Okay, first things first. I'm Christian. So naturally I shouldn't be a huge fan of these books, right? Because of the whole killing god thing, but actually that isn't why I don't like these books. I don't like them because they are a soap-box for atheism and it gets boring...
The first book is pretty interesting, has a suitable villain and a good story line, interesting setting in an alternative universe. But the second book dives right into the weird. Most fantasy books are slightly weird, but this is a bit too much for me. Pullman brings in the "real world" (I hate that term...) suddenly, then is having characters cross back and forth between, for the lack of a better word, dimensions. They have some kind of a goal, but it is never very clear what, and the bad guy turns out not to necissarily be bad, just possesive, and the good guy turns out to be a power-hungry crazy guy! (I'm talking about her father..)
Then it starts to be this whole soap box about how Christianity isn't true and organized religion is just a conspiracy theory to gain power and control over people. So in the end of the third book, their is basically another 'War in Heaven', this time with the renegade angels winning...I'm confused just trying to write a description!!! So he is against Christianity, but he uses Christian motifs throughout the whole book to prove how Christianity isn't true? Including 'killing' God?
I think Pullman is trying to use Milton's idea in Paradise Lost of Satan being the true hero of the Fall, but he uses too many ideas that contridict each other. It isn't really a children's novel, it is an academic essay encouched in what looks like a children's novel.
I can also see that Pullman is trying to go against the genre of the Hero Cycle, which usually includes a definate goal, a definate enemy, and a definate higher being (kinda like Dumbledore in Harry Potter, or Gandalf in Lord of the Rings..). Pullman pretends like it is going that way, then pulls the rug out from under the reader, which just adds to the confusion. Instead his characters have to relie on their own ingenuity and figure out what must be done, even though the main characters are 11-12 year old children. It is unrealistic, and too far-fetched for the genre these books seem to be.
These books are interesting to read, mostly because of the spin Pullman takes and the academic arguments that are involved. But they aren't children's books. Far from it, in my view. There is a lot of ethical, religious, and moral debate in these books that can be difficult to understand in the best of times. Some portions of this book I have to read like a textbook, not a novel, to follow the plot at all.
Now, I don't like these books because they are confusing, contradictory, and not what they profess to be. Not because the author is atheist and trying to convince others to be atheist. No matter what an author does, he/she can not change the readers mind about what they already believe. And if I were going to be convinced that there was no God, these books would not prove it. They aren't logical enough and too contradictory to do prove anything other than an interesting twist on High Fantasy, one that I don't think works very well. I commend Pullman for what he is trying to do, but I don't think he succeeds.
"His Dark Materials" are not evil books, as the rumor has been going around the Christian Community. They take an interesting spin on High Fantasy, atheism being a part of that spin, because most High Fantasy (its true!!) has a strain of Christianity in them. Read them, they are very interesting, but I only bought them so I could write a paper about how I didn't like them.
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