Ugh. Just finished it. What a disappointment. I was prepared to be disappointed, but this sadly exceeded my expectations.
Completely agree with all the points already made.
So many plot lines started and hinted at and not followed up at all.
A complete u-turn from the HDM sequence re: the windows. The angels were going to help close all the windows, so why were there so many left open in Lyra’s world? Surely they would have started there!
And yes, 100% Lyra would surely have gone looking for Will once she discovered that the ending to The Amber Spyglass was a in fact pack of lies and that the windows were fine. Especially when she realised that she had her own subtle knife. Or did Pullman just forget what he had written at the end of HDM?
I can’t really forgive him for not bringing Will back at all, he was such a great character. Even if it was just to see what he was doing in his life. And what was the point of killing off Serafina Pekkala? It added absolutely nothing to the story!
The magisterium plot bits, I just skimmed over. So dull. The world through the red building, all the “money is bad” stuff right at the end - the way it was written just seemed so contrived, as if Pullman was trying too hard to be clever - “oh, look, what is happening in this imaginary world is just like what’s happening all over the world in real life!”
I too was confused about the whole needing-to-separate thing to go into the red building, which was a Big Thing all the way through the books until they all got there and it wasn’t a Thing at all.
No idea why/how Ionides suddenly turned up in the other world at the end.
Literally the only thing in the whole book that I was happy about (other than Lyra and Pan happily reuniting, of course) was that Malcolm and Lyra didn’t get together after all. The thought of that just gave me the massive ick, it was like a middle aged man’s fantasy that every young woman must secretly lust after an older man.
I could (and do) re-read HDM over and over, but this trilogy and The Rose Field in particular is a one-time-only read for me, I think 🙁