The Amber Spyglass Book Review: The Ending That Made Me Cry for a Week

Luke Stoffel
Apr 21
3 min read

Rating: ★★★★★

Boy, Refracted by Luke Stoffel - Book Review

"The Amber Spyglass" Book Review:

The Amber Spyglass is the book where Philip Pullman finished building his cathedral and then knocked it down. This is a children's novel about the death of God, the liberation of the dead, the nature of consciousness, and two children who fall in love and must be separated forever. It should collapse under the weight of its own ambition. It doesn't. It soars.

Lyra has been drugged and hidden in a cave by Mrs. Coulter, who is simultaneously protecting her daughter and betraying everyone. Will finds her. They journey to the land of the dead — an actual, physical underworld — to free the ghosts who are trapped there. Roger is there. Every person who ever died is there, and Pullman writes the dead with such specific, heartbreaking detail that the underworld sequences become some of the most moving passages in the entire trilogy.

Lord Asriel wages war against the Authority — the first angel, who claimed to be God but is actually an ancient, feeble being kept alive in a crystal litter. Metatron, the Regent, is the real power, and Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel sacrifice themselves to drag him into the abyss. Pullman kills both of Lyra's parents in a single act of mutual destruction that is simultaneously redemptive and devastating.

And then the ending. Lyra and Will love each other. They cannot stay together. Every window between worlds must be closed, because each opening leaks Dust — consciousness itself — and if they stay together, the multiverse will die. They sit on a bench in the Oxford Botanic Garden, in their separate worlds, and they agree to come back to that bench every year. It is the most painful, most beautiful, most earned ending I have ever read.

This won the Whitbread Book of the Year — the first children's book ever to win that award. And it earned it by refusing to treat children's literature as a lesser form. This is one of the great novels of any category.

Philip Pullman and the full cast deliver a final performance that is worth every one of the preceding hours.

Five stars. I am still not over the ending. I may never be.

If You Liked The Amber Spyglass, Try:

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe — Dense, philosophical science fiction about death, rebirth, and the nature of divinity. Adult-level difficulty, same cosmic ambition.
The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb — Fantasy that builds to a devastating emotional ending about sacrifice and the cost of loyalty. Same willingness to break your heart.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke — A much quieter story about identity and wonder, but the same Pullman-like quality of goodness surviving inside a mystery.

From Luke Stoffel's Bookshelf

If this book review resonated with you, check out The Warboy Chronicles — a queer memoir series about separation, sacrifice, and the bench you keep coming back to, sharing Lyra and Will's understanding that the truest love is the one that costs you everything. Learn More: The Warboy Chronicles