I'll chime in to agree with the Pullman consensus: the
third book fails to close the arc started in the first
two, and drops the ball thematically and practically.
(mild spoiler) A reviewer elsewhere [on the Bujold
list] spoke of "boinking to save the universe". I therefore
re-read that section closely, and it's not certain they did
"boink", but it's likely--and it just doesn't make sense,
given what went before, or how things were shown to work in
the multiverse he proposed.
(end spoiler)
I liked Golden_Compass enough to buy one of Pullman's
other novels, Ruby_in_the_Smoke, which turns out to have
all the same virtues and flaws as the "His Dark Materials"
triology in one volume: really good characters, a wonderfully
detailed portrayal of an imagined world (in this case 1878
London), an interesting situation--and a total collapse
into nonsense at the end, when the author can't seem to
figure out how to end the story without breaking his own
rules.
(*Serious spoiler for Ruby_in_the_Smoke)
The villian is Mrs Holland (a nasty old lady who runs a
lodging house in Wapping and a gang on the side, and who
I hoped would continue because she was such a wonderful,
clever, perceptive villian) confronts the heroine at the
climax of the book. When all is almost in her grasp, she
suddenly goes_mad and kills_herself in a couple of
paragraphs! This absurd action is completely unforshadowed,
no matter how convenient for the heroine it is.
(*end spoiler)
There were other things to boggle at, but that one truly
shocked me--how could an author so competent would let that
text even get written, let alone printed escapes me.
What a shame.
-John Bishop