THE AMBER SPYGLASS

'''The Amber Spyglass''' is the third and final novel in the ''His Dark Materials'' series, written by British novelist Philip Pullman, and published in 2000.
The Amber Spyglass won the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year award, a prestigious British literature award.^[1]
''The Amber Spyglass'' deals most strongly with religious and metaphysical ideas, depicting the foreshadowed re-enactment of Milton's ''Paradise Lost'',^[2] and finally elaborating upon the nature of Dust.

Contents

Plot summary

See also

Further reading

References

External links

Plot summary

Lyra has been taken by her mother, Marisa Coulter, to a remote cave in the Himalayas of their own world, where she is kept in a drugged sleep. In this state, Lyra dreams that she is in a wasteland talking to her dead friend Roger, whom she promises to help.
In Cittàgazze, a pair of angels named Balthamos and Baruch tell Will that they have come to take him, the bearer of the subtle knife, to Lord Asriel. Will refuses to go until Lyra is rescued, to which the two assent. Will and the angels are attacked by a soldier of the archangel Metatron, the Authority's Regent. Will cuts a window into another world to escape.
A sect of the Magisterium called the Consistorial Court of Discipline learns where Lyra, considered the next Eve, is being held. They send out a small army to capture and kill her. They also know that a woman, Mary Malone, is fated to play the role of the serpent, tempting Lyra; therefore they send a priest named Father Gomez to follow Mary and subsequently kill Lyra.
Lord Asriel sends out a small army to Lyra's cave, to counteract the zeppelins from the Consistorial Court. He also sends two Gallivespian spies, the Chevalier Tialys and the Lady Salmakia, to protect Lyra. Gallivespians resemble humans, but are approximately four inches tall.
Mary Malone, who has stepped through a window from the reader's world into Cittàgazze, eventually goes through another window into a stranger world. She finds a group of elephantine creatures who call themselves mulefa and travel by attaching round seedpods to their feet and using them as wheels. These creatures have a complex culture, intricate language and an infectious laugh; as a result, Mary begins to think of them as people. Eventually, Mary is absorbed into ''mulefa'' community, where she learns that the trees from which the seedpods are gathered are becoming extinct, and have been so for 300 years. Mary, to further understand this problem constructs a telescope out of sap lacquer that allows her to see Dust. It seems to be flying off into the distance in large streams, rather than falling downward and nourishing the trees on which the ''mulefa'' mutually depend.
Will meets Iorek Byrnison, the king of the armored Panserbjørnes, whose people are migrating south to avoid the Arctic melt caused by global warming. Iorek agrees to help rescue Lyra. Here, global warming is associated with similar disasters taking place throughout many worlds as a result of the upheavals regarding Dust.
Three forces--Will, Iorek, and Balthamos; Lord Asriel's army; and the Church's army--converge on Mrs. Coulter's cave. Will is able to wake Lyra. He is cutting a window into another world when Mrs. Coulter turns and looks directly at him. For a moment, Will is reminded of his own mother. His concentration falters, and the knife shatters. Because the window he has cut is open, Will, Lyra, and the Gallivespian spies manage to escape to another world.
Lord Asriel's forces capture Mrs. Coulter, who escapes and flies off to tell the Consistorial Court everything she knows, and then to spy for them. The Consistorial Court of Discipline arrests Mrs. Coulter; therefore she allies herself with Roke and Asriel. This side of the war wants to preserve Dust, not destroy it; they see the Church as trying to take all enjoyment out of life by categorizing as "sin" that which is is not evil.
Iorek Byrnison repairs the subtle knife. Will, Lyra, Tialys and Salmakia enter the world of the dead, leaving their dæmons (worldly identities) behind. Lyra finds Roger in the crowd of ghosts. Will and the Gallivespians decide that the ghosts must be freed from this world, which Will considers a prison camp; therefore they decide to go to the highest point in the land of the dead, where Will cuts a door into another world. At this, the ghosts step through and dissolve into nature.
The final battle begins. John Parry and Lee Scoresby hold themselves together when they leave the world of the dead and join Lord Asriel's army to fight the spectres.
Mrs. Coulter enters the Clouded Mountain, citadel of the Authority, where she meets the Regent Metatron. Mrs. Coulter manipulates Metatron by offering him Lord Asriel's life. This is similar to the means by which Lyra had tricked Iofur Raknison, Iorek's rival for kingship of the bears; in that Lyra had used Iofur's desire to become human to trick him, much as her mother uses Metatron's desire to experience sensual pleasure to confuse him. Mrs. Coulter betrays Metatron to Lord Asriel, on the grounds that Lyra is precious to both of them. All three tumble into an abyss.
Will and Lyra enter the world of the ''mulefa''. They grab their dæmons immediately before doing so; but the dæmons run off again.
Lyra and Will's dæmons return and tell them that all the windows between the worlds must be closed, as Dust is leaking out of them all the time. Furthermore, every time a window is made, a Spectre is created; therefore the knife must be destroyed altogether. The angels will allow one window to remain open: the one leading out of the land of the dead. Because Will and Lyra have fallen in true love with each other upon the onset of puberty, and because they cannot live together, this information deeply saddens them.
Lyra returns to Jordan College, where she had lived for many years. Because she can no longer read the alethiometer, having lost the subconscious innocence that enabled her to read it by instinct, she decides to study alethiometry at a special school. Hereinafter, she and daemon Pantalaimon will follow John Parry's suggestion to build the idealized Republic of Heaven where they are. Will, too, returns to his world.

See also

★ 2000 in literature

★ His Dark Materials

Further reading

★ His Dark Materials Illuminated: Critical Essays on Phillip Pullman's Trilogy, , Millicent, Lenz, Wayne State University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-8143-3207-2

★ The Elements of His Dark Materials, , Laurie, Frost, The Fell Press, 2006,

References

1. Epic children's book takes Whitbread Fiachra Gibbons
2. Frequently Asked Questions

External links

★ His Dark Materials | BridgeToTheStars.Net

★ HisDarkMaterials.org

★ Graphical timeline (unofficial)

★ ISBN 0-345-41337-7 (American paperback edition)