. No gender. Laughable, author, and nice try at making them saintly because they’re even confused over their sexuality 3) Finally it’s God who’s been made fun of in here, making him another angel who’s so cowardly and all terrified that when He was out of that stupid box He immediately got pulverized. Nice, author, but this didn’t sound like God at all. It’s perhaps the author here who’s been playing the ‘authority’ all along. After all, he’s the ‘author’ of this one right? Yeah, I just sound repetitive already. Again, you should expect that this is how my stream of thoughts can go when I’m very emotional about it.
So, God here and those who sided with Him have been destroyed. Hmmm, I wonder why God still made this author spout off his own non-sense about Him if He really were that awfully evil? Aw, you know, humans, we’re not known for our ability to go out of our way and love everybody unconditionally. It is God who is still feeding this man, and it is also God who keeps both the good and the bad as a testament of His real nature. Too bad this author entirely missed this one. And why I found this whole saga just naive and dumb. And it was why I was insulted. Because it was naive and dumb. Full Stop.
As for Lyra and Will, they were made out to be like Adam and Eve in this story. When will the ignorance ever stop? Has this author ever even studied Middle-Eastern, especially ancient Jewish history and philosophy? Does he even know the role covenant theology plays in the faith of this people and mine? Actually, does he even care? And so goes the smug ignorance. And the spyglass of the story! How can I forget that! This was even the title of this ignorant tale of spiritual confusion. Yeah, I forgot what this thing even served as. Just another plot device to cheat on readers to cover up for the thin plot. And what about the knife and compass? Well, in the end, they just stopped working, because it was all the power of love that has destroyed them when Lyra and Will fulfilled the prophecies of the witches. Yawn. End of story. Overall, its only saving grace was Will so I guess it wasn’t entirely boring. Oh and I forgot that he even found his own animal companion in the other world. A cat, mind you. I like cats. I like Will.
So, again, end of this tedious tale.
The Orange Way 