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The Amber Spyglass
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 First edition cover |
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| Author | Philip Pullman |
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| Cover artist | Philip Pullman & David Scutt |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | His Dark Materials |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy novel |
| Publisher | Scholastic Point |
| Publication date | November 14, 2001 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 518 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-439-99358-X |
| Preceded by | The Subtle Knife |
The Amber Spyglass is the third and final novel in the His Dark Materials series, written by British author Philip Pullman, and published in 2000.
The Amber Spyglass won the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year award, a prestigious British literature award.[1]
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The plot summary in this article is too long compared to the rest of the article. Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot. |
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. One of the most controversial elements of the story is the demise of the Authority, which some readers have imagined meant to portray god as worshipped in today's dominant monotheistic religions. Not only is the Supreme Being unmasked as a decrepit and immoral fraud, but his passing is all the more ignominious as its value in the storytelling is barely a minor footnote. Senile and invalid, his being is dissipated by the wind, after his furtively fleeing litter crashes after being upended by a mindless cliff ghast. The book's two main protagonists, Lyra and Will, are present and take pity on the frail looking being, but do not recognize him.
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 drugged sleep. In this state, Lyra dreams that she is in a wasteland (later realized as the land of the dead) 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.
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 her and Will's own world (much like the readers') 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 her equals. 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 armoured Panserbjørne, whose people are migrating south to avoid the Arctic melt caused by the effects of Lord Asriel's bridge (created at the end of the first book). 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; as a result, 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. 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, for they see the Church as trying to take all the joy out of life by categorizing it as "sin".
Iorek Byrnison repairs the subtle knife. Will, Lyra, Tialys and Salmakia enter the world of the dead, leaving their dæmons (worldly identities) behind. The manner of their entry reflects Greek mythology in its use of an aged boatman (not named in the novel, but presumably Charon) to ferry the dead across a river. 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, their ghosts destined to continue to fall for eternity.
Will and Lyra enter the world of the mulefa. They grab their dæmons immediately before doing so; the dæmons run off again.
Lyra and Will's dæmons return after meeting with the witch Serafina Pekkala 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, and because they cannot live together (for the reason being permanently out of one's own world causes sickness and death within a little over ten years), this information deeply saddens them. However, they both agree that one day a year, on Midsummer's Day, each of them will sit on a bench that corresponds to one like it in the other's world; thus putting them in the same place. They do so, for the rest of their lives.
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 dæmon Pantalaimon will follow John Parry's suggestion to build the idealised Republic of Heaven at home. Will, too, returns to his world, accompanied by Mary Malone, and knows that he has a true friend who will understand the whole ordeal.
- 2000 in literature
- His Dark Materials
- The bench at the University of Oxford Botanic Garden featured late in the novel.
- ^ Gibbons, Fiachra. "Epic children's book takes Whitbread", The Guardian, Guardian Unlimited, January 23, 2002. Retrieved on 2007-04-05.
- ^ Frequently Asked Questions. BridgeToTheStars.net. Retrieved on 2007-04-26.
- Lenz, Millicent (2005). His Dark Materials Illuminated: Critical Essays on Phillip Pullman's Trilogy. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0-8143-3207-2.
- Frost, Laurie (2006). The Elements of His Dark Materials. The Fell Press.
- His Dark Materials | BridgeToTheStars.Net
- HisDarkMaterials.org
- Graphical timeline (unofficial)
- ISBN 0-345-41337-7 (American paperback edition)
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| Books | Northern Lights/The Golden Compass · The Subtle Knife · The Amber Spyglass Lyra's Oxford · Once Upon a Time in the North · The Book of Dust |
| Films | The Golden Compass |
| Games | The Golden Compass |
| Characters | Lyra Belacqua · Will Parry · Lord Asriel · Marisa Coulter · List of characters |
| Locations | Jordan College, Oxford |
| Other | Races and creatures · Dæmons · Dust · Intercision · Objects · The Republic of Heaven · Terminology |