I hate Philip Pullman. I love this book, but I hate him so much right now. Because I can't think of reading this book again. And I don't know when I'll be compelled to read the third installation. Ugh. So much hate. Right about now.I really liked The Ruby in the Smoke. It was such a great way to introduce a slew of characters, and while there were multiple points of views, I appreciated how the reader knew what the villains were thinking. This kind of writing followed through in The Shadow in th...

The Shadow of the North has a lot going on, including runaway magicians, false mediums, and steampunk weapons of mass destruction. But the true heart of this story does not lie in its intricate and sometimes improbable plot. It's about love. Not that mushy, obsessive stuff so many YA novels devote their pages of purple prose to. This is about a love of equals, and all the sharp, bright angles such a love has to carve a path out where there seems to be none. Philip Pullman's writing captures all

My experience with Philip Pullman is that he writes an excellent first book, but then starts doing nasty things to his characters and basically ruins it all. I hate that his romances never work out. And the books end up getting so dark and twisted.

I can pretend i finished this book but that is a lie i just really wanted to rate it and say that i found it very boring im so sorry, pullman, but i'll give you another try when i start reading the golden compass

Glad there are four books in this series. This one was terrific (yes, at times depressing.)

The ending sucks. Period.

For my full review, visit me at https://mrsbrownsbooks.wordpress.com/...The gang return again for the next instalment in Pullman’s mystery series. A welcome return by the likes of Sally, Frederick and Jim, the trio under take another mystery involving deception and terrifying weapons.For my full review, visit me at https://mrsbrownsbooks.wordpress.com/...

Get read for an angry rant (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻There were many things I didn't like, but only three of them are truly the table flipping kind. Here they are.1. There's a girl who's so pretty she is assumed to be perfect of character, innocent and divine - just because she's unearthly beautiful. That's how the world works when guys write books, after all.2. In contrast, there's a girl who is disfigured. Naturally, she knows her place in the world and that she would never be loved by the man she wants. So

Bleh! This is not YA in my opinion. The 16-yr-old Sally from the last book is now 22 and Frederick is something like 26. Their concerns and conversations are not YA I think. I like the writing and characters mostly again, but this is dark and deals very frankly with murder and sex.MAJOR SPOILERS here: It was 3-star again until the dumb ending. Sally and Frederick have been having a believable romantic conflict rooted in gender roles--very interesting--but when Sally realizes she does want to mar...

book on CD: Anton Lesser is a delightful reader!

This took nearly a month to read, and I had to keep putting it aside to read other things. The main reason was its general dry nature and boredom. Sally and co become mixed up in the machinations of a very unpleasant man who has at least one murder to his credit, employs thugs and killers, and has political and economic power which is permitting him to create a weapon of mass destruction. There was a subplot where he blackmailed a politician to let him marry his daughter who was a colourless, in...

I rebelled for months against finishing this reread because THE ENDING HURTS SO MUCH. But the entire story is, of course, so well done and so complex and inviting that even the ouchiest of literary ouchies can't take away the joy of visiting Sally's world again. That said, if Pullman could let some characters just be happy, I wouldn't be such a blubbery mess right now. JUST SAYING.

What do I rate this audio book?The reader is fabulous. Lesser reads brilliantly. Pullman write a compelling story for more than 2/3 of the book.The historical detail is seamless and breathtaking.But ... yes, BUT. But then Pullman has three characters behave strongly out of character that results in the death of one of them. The story goes downhill from there. I just could not allow Pullman to take such a lame turn in his own plot. He's too good a writer to pull a stunt like this. If he's going t...

seriously, why the heck do people waste their time with the golden compass? so good. intelligent, villains you love to hate, sinister plots...i normally hate this word applied to a book, but it was a delicious read. so dang good.and now, major spoiler.....................seriously, don't read this if you value the experience of reading a book at all.................no joke. leave now.......don't say i didn't warn you.fred dies! are you freaking kidding me?! stupidly, too. that dumb girl who want...

I'm hooked on the Sally Lockhart series. I listened to this right after listening to 'The Ruby in the Smoke' which is the first in the series and while I liked 'The Ruby in the Smoke', I think 'The Shadow in the North' is much better in both plot-line and character development.I love Anton Lesser, he's such an amazing actor/reader listening to him read the book is a delight. I love the voices and the accents he gives the characters. I can't wait to listen to the next book in the series. (July 25...

Pullman is a great writer--characters, plot, setting are all beautifully and deftly developed. The Sally Lockhart series is as engaging a mystery series as you'll find. Sally and her friends/business partners are a delightfully intelligent group who come upon a major mystery that joins a magician's trouble with some shadowy pursuers and a retired teacher's loss of investment money. Something insidious is entrapping Victorian England, and Sally's life becomes dependent upon discovering its source...

The girl has grown up!When last we saw her, she was much younger. Young but experienced in the corruption and evils of the world. Young but old beyond her years. Young but ready for revolution!Now older, wiser, but just as angry. Scarred. More scars shall come. Alas!The author is committed to showing that growth. We are all works in progress, no matter how righteous our cause.Much like his protagonist, the author is also angry: at the systematized inequities of the world, at the secret power bro...

To give a Philip Pullman novel only two stars physically pains me! However, this just was not the book for me. This is the second instalment in the Sally Lockhart quartet, which is a Victorian-era series following amateur-sleuth-turned-private-detective, Sally Lockhart, as she attempts to solve the mysteries of London's dark underbelly, as well as those muddying her own past.I struggle to pinpoint exactly what made my experience of reading this so unenjoyable. I can only pinpoint it to my prior

1/1/21:Still perfect, atmospheric, wrenching. 12/28/15:The Shadow in the North is a much stronger book than The Ruby in the Smoke. It is tighter, more intricately plotted, and its characters are more human. Often frustratingly, infuriatingly human. Will I ever forgive that one secondary character? I wonder.12/25/08:I first read The Shadow in the North in France, when I was ten. The Shadow in the North was the first book I read with a sex scene. (It was entirely PG, of course, but I was still, na...

This book annoyed me in several ways. First of all, it is set six years after the first book and changes many things about the characters with no explanation. A character who was only interested in photographic art is now a private detective. Etc. The plot I actually really enjoyed. It was a fun, light, Victorian adventure story. But then it became needlessly dark and depressing. Pullman doesn't seem to know what kind of book he's writing. He seems to be trying to force a YA book to be more adul...