Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This trilogy was one of the most annoying works I have ever read. (And I have read a lot - I'm a retired English Lit teacher and adjunct professor.) The cosmology of this story is not only deeply, deeply flawed, it is inconsistent, ill-conceived and poorly conveyed. I felt that I was waiting in suspense for a overarching explanation that would clarify how it was that good was evil and evil was actually good, but I was left instead with a confused collection of twisted scenes from Paradise Lost that was obviously written by an author with a hatred of the Church and disdain for Christianity as a whole. I have read that Pullman considers himself an atheist, yet this is not the work of an atheist. Consider that the books require a cosmology that includes a God (the Authority,) His angels, and fallen (Rebel) angels. A true atheist isn't against God - that acknowledges God's existence. An atheist does not believe in a spiritual world at all. Pullman writes well at times, but many characters are flat and evoke little interest. His novum of visible animal souls is a creative stroke of genius - and I think a strong contender for why so many people are enamoured of the books. Pullman is, in the end, unable to pull it all together to create a world where there is a moral structure that works. He manipulates the forms well, brilliantly at times, but left me with a distinct empty feeling, and one of disatisfaction. These books are not for children, and I would question the appropriateness of providing them to children without some sort of guidance - again, these are not godless - as the Harry Potter novels have been acused of - these are books in which God is killed. Pullman is an artist, but his art is used to twist things so far that even his best efforts are incapable of connecting them again, and so this trilogy falls as flat as a Saturday morning cartoon that readily reveals that it's true goal is simply to sell toys to children, not to tell a story. Only Pullman isn't just selling harmless toys.