I really wanted to like it, but this was disappointing. If it hadn't been related to the His Dark Materials trilogy, I probably wouldn't have finished it. The whole thing was melancholy and sad. It wasn't very fun to read Lyra and Pan fighting and hating each other.
Malcolm was fine in the Belle Sauvage, but he was super creepy here. I hated the set up of a Lyra/Malcolm romance - he helped feed her and care for her as a baby! He was her teacher when she was a young teenager! It's creepy as hell to be attracted to her. Especially in the world of #metoo. On that, I hated that there was an attempted rape scene of Lyra near the end. Why was this necessary? Especially after the rape of Alice in the last book. It added nothing to Lyra's development. We don't need rape as a plot device. Especially not with both of the main female characters.
I didn't understand why I was supposed to care about the overall plot. There wasn't a flow to the story. It was just random event after random event.
but there were things I liked. The beginning was promising, and I enjoyed seeing the normal life of college Lyra. And I was intrigued about the older Princess who had a relationship with the dancer and lost her Daemon. In fact, I wish we had got that story instead!