From the very start of its very first scene, The Amber glass
will set hearts fluttering and minds racing. All we'll say here
is that we immediately discover who captured Lyra at the end of
The Subtle , though we've yet to discern whether this
individual's intent is good, evil, or somewhere in between. We
also learn that Will still possesses the blade that allows him
to cut between worlds, and has been joined by two winged
companions who are determined to escort him to Lord Asriel's
ain redoubt. The boy, however, has only one goal in
mind--to rescue his friend and return to her the alethiometer,
an instrument that has revealed so much to her and to readers of
The Golden Compass and its follow-up. Within a short time, too,
we get to experience the "tingle of the starlight" on Serafina
Pekkala's skin as she seeks out a famished Iorek Byrnison and
enlists him in Lord Asriel's crusade:
A complex web of thoughts was weaving itself in the bear king's
mind, with more strands in it than hunger and satisfaction.
There was the memory of the little girl Lyra, whom he had named
Silvertongue, and whom he had last seen crossing the fragile
snow bridge across a crevasse in his own island of Svalbard. Then
there was the agitation among the witches, the rumors of pacts
and alliances and war; and then there was the surpassingly
strange fact of this new world itself, and the witch's
insistence that there were many more such worlds, and that the
e of them all hung somehow on the e of the child.
Meanwhile, two factions of the Church are vying to reach Lyra
first. One is even prepared to give a priest "preemptive
absolution" should he succeed in committing mortal sin. For
these tyrants, killing this girl is no less than "a sacred
task." In the final installment of his trilogy, Philip Pullman
has set himself the highest hurdles. He must match its
predecessors in terms of sheer action and originality and
resolve the enigmas he already created. The good news is that
there is no critical bad news--not that The Amber glass
doesn't contain standoffs and close calls galore. (Who would
have it otherwise?) But Pullman brings his audacious revision of
Paradise Lost to a conclusion that is both serene and
devastating. In prose that is transparent yet lyrical and 3-D,
the author weaves in and out of his principals' thoughts. He also
offers up several additional worlds. In one, Dr. Mary Malone is
welcomed into an apparently simple society. The environment of
the mulefa (again, we'll reveal nothing more) makes them rich in
consciousness while their lives possess a slow and stately
rhythm. These strange creatures can, however, be very fast on
their feet (or on other things entirely) when necessary. Alas,
they are on the verge of dying as Dust streams out of their
idyllic landscape. Will the Oxford dark-matter researcher see
her way to saving them, or does this require our young heroes?
And while Mary is puzzling out a cure, Will and Lyra undertake a
pilgrimage to a realm devoid of all light and hope, after having
been forced into the cruelest of sacrifices--or betrayals.
Throughout his galvanizing epic, Pullman sustains scenes of
fierce beauty and tenderness. He also allows us a moment or two
of comic respite. At one point, for instance, Lyra's mother
bullies a series of ecclesiastical underlings: "The man bowed
helplessly and led her away. The guard behind her blew out his
cheeks with ." Needless to say, Mrs. Coulter is as
intoxicating and fluid as ever. And can it be that we will come
to admire her as she plays out her desperate endgame? In this
respect, as in many others, The Amber glass is truly a book
of revelations, moving from darkness visible to radiant truth.
--Kerry Fried