I really enjoyed this series; I enjoyed the protagonists and all the side characters, I enjoyed the various explanations of magic we got while we and the children explored the world, and I enjoyed the overall themes explored in the ending. The Black Reckoning is like what I expected The Amber Spyglass to be, but it met a lot of my expectations. It’s sad that things ended in such a bittersweet way, that Jake and Beetles were old wizards and everyone the kids saved at Cambridge Falls the first time are grown, Pym, Raife, and Gabriel are dead and the Wibberlys’ will always be welcomed back into magical territory, but it’s time for life to go on. I wish at least Gabriel got to live or we got more closure with Claire and Richard before saying goodbye. I was shocked about how Will killed Walter, but the dwarves feel so unserious that it wore off after long.

The final chapter almost coaxed a tear out of me. Each of them grows in the course of the series but also loses so much. Michael, Wilhelmina— Kate, Raife— and Emma, Gabriel. The central theme keeps coming back to love and that old saying “it’s better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all” There was a lot of joy to be found in this book despite all the traumas these fourteen, thirteen, and twelve year olds face, without being too full of itself and its message. It’s sad, but its enough to know that their loved one’s love for others will save their souls in the next world. I do wish that the last chapter was maybe ten pages longer and included a mirror of the scene we started with, with the family together although not about to be torn apart by Dr. Pym.