Northern lights
I saw the film a long time ago, so i don't remember much of the plot. But what is instantly noticeable is that the book puts Lyra in the category of poor and stupid. She spends the entire opening part being completely unsupervised street rat.
The concept of daemons is a quirky USP, but it's mechanics still doesn't exactly click for me. Well it does work at face value and it does make you feel the feels from the descriptions.
It's a cool unique fantasy adventure with a rather inconclusive ending.
The Subtle Knife
Ehm, ugh, okay? You know first book is pretty simple compared to this one. After the previous ending is just a beginning this one opens with a different protagonist and takes its time before it finally ties into the first story in utter Dick's bizarreness arranged into Simak's seemingly sane logic.
This is a one damn esoteric exquisite exotic cuisine dish, and you have to be into things like Lexx, Naked Lunch or especially Zardoz, with its underlying philosophy, to get into it.
The Amber Spyglass
Sooo. Compared to this one the previous book is child's play. The third book manages to be both more wild, and to completely tie all events together into a consistent ruleset. The daemons turns out are actually a YU+ME: dream type soul-splitting ordeal (or the other way around), which makes the soul-rape parts even more impactful.
The story is vaguely hinting at the events, which will make degenerate concerned moms go berserk, if they only knew these books exist. The author did try to chicken out of it, but his chosen vagueness speaks for itself. And we all know what we would (and most of you did) in such situation. The book is climaxing in the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the two dilemma, at the least selfless age, and at the least selfless moment. And, boi, that smarts.
The harshness does work, but still, there must be loopholes with the scale of things. It's basically same is saying that you personally is able to stop global warming by yourself, with the rest of the planet still doing their shit at the price of your misery and unresolved missed opportunities. Well, most of the people already live with unresolved issues and do ponder missed opportunities, with an ability to seemingly just move on during the waking hours, which precede late night in bed introspections.