The Dark Materials Trilogy (Golden Compass, etc.)

I was reading The Subtle Knife a couple of days ago, and was once again caught up in the story.  The one thing I regret is that my mental image of the central characters of Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel, as well as Lee Scoresby, are all dominated by those of Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig and Sam Elliott, but honestly, there isn't that much regret on that score.

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.