Phillip Pullman [Digest urth.v030.n091]

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

Thank you, John! This is so much better put than my messages. That's exactly how I felt; the last book collapsed into nonsense and he broke his own rules. I wish I hadn't brought up the anti-religious aspect of the books at all now. It really was a side issue. William Ansley