As much as I would like to snark on this book and Philip Pullman, I have to go with my feelings after finishing the last page of the series. I give 4 stars to the series in general and probably 3.5 for the book. So much happens in this book that it's hard to keep track of and get into, but I think by the end Pullman FINALLY draws us in...in a very sentimental, it's-kind-of-embarrassing-to-read kind of way.

At the end of it all I can't say that his project was a failure--I completely appreciate his endeavor, but I am a bit disappointed, and I can't decide if it's the kind of disappointment that comes with finishing any book or project that you have an emotional investment in, or if it's a real trufax-this-should-have-been-better kind of disappointment. I'm going to go with the former, because while it's easy as a reader to criticize the pacing or the narration or what-have-you, the fact is that Philip Pullman took on this enormous project that I completely appreciate and I believe that the world is a better place because he made this trilogy, and it's hard to demand that he have made this series with impeccable narration, deeper characters, better pacing, etc., etc., AND all in the span of three books. Maybe he could have expanded it across an extra two or three books, maybe such an undertaking would have been too much for him.

That said, I'm going to go ahead and snark on his comparing Lyra's "awakening" to a house. I mean, the last two books almost exclusively followed around this boy with this magical phallic weapon (which, I admit, I am sorely disappointed in after being introduced to the wonderful female protagonist Lyra), and while I can try to suspend my feminist lens, the house-thing was just too much. I definitely LOL'd.