If you haven't read the books, you should; Philip Pullman is an excellent writer. The characters are wonderful, and likable for the most part. But that's not saying much; I think my own characters are just as great, but this next component is what I struggle with: the story. Pullman's story line is brilliant.
I picked up the last book in the trilogy: The Amber Spyglass, and to my disappointment, the narrative gets a little confused, especially in the parts with a lot of action. Despite everything, including the highly ambitious philosophical background, the trilogy seems to be a success. I'm still not through the last book, and I must confess that a complete endorsement of the trilogy must wait, because the end of a large work of fiction must be reasonably satisfying, to receive a star. In a short story, the ending is almost everything, but not so in a novel.
Apropos of absolutely nothing, here are the word counts of some of the more interesting fantasy series as reported by https://griffinpauljackson.com/ :
- His Dark Materials (trilogy) by Philip Pullman – 329,000
- Lord of the Rings (trilogy) by J.R.R. Tolkien – 455,000
- Harry Potter (seven-book series) by J.K. Rowling – 1,002,000
Writing merely a long book is not a praiseworthy achievement, but I found it difficult to write Music of the Stars, 236,000 words, and Alexandra, 329,000 words. Helen, the piece of writing with which I began is reported by Word as 1.3 million words, not including some enormous gaps in the middle, for which my careless editing is to blame; I ripped out vast chunks of text before replacing it with something decent, and now I can't remember what's supposed to go in there.
