His Dark Materials Trilogy - Phillip Pullman

We were supposed to read 'The Golden Compass' for my book club, and I decided to read the whole trilogy since I was going to be on vacation anyway. What a mistake. I read some people comparing these books to the Lord of the Rings, and talking about all of the parallels to Paradise Lost. I saw no resemblence, either in quality, style, or story. Probably these books are fine fantasy novels for adolescents but there was really nothing of quality for adults at all. Characters were poorly developed. The story was superficial at best. The "new world" the novels were set in was only slightly different from our own and not even very well fleshed out. The only similarity I saw to Milton was the apple scene, and that was tenuous at best. Perhaps I'm missing something - happens sometimes. I somehow couldn't buy that a first kiss/more? between two random children could alter the fabric of reality.

Rating: put it down and walk away, very slowly