2008-05-17 Goes out with a whimper

Northern Lights is brilliant in almost every respect; fast-moving, well-written, imaginative. The Subtle Knife is almost as good, but begins to be diffuse. The Amber Spyglass is, frankly, rubbish. In order to understand what is going on here, you have to have read an obscure essay by a second-rank German author (Heinrich v. Kleist) that Pullman is always going on about. By a logic that defeats me, it concludes that a re-temptation of Eve will undo the disaster that came from the first temptation. Hence Lyra (she's the new Eve, we're told) goes all tingly when she's kissed (only kissed, mind you). This saves the world (don't ask me how). Pullman's cosmogony/theology is even wackier than the Christian version to which he's so hostile. Nor does The Amber Spyglass have a very tight plot -- is the realm of the dead another parallel universe, or what? The Father Gomez episode is totally gratuitous church-baiting, and should have been edited out (along with a few other repetitious bits). It is fairly obvious that Pullman had no idea how to end this trilogy, which accounts for the long delay in publication between parts 2 and 3. But the ending, when it comes, is possibly the most banal I have ever read. One might have thought that having opened the gates of hell, having quite literally witnessed the death of God (and incidentally having saved humankind with a kiss) Lyra and Will deserved some sort of apotheosis. But the ending is like the ending to a children's party: right now kiddies, pack up your things, time to go home.