oh gosh.. where to even start

pros:
- Pullman's writing is just beautiful. The way he conjures up the vivid worlds is brilliant.

- I did prefer this one to the Subtle Knife because it traveled through different worlds and we got the wonder of them again. I adored the description of the land of the dead, which worked greco-roman myth into the Christian, and of the world with the mulsafa. 
- I loved the new characters: the mulsafa, Baroch and Bathalmus, the little people, Mary Malone being further developed, etc. The two angels were great especially, being sarcastic and brave and human.
- I loved the idea of Dust, the sheer genius complexity of the worldbuilding and how it all ties up into a metaphor about growing up and sin and experience. It all tied together beautifully with the Spectres, Dust, the seed-pod trees, etc.
- I really liked how Lyra and Will's relationship grew. This might be an allosexual person's perspective but their sexual awakening felt real and powerful. It was clear that it wasn't shameful and there was nothing wrong with the "loss of innocence". 
- in TSK, the religious overtones and all felt a bit too on the nose and lecture-y, whereas somehow it worked better here, or so I felt.
- I was hugely pleased that Lyra got to resolve things with Roger, and Will with his father. a big part of my dislike for TSK was how utterly unresolved those felt, and i thought Pullman would leave it like that. So while Will didn't get to speak to his father a lot, it was still really good.
- The ending was bittersweet, but it fit within the story and I was okay with that, even if it did make me tear up. I'm looking forward to seeing the older Lyra in TSC

- there's a whole lot more i can't even say, just the vivid imaginative beauty of it, tied up with the immense intellectual and story-telling impressiveness of the whole thing.

cons:

- one thing I didn't like was that the only gay characters in the series, Baroch and Bathalmus, both died. A lot of people in the books die, admittedly, but it did feel like BYG.
- I think an asexual person might be upset and hurt by the ending, with the resolution of Dust being fixed through love/sexual awakening. I think it was more hinted towards the latter and the idea that to be sexual = the core of humanity is a bit :/ obviously there was more to it than that, but that seemed a key component and that felt a little bit off.

i think that's all! this was a wonderful end to the trilogy and i loved it. i can't *quite* remember if i read it before or not.

the bit where Mary makes the amber spyglass did feel very deja-vu, but if i did read it, maybe i didn't finish, or it was years ago