This book was a good attempt at rounding off a trilogy. After the second book, anything would have been great in comparison. Luckily book three had enough to be good in its own right.
The world of the mulefa was so
fascinating. The author did an amazing job in bringing that to life. Everything about the mulefa was
stunning. Their looks, their way of life, their language: simply perfection.
Good Writing
The very first paragraph was pure
perfection. It was far more interesting than all of book 2 combined.
But
this book continued to pull literacy brilliance from the bag. There are too
many to list them all. For example, the harpies called Lyra ‘liar’ so they
began to sound the same: if there ever was an appropriate name for a character,
it is this.
Again
with the harpies, their ‘shrieks hang in the air and stung like jellyfish’.
The one
time when Pan is in stoat colours rather than their winter form (ermine, which
is white), he gets scared enough to turn white. This in itself was good but it
was described as ‘fog-pearled hair’.
My final
note in this section isn’t a description as such. Asriel called Lyra
‘impulsive, dishonest, greedy’. Mrs Coulter counters this by called Lyra
‘[b]rave, generous, loving.’ This simple exchange displays their different
worldviews with both detail and succinctness.
Grammar
As clear from all my critiques,
grammar, and particularly punctuation, grabs my attention. Unfortunately, it’s
hardly ever good news.
The author
writes ‘h’mm’. Without doubt, ‘hmm’ without the apostrophe would be better
because what exactly are you abbreviating.
As
in book one (but not book two), ‘he’ is used instead of ‘He’ for God. This
shows a stunning lack of consistency within an omnibus.
Of
Mary Malone, she wonders how to label the mulefa she’s bonded with. ‘She settle
for – friend.’ This is truly awful sentence structure. Ellipses would have been
far more appropriate.
In
book three, the author has a habit of writing a piece of information and then
repeating it almost instantly. Eleven lines after the first time, she again
says that the creatures’ speed terrifies her, yet pretends as if this is new
information. Within half a page of prose, he twice mentions that they have no
idea how long redoing the knife took. That’s too short amount of time to need
reminding. Also, far more important information is never repeated so this can’t
be brushed away as establishing vital information in the readers’ brains.
Lyra’s Character
Lyra’s always come up with daft
conclusions. The fact she continues this in book three shows consistency.
When
Lyra has to leave Pan behind, this is apparently the betrayal that the Master
of Jordan College spoke about. But Lyra isn’t leaving Pan forever. Plus Pan
agreed that Lyra needed to do this. How is it betraying someone to do what they
agreed?
Whilst
Lyra might view this as a betrayal, no one else could. For Lyra to do her job,
the Master was told to not tell this information to Lyra. So if it’s something
that only Lyra would think is a betrayal, but Lyra would never told about it,
why would the Master be told that Lyra would betray someone.
But some of Lyra’s actions don’t fit
the character. Lyra sobbing when she left Mrs Coulter, for example.
Lyra’s
infatuation keeps on building and it annoys me so much. Not because the lead
female/male characters get together (because I think that was the right call)
but because it makes an independent character completely dependent on another.
Lyra is too rebellious for this.
Since book
two, this growing dependence has been essential for Lyra’s behaviour and the
plot-at-large. Yet as it doesn’t fit the character, it makes the plot crumble
under its own weight.
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