The first time I read The Amber Spyglass I felt that it was too long, had too many plot holes and was an unsatisfying end to the series. On my second reading I thought this even more so. At the end of the previous book Lyra gets kidnapped while Lord Asriel continues to build his army to fight God. The story picks up right from there and introduces even more unnecessary subplots. First off, the whole subplot about a scientist, Dr. Malone, that finds herself in a realm with intelligent creatures that use nuts as wheels goes on forever and is not important and kinda boring. Next, the book never explains how Asriel builds his giant fortress and forms a coalition of beings from different realms so quickly. He goes from not even knowing that these other places even exist to having a fortress and army in just weeks. The book never explains how he even gets between these different realms. Plus I'm not sure if he is supposed to be the good guy or the bad guy. His whole quest to defeat The Authority is never explained sufficiently. How does he even know about the existence and history of the Authority? It makes no sense. Plus after building up talk of this army for two books his story ends with him wrestling the Authority's Regent... Plus Pullman keeps introducing new ideas that don't go anywhere or add much to the story at all. He builds up a plot about an assassin that just fizzles out and some kind of magic bomb that is easily defeated. Plus after so carefully mapping out the geography of action in The Golden Compass, here he just doesn't pay attention to the geography and how the realms overlap in a way that is consistent. Plus for a book that is so anti-religious and the God of the book doesn't really have any power it never explains what it is that powers the aleithometer or exactly where Dust comes from. The only part I liked was when Lyra had to abandon her daemon Pan to enter the land of the dead. I'm glad I'm done with this one, The Amber Spyglass gets a C.
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