Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it… We don’t need lists of rights
and wrongs, tables of do’s and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence.
‘Thou shalt not’ is soon forgotten,
but ‘Once upon a time’ lasts forever.
Philip Pullmann
The “Amber Spyglass” is the third and final novel in the “His Dark Material” series, written by Philip Pullman, and published in 2000. After “The Golden Compass” and “The Subtle Knife”, Pullman completes the trilogy with “the last great fantasy masterpiece of the twentieth century.” (The Cincinnati Enquirer), a story that involves fantasy elements such as witches and polar bears in armour, and touches on a broad range of topics such as physics, philosophy, theology and spirituality.
In concluding the spellbinding “His Dark Materials” trilogy, Pullman produces what may well be the most controversial children’s book of recent years. The witch Serafina Pekkala, quoting an angel, sums up the central theme: “All the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity. The rebel angels, the followers of wisdom, have always tried to open minds; the Authority and its churches have always tried to keep them closed.”
The cosmic battle to overthrow the Kingdom is only one of the many epic sequences in this novel: so much happens, and the action is split among so many different imagined worlds, that readers will have to work hard to keep up with Pullman. Along the way, Pullman plays on the elemental chords of classical myth and fairy tale. While some sections seem rushed and the prose is not always as brightly polished as fans might expect, Pullman’s exuberant work stays rigorously true to its own internal structure. Stirring and highly provocative. (Publishers Weekly)
“The first edition of The Amber Spyglass didn’t have any pictures in it, because there wasn’t time for me to do them. Instead I chose a little quotation to head each chapter: lines from Milton’s Paradise Lost, from William Blake, from Emily Dickinson, and from many other writers whose work I love. It was a way of acknowledging their influence. But for subsequent editions, I made sure I had time to do some pictures. I’m very glad that I was able to, because I enjoy drawing, and I think the ones I did for The Amber Spyglass are pretty good.”
Will: “Did you stop believing in good and evil?”
Mary: “No. But I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that’s an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.”