Nathaniel is 17 now, the sweetheart of the government after saving everyone in The Golem's Eye and even worse when it comes to believing the goverment’s line about the supremacy of magicians and mistreating Bartimaeus.

As you might guess, in much the same way as in The Golem's Eye, I didn’t really care for Nathaniel. Bartimaeus is still pretty cool, but where this book really shines is seeing what Kitty has gotten up to over the past few years and actually digging into what Ptolemy was like.

The Amber Spyglass is really a sequel to The Subtle Knife more than a conclusion to The Golden Compass . Most everything that I liked in the Golden Compass but was missing in The Subtle Knife is still missing here, while the new additions that annoyed me about The Subtle Knife are turned up to 11.

We get fascinating new worlds (miniature spies with poisonous spines on their feet! creatures with wheels! how weird!) but to the most part they don’t seem to really lead to the story. Lyra… is growing up and supposed to be super important to the upcoming battle, but really this is again a book about Will. And Lyra’s big part? Growing up. That’s about it.

Oof. That’s an intense book.

Hawking does an impressive job of making cosmology and the Big Bang and black holes seem relatively digestable, but even for me–with a strong background in mathematics, a pretty decent one in at least undergradate level physics and a stronger study specifically in quantum weirdness, albeit more from a computational perspective–this book is hard to read at times.

The Subtle Knife takes off where The Golden Compass left off, with Lyra leaving her world behind, traveling across a bridge originally torn by the death of a friend. On top of that, we have a new character in Will, a boy searching for his missing father, instead finding another, must less dramatic way to travel between worlds.

To some extent, The Subtle Knife feels like an odd sequel. Where the Golden Compass centered almost entirely around Lyra, this time around, we’re split between Lyra and Will, with Will really the driving force behind the story. I don’t mind Will–he’s unlikable at first, but you fell that’s mostly because

I’ve read The Golden Compass before, but it’s been a few years. On top of that, this time around, I listened to it as an audiobook (the full cast reading, I’m not sure if there is another). I have fond memories of this book and for the most part, they were met on re-read, which is something you don’t always get.

The core of the book is a world where people’s spirits / souls / conscious exists as a separate being, a daemon who takes the form of an animal companion –changing and mutable at first and eventually settling into a single form for adults that represents the core of who they are. It’s an interesting idea and well done, to the point that it feels natural, to the point that I almost wish I could live in this world, just to see who my daemon might be.

There are no endings, and never will be endings, to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was an ending.

And oh what an ending it was.

After I read Old Man's War, I went looking for the sequels. While on paper The Ghost Brigades is the second in the series, it’s surprisingly different.

We get a lot more of a look into the CDF and specifically Special Forces, which was something that was interesting from the first book.

Towers of Midnight continues the final avalanche to the Last Battle, with Lan continuing to gathering followers, the Black Tower continuing to grow more and more corrupt, Perrin confronting the Whitecloaks (it’s about time that storyline wraps up), and the newly healed Rand causing even more chaos than before.

Many people, when asked what they notice most about the change from Jordan’s writing to Sanderson’s mention that Mat is different. Honestly, I didn’t really notice it. I like Mat–Mat in all his guises. Poisoned by the dagger. Helping his friends no matter what. Son of Battle, Prince of the Ravens. He’s one of my favorite characters. If he feels different under Sanderson, it almost feels like growing up. After all:

“The end is near,” Moridin said. “The Wheel has groaned its final rotation, the clock has lost its spring, the serpent heaves its final gasps.”

Wow.

I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife’s grave. Then I joined the army.

Fascinating.