I was recommended this trilogy by a friend who was also into fantasy books, he was a big fan and so I was quite keen to read them. Having finished The Amber Spyglass I have to say I was very disappointed with it. I felt there was no real structure to the plots, Pullman almost changed his mind as he went along, I didn't get how Mrs Coulter, was bad, then good, then bad again, the same with Asriel. He brought in characters for the sake of it then withdrew them again after a couple of pages, there seemed no consistency to the original idea. The ending then just got lost, I thought the idea was she was the new 'Eve' but where was the temptation? What action from this temptation brought down the church? How was Mary the 'tempter'? Plus a love story between children just doesn't wash with me, I couldn't emote to them as they are only supposed to be around 11-12 so it didn't feel so tragic. There are areas of the book and ideas that I liked but it did not feel correctly thought out which would have made for a brilliant trilogy.