This is part of a series of posts on the His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman. Spoilers abound.
All of the biggest problems with the His Dark Materials trilogy are in the third volume. As I mentioned before, the first volume was excellent, and the second plenty good. The third one stank to the heavens, and lo, great was the odor thereof. And yet, I could even have forgiven the third volume its many absurdities, if it had not been for the ending.
The climax of the third book, or what should have been the climax, was the death of the Authority. That was handled fine. There was a bit of authorial convenience, what with the protags just happening to stumble across the old bloke in time to open the lid and have him disappear in a puff of air, but that was no worse than many of the other stupid things that happened in that book. No, the part that made me throw the book across the room was what happened after that. You know what I’m talking about. When Lyra and Will get together and…
Let’s give Pullman a little credit here. Let’s assume that he didn’t mean to imply that his thirteen-year-old protagonists actually had sex, even though the scene easily lends itself to that interpretation. (If they only kissed, why put it off-screen?) But still, let’s stop to appreciate the utter idiocy of what Pullman tried to pull off in the ending: the leakage of Dust, which threatens the entire multiverse, is stopped because two kids kiss.
I died of stupid when I read this.
The biggest problem of the third book is that Pullman’s polemical purpose got ahead of his narrative purpose, and this problem is basically what kills the ending. He wants to make some kind of point about sex being awesome and good (and you should totally do it, even if you’re only thirteen), and he has to make good on the prophecies hinted at back in the first book that Lyra would be a Second Eve[1]. So he contrives to have preteen smooching somehow be the solution to the universe’s problems, even though this makes no sense at all given what the rest of the trilogy has told us about Dust. There is no logical reason for Lyra’s and Will’s actions to close up the leakage of Dust. It occurs purely to support Pullman’s polemics, and it violates the logic of the story to do so.
Pullman may have been trying to have the ending operate on fairy-logic or dream-logic, and this might have worked had the rest of the story not been so science-fictional. This is a story in which the “magic” operates on clear principles, and there’s a rational (though fantastic) explanation for everything. The dream-logic by which love can heal the universe clashes with the tone that carries through the rest of the book, and the glaring incongruity instead foregrounds Pullman’s authorial fiat. Plus, what a saccharine, cliched form of fairy-logic this is? Love is what saves the universe? A kiss will heal the tear in the world? This is a plot for a second-rate Disney film, not a significant children’s trilogy with aspirations to something better.
Pullman should have known better.
[1] I should point out that there already was a Second Eve, and she’s known for something kind of different.
J.S. Bangs 
It’s sex. The aftermath is clearly indicating sex. I never even had a question when I read it. It makes sense because of the whole “adult/child” + dust + soul animal stuff. That what Pullman wants to save the world isn’t so much sex, but what sex represents “going up so that we no longer need, or want the ‘Authority'”.. which apparently was nothing more than the first sentient or merely longest currently still living sentient being in this part of the universe. He’s hardly God and a poor analog for even the most paganized versions of divinity.
The first book was a good book that needed a good series and got an average sequel with a pointless concluding book. He’s an atheist and has said in interviews that his express interest is in being a sort of anti-Narnia propaganda-to-kids book. That’s the weakness of Narnia and that’s ultimately the failure of HDM.
Feel free to disregard my opinion, since I would never bother to read such books (I don’t believe in multiverses or any such magic fiction).
It’s not the “sex”, which is possibly just your imagination. If the writer did not write them having sex … They Didn’t Have Sex !! Sex only happens with the writer’s Written Consent. So you’re completely derailing the book here.
The kiss was a symbolic gesture of Defiance. Dust can’t kiss, the world can’t kiss, but it’s “saviours” can kiss. Sharing saliva in a filthy, bestial way, much like the Blue Gender anime, from which, I’m certain the writer drew inspiration from.
The same way “dust” would have a voracious growth pattern of pollution, that kiss “seals” it, by closing the space between them, like a closed Gate.
You have to realise that most book writers, actually use metaphores, and more subtle meanings and double entendre, than simple “direct writing” which is very formal and soviet documentary-like.
Yes, writers use metaphores in their books. Imagine that. The true meaning is found in the symbolism of the words BEING WRITTEN. And not the worthless gestures you imagined it “could have lead to”.
The English edition makes Lyra’s experience much more specifically sexual and it was clear enough in the text that they censored it in the American edition.
I suppose the author, knowing he’d get hammered kept just far enough away to establish plausible deniability. They decide they are in love, they get all excited, they touch each other’s daemons (which is offensively intimate in any other circumstance in the books) and they lay together all night under the trees alone.
Saying the\y didn’t have sex because he didn’t say, “and then they did the nasty” is silly.
I got the metaphor, like a club over the head. The entire book is filled with the overtones of “coming of age without God” and frankly I find him a bit sexist that because the main character was a girl, that must mean sex.
I’ll have to take your advice and disregard your post since you didn’t read the books and are missing all the pieces of the puzzle that he put together.
I made an account just to say that this whole comment is ridiculous. Why are you even on this thread if you haven’t read it? I’m with David here. Your opinion is quite easy to disregard not having read the book. Even your generalized idea that writers have to specifically write something down in order for it to happen is silly. If enough clues point to a conclusion and there’s no suggestion in the writing that it didn’t happen, then the writer is indicating that it happened.
Super