The Amber Spyglass

infobox Book |
name = The Amber Spyglass
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = First edition cover
author = Philip Pullman
cover_artist = Philip Pullman & David Scutt
country = United Kingdom
language = English
series = His Dark Materials
genre = Fantasy novel
publisher = Scholastic Point
release_date = 2000
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 518 pp
isbn = ISBN 0-439-99358-X
preceded_by = The Subtle Knife
followed_by = Lyra's Oxford

"The Amber Spyglass" is the third and final novel in the "His Dark Materials" series, written by English author Philip Pullman, and published in 2000.

"The Amber Spyglass" won the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year award, a British literature award, making it the first children's novel to receive the honorcite news |first= Fiachra|last= Gibbons|title= Epic children's book takes Whitbread|url= http://books.guardian.co.uk/whitbread2001/story/0,,637850,00.html|work= The Guardian|publisher= Guardian Unlimited|date= January 23, 2002|accessdate=2007-04-05 ] . It was named Children's Book of the Year at the 2001 British Book Awards, and was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, again the first time this had happened to a children's bookcite news|url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2002/01/23/bowhit23.xml|title=Children's book scoops £30,000 Whitbread prize |date=23 January 2002|work=Daily Telegraph|accessdate=2008-10-09] .

Plot summary

Lyra has been kidnapped by her mother, Marisa Coulter, and relocated to a remote cave, where her mother has hidden her from the Magisterium, which has become determined to kill her before she yields to original sin as she is destined to do. Marisa forces Lyra to drink a cup of tea with crushed drugs in them and she does - and then passes out. 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, whereupon Will cuts a window into another world to escape.

Back in the cave, Marisa washes Lyra's arms, neck and shoulders before forcing another - drugged - cup of tea down her. When Lyra's arm knocks the drink and nearly spills it, Marisa hits out, slapping her daughter across the face, gripping her hair tightly and forcing the drugged drink down her throat.

Lord Asriel sends 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 own world (assumed to be the readers' world) into Cittàgazze, eventually goes through another window into a stranger world. She there 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 becoming so so for 300 years. Mary, to further understand this problem, constructs a telescope out of sap lacquer (the 'amber spyglass' of the title) that allows her to see the elementary particles known as Dust, which adheres to all life-forms who have attained a level of intelligence associated with the building of civilization. She sees that the Dust 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). After challenging the bear to single combat to stop a raid on a nearby village, Will demonstrates the Knife on Iorek's armor; Iorek, seeing his helmet reduced to slivers in moments, begs defeat. After a moment of mutual introduction, 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, where 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, having been unable to sever his affection. Because the window he has cut is open, Will, Lyra, and the Gallivespian spies manage to escape to another world.

Lord Asriel's forces kidnap 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 Asriel.

Iorek Byrnison, despite his reluctance to mend something as perilous, repairs the subtle knife. Will, Lyra, Tialys, and Salmakia later enter the world of the dead, leaving their dæmons behind. It is shown here that although Will, Salmakia, and Tialys do not have corporal dæmons like that of Lyra, they do possess a synonym of this. 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 into a dark, joyless realm wherein many worlds' dead are tormented by harpies. Lyra finds Roger in the crowd of ghosts. Will and the Gallivespians decide that the ghosts must be freed from this world, which Will has been led to think as a prison camp; therefore they travel 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.

Asriel and Marisa talk, revealing that Asriel believes 'sin' to be simply the enjoyment of life, which would be quelled by the Church's desire for purity. Therefore Asriel has appointed himself to form an army from all over the worlds and conquer the Authority, who is Christianity's God and represents, in Asriel's mind, all the oppression that the Christian Church has caused.

The final battle begins. John Parry and Lee Scoresby, rather than dissolve, remain intact when they leave the world of the dead and join Lord Asriel's army to fight the Spectres, who are wraithlike creatures that devour the souls of adult beings in various worlds.

Mrs. Coulter enters the Clouded Mountain, citadel of the Authority, where she meets his Regent Metatron. To him, she offers Asriel's life, hoping that he will destroy himself taking it. When Asriel arrives, she confesses her scheme to him, whereupon he attacks Metatron. All three fall into an 'Abyss' and cease to exist. Here, Mrs. Coulter's trick resembles that used by Lyra to defeat the renegade bear Iofur Raknison. The Authority himself dies of his own frailty when Will and Lyra free him from the crystal prison wherein Metatron has trapped him, able to do so because an attack by cliff-ghasts kills or drives away the prison's protectors.

Lyra and Will, having left the land of the dead, enter the world of the "mulefa", where they encounter Mary and the witch Serafina Pekkala, who has come from Lyra's world. Here, too, they reunite with their dæmons, who have assumed the forms of a marten and a cat, and fall in love with one another. To their dismay, Serafina Pekkala reveals that all the openings between worlds, with the sole exception of the opening leading from the world of the dead to that of the "mulefa", must be closed, on the accounts that each opening allows Dust to escape into oblivion, whereas the creation of new openings generate the Spectres. Thus, it is decided that Lyra and Will must return to their home worlds, being unable to remain together as a result of their inability to survive more than ten years in any world but their own. The two protagonists, therefore, make an emotional farewell, promising to come each year to a place in each world that corresponds to one in the other and be together in this way.

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, who remains his friend. During the return, Mary learns how to see her own daemon, who takes the form of a black Alpine chough.

ee also

*2000 in literature
*His Dark Materials
*The bench at the University of Oxford Botanic Garden featured late in the novel.

Footnotes

References

*cite book | last=Lenz | first=Millicent | year=2005 | title=His Dark Materials Illuminated: Critical Essays on Phillip Pullman's Trilogy | publisher=Wayne State University Press | id=ISBN 0-8143-3207-2
*cite book | last=Frost | first=Laurie | year=2006 | title=The Elements of His Dark Materials | publisher=The Fell Press

External links

* [http://www.bridgetothestars.net BridgeToTheStars.net]
* [http://www.hisdarkmaterials.org HisDarkMaterials.org]
* [http://homepage.mac.com/mhcole/misc/AS_timeline.jpgGraphical timeline (unofficial)]
*ISBN 0-345-41337-7 (American paperback edition)